Photo of the week – Week 8 Term 4

Posted on December 2, 2023 by Newsletter Ed

Til

Til

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Preschool News Week 8 Term 4

Posted on December 1, 2023 by katrinaa

Hello everyone,

The weeks continue to fly by, not long to go until we’ve reached the end of the year. We hope you’ve kept the afternoon of Wednesday 13th December free as we look forward to catching up with families at the Diddy after school finishes.

On Tuesday we had the first of 3 orientation mornings for new families joining preschool next year. It was gorgeous to see how welcoming the current preschool children were, and how excited they were to greet families and show children around preschool.

The highlight of the week would have to be the Preschool Thank You Afternoon Tea, a long-held tradition to celebrate the children’s year in preschool and a way for the children to say thank you to everyone involved in caring for them and making it possible for them to attend Currambena. We hope all the serving practice paid off and you were well taken care of by your server! Seems we did, however, make a few too many loaves of banana bread. I’ve let the children know that we’ll be making our way through them over the week. Everyone enjoyed finishing off the lemonade, cheese sticks and cookies on Friday.

I’ll be sending those families returning to preschool next year a fee relief declaration form. Please complete it and return it to me as soon as possible as we need this to be able to calculate your fees for 2024. This can be done online so there is no need to print it out. For those families that are attending primary school next year I really need you to complete and return the transition to school permission form if you’re attending a primary school other than Currambena, as without it I can’t complete the statement. Thank you to everyone that has already done this.

Love

Katrina, Michael and Lisa

 

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The Rubies Week 8 Term 4

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Vincent

Hi all,

Thanks to the parents for coming to help this week with reading groups! It was a shame to miss swimming, but the weather was looking quite bad on Tuesday. This week we introduced our last set of sounds for the year – qu, x, ng, ck. We spent some more time this week looking at position and capacity. Meg ran some water experiments with the children to investigate volume and capacity. The children enjoyed their music with Phil and craft with Chris this week.

Our highlight of the week was Summerhill Day on Wednesday. The children loved making gingerbread people with Carolina and Archana. Rice Paper Rolls with Wendy was also very popular. Lots of the children spent some time in Jo’s and Amelia’s room making a variety of paper craft and artworks. In our room we had a range of children enjoying making animated drawings, doing some still life drawings, and making Ooblek.

Vinnie

 

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Jess’ group Week 8 Term 4

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Newsletter Ed

Hello everyone.

We’ve had another lovely week together as we draw closer to the end of the year. The children have set up little letterbox envelopes so that they can leave friendly notes to each other in the lead up to Christmas. It’s gorgeous to read some of the special messages the children are writing to one another.

Summerhill day was a blast with cooking activities being some of the most popular. PIPs have been completed and everyone is looking forward to presentations on Monday afternoon. The younger children have also completed their group project about Australian Birds and will be presenting this on Thursday afternoon to the elders.

By all reports, Pyjama day was a lot of fun on Friday and the photos in this newsletter show some of the shenanigans..

Looking forward to the last full week of 2023.

Jess

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Amelia’s Group Term 4 Week 8

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Amelia

Hello everyone,

Our countdown to the end of the school year is in full swing, with enthusiastic Kris Kringle message-writing and guessing, preparations for our Year 2 PIP presentations, and a very jolly 1st of December with Christmas music and a few inspired outfits.

We are nearing our farewell to Sally, our student support teacher, who will now be finishing up on Monday next week. She has been a huge asset to the team, and the children warmed up to her almost immediately. I am sure they will all be very sad to see her go! We wish her all the best with her continued study, and know she will be amazing at whatever path she chooses to follow.

The children enjoyed a lovely Summerhill Day on Wednesday this week, with a variety of activities. Some of these included gingerbread cookies with Carolina, Vietnamese rice paper rolls with Wendy, capture the flag run by the elders in Wendy’s class, animated drawings with Vinnie, recycled sushi craft with me, and oobleck making with Meg. It was a lovely, high-spirited day, and a memorable final Summerhill day for our Year 6s.

Have a lovely weekend!

Amelia

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Jo’s group Week 8 Term 4

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Newsletter Ed

What an extraordinary week we have had. The countdown is on with 1.5 weeks of school left, where did the time go?! The children have had an enjoyable time on Summerhill Day, which went off without a hitch! In my room, we explored how to make flipbooks, floating your boat, and team drawing. Each activity was a lot of fun and I liked seeing each child included in the process, using their imagination and experimenting with materials. In flipbooks, we watched a video to see how the process works. Then each child got to working on building their story and drawing each page the same, with a detail changed on each page. ‘Whatever floats your boat” was an interesting activity as each child experimented with different materials to see what floated. While some materials, like Duplo, were heavier than others, it could float easier with foil or spoons. Team drawing was an enjoyable experience as children in groups of 2-3 had a piece of yarn taped to a texta and together drew pictures supplied by myself. It was fun afterwards, too, to guess what each group drew. The challenge was to only hold the yarn to draw. Some children experimented with 1 child drawing and the other person holding their hand still or holding the yarn so close to the texta to gain more control. It provided many laughs.

This week in science, the children researched how Aboriginal people, specifically the Noongar people from WA, predicted seasonal changes. They used their knowledge of how non-Indigenous people predict the seasons by calendars, temperature, plants shedding and animals hibernating to explore this further. The chromebooks were utilised to help their research with pre-picked YouTube videos and easy-to-read websites to gather information. I was impressed by their concentration and engagement with the task. Afterwards, I shared something I found fascinating which was how astronomy is used to predict the seasons. Australia’s first astronomers used the ‘emu in the sky’ to predict a hunting season of emu eggs (April-May).

PIPs have begun this week and I am thrilled with each child’s progress and growth in their speaking and presenting skills throughout the last 2 terms. Parents, please check in with your child to see when they are presenting.

Highlights for next week:

-        Monday is our last library visit for the year! Remember to bring in your borrowed books.

-        On Tuesday at swimming, the children will have a chance to buy an ice-cream afterwards, valued at $5 or less. There will also be a chance to jump in the water fully dressed, so remember an extra set of clothes to swim in.

-        Wednesday is our excursion to Macquarie University Astronomical Observatory as part of our Earth & Space unit this term. We will depart by bus at 9:30am and return to school at 2:30pm.

-        Kris Kringle is this Thursday! Remember gifts need to be between $0-20.

-        PIP presentations have begun and will continue on Monday and Thursday.

Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend,

Jo.

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Wendy’s group Week 8 Term 4

Posted on December 1, 2023 by wendyp

Our room is crowded with camping gear, inside and out, and I’ve been watching the weather, grateful that the huge storms on the south coast have happened this week and will hopefully be gone by next Monday!

We’ve continued with poetry reading, algebra and PIP presentations this week… and had a fun Summerhill Day on Wednesday. I hope you all enjoy the photos.

We’ve also been finishing off some PDHPE topics about respect, consent and safety, in person and on-line.

Our last Buddies session for the year on Tuesday was a bit tricky because so many of our Year 6s were off visiting their respective high schools. All the decisions are now made and they all know where they will be next year. Now to enjoy camp and the final days of primary school.

Not much else to say really… I’ll email my group with last minute camp reminders.

Have a great week!

Love,
Wendy

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My Time at Currambena by Til

Posted on December 1, 2023 by wendyp

I’ve been at Currambena my whole life because I have an older sister who used to come here and I would always come with my mum to drop her off and also because my mum used to work in TBU.

Preschool
One of my memories that I can clearly recall from preschool is that I could not speak English and my only friend then was Kai. He could somehow understand my German. Another memory is the old green slide that was removed when Wendy’s new classroom was built. It was so much fun and I was sad when it disappeared.
I watched every day the builders building Wendy’s classroom, I was obsessed with building and diggers then.

Kindergarten and Year 1
Kindergarten was the first year I could speak English and I spent 2 years there and made a couple of new friends like Zavier and Asher. A funny memory in spelling when I was stuck on the easiest level of spelling words when everybody else was at the hardest levels. Also, Asher and I would always build traps for each other. When the sports shed was built, the wood planks and the other stuff we used for our traps just disappeared. Things that I loved were the Monarch butterflies and the ducklings.

Year 2
I had Rosie as a teacher and she was one of my favourite teachers. Unfortunately, she left not long after she came to the school. Every week we would find a partner and would have massage sessions. When Rosie left she gave all of us a present. My first memories from Summerhill Day were in Rosie’s class when we did a ton of science experiments that I really liked.

Year 3
This year was the first year I went on a school camp to Mowbray Park. All I remember is archery and canoeing and I had a lot of fun there. Then COVID came and the lockdown started. There was also the build week where the school built Keepy Uppy, the dome in front of preschool, the bridge over the entrance and the treehouse around the Jacaranda tree.

Year 4
I don’t remember much from year 4 but I do remember going to camp and walking into someone’s cabin and there were food wrappers all over the floor. Our class also often went bushwalking in the mushroom forest. We also had a Siamese fighting fish with a pineapple in the fish tank for him to live in. One of the things that I always looked forward to was climbing the rafters and cool maths games every Friday.

Years 5 and 6
The best thing in Wendy’s class is being able to go to the shops for a lot of different types of food. Sometimes, at the end of each term, we are allowed to buy Cha-time and Dominos. We are also allowed to sell ice blocks on Fridays. In year five I wasn’t very keen to do this, but this year was different and I really enjoyed it. In Wendy’s class, we were allowed to choose what language we would like to learn and I chose Japanese and Latin and had fun learning both of them. What I liked was the seniors’ room where you could just chat with your friends. I also loved the camps that I have gone on in Wendy’s class, especially Jervis Bay and I have made some really good friends.

Craft
I have always loved craft and think that Crafty is a great teacher. I had always looked forward to craft, it was one of my favourite subjects because Crafty would let us do a lot of things you would not be allowed to do at another school and my nickname from him was Til Bobaggans. I will always miss this type of craft and teaching. I also really liked that Crafty would always help you.

Thank you to all my teachers and friends that I ever had, and to my parents for supporting me.

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Photo of the week – Week 7 Term 4

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Newsletter Ed

Kai

Kai

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Preschool News Week 7 Term 4

Posted on November 24, 2023 by katrinaa

Hello everyone,

Where has the year gone? This time next week it will be December! Only a few short weeks left of the school year at Currambena with loads to fit in before our time together comes to an end…. sniff, sniff.

The countdown is on and the preparations for the preschool annual end of year Thank You Afternoon Tea are beginning to build momentum. After lengthy deliberation with 32 preschool children the afternoon tea menu has been decided and we’ve begun preparing some of the food and organising the event. Thank you to everyone that RSVP’d as it’s helpful for us to know how many people we are catering for.  The very astute preschool children are ensuring they taste test many of the menu items as part of their quality control processes, so our supplies are running low.

In group time we’ve been practicing serving our guests at the afternoon tea. We’re amazed to see the children independently grouping into groups of 2 with the preschool teachers choosing one person being the server, the other the guest. It’s also lovely to see children pairing up with people they don’t usually play with, with a few new friendships developing as a result.

As always Music, Spanish and Craft have been highlights of the preschool week. The children have been working in craft sessions to create a t-shirt to wear at the afternoon tea. In Spanish they’ve continued to actively engage in Carolina’s fun Spanish lessons based on the children’s learning through Polyglots, and in Music Phil has been developing the children’s ability to interpret and read written symbols.

Thank you to Zoe, Sia’s Mum, for coming in last week and running an amazing Cheerleading class for preschool, it was a lot of fun and a great opportunity for some of the preschool children that are really interested and skilled in gymnastics to further develop their skills.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the big event, next Thursday, 2pm. If your child doesn’t usually attend on a Thursday, please bring them in at around 1:50pm to assist us with the planning.

Love,

Katrina, Michael and Lisa

 

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