Canteen for Mon 24-Feb-2019

Posted on February 21, 2019 by traceye

Morning Tea

Samosas (veg filling) -$1

Lemon drizzle cake -$1

Fruit -50c

 

Lunch

Butter chicken with rice and papadums – $2.50

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Eva (our new PE exchange student)

Posted on February 21, 2019 by traceye

Hi everyone!

My name is Eva Bakker and I’m 25 years old! I’m an exchange student from The Netherlands.

I have two brothers and two goldfish back at home. I live in a small place called Drachten. In The Netherlands we are famous for our wooden shoes and cheese!!

When I was 7 years old I started playing Waterpolo and I still do. I like to go
to the beach and hang out with my friends but most of all I love to be
outside and play any sport!

I’m in my last year of PE school to become a teacher. When I’m graduating college I would love to work at a primary school in Zwolle. That’s another small town in The Netherlands. I really like to work with kids. If you would like to know anything else about me or you just want to talk you can always come to me and ask!
See you at PE!

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Julianna Term 1 Week 3

Posted on February 21, 2019 by juliannam

Hello Everyone,

Welcome Eva! We hope you have a wonderful time at Currambena. Please see Eva’s note of introduction.

CURRAMBENA’S 50TH BIRTHDAY!     We did some brainstorming in our staff meeting on Monday and have come up with a suggested timeline of events/socials for the year.

TERM 1 Welcome Breakfast 28th February, and end of term Bush dance – 70s theme?

TERM 2 Whole School Art Exhibition followed by camp fire and BBQ Week 9 Friday 28th June – with a sing-a-long of Currambena favourites?

TERM 3 Open school Friday 21st Sept with birthday weekend celebrations Saturday 21st September

TERM 4 Whole school Concert at Sydney Norths Leagues Club 14th Nov, and end of year social

Please let me know ASAP if you are interested in being part of al or some of these exciting events or have other ideas/events you would like to run or assist with.  Email is good or pop into the office and have a chat. We need to be getting onto any bookings now!

UP COMING EVENTS!

TONIGHT! 6pm - Whole School Teacher Parent evening. We start with everyone on the deck under the jacaranda tree and have a short introduction to all the staff, a summary of key issues by Julianna then parents move off to their children’s classrooms. The teachers will run through what their class is all about and the general expectations of the children and parents.

28th March 8.15am -  Welcome Breakfast next Thursday on the Deck.  Looking for help! We need people for buying of the fruit, set-up, serving and pack away. If you can help with any of these please let me know. Set-up is a 7.15 start!               

REMINDERS……. 

School Records -Please remember we use your child’s surname as the reference for all school data ie payments or email enquiries. Some people are still not doing this.

Fees –due on the 28thth February. If you are thinking you need a payment plan please email your suggested payment schedule to enquiries@currambena.nsw.edu.au for confirmation before the fee due date.

Maintenance Hours – Due 9th April.

Recycling – please say no to plastic wrappings, disposable containers. Can we please be one of many to keep our oceans plastic free!

Cheers Julianna

 

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Jess’ Class Term 1 Week 3

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Jess

Hello Everyone,
Thank you to all my fabulous volunteers who have helped or who have signed up to help out in the classroom. Its fabulous to have so much enthusiastic support. A reminder please to apply for your Working With Children number if you haven’t done so already. It is now a policy of the school that all volunteers have a cleared number in order to volunteer in any way at the school that involves being around the children.

A Warm welcome to Eva who has joined us from the Netherlands. She is an expert in physical education and will be part of our Currambena community until May. Each week she will run a session with my class and will also be helping out with excursions, literacy stations and more. If you see her around say ‘Hi’!.

We also have an upcoming excursion to the aquarium planned in week 5. We will be going with preschool and Rosie class by coach. If you are interested in volunteering for this, and you have working with children number, please come and see me. It should be a really fun day.

Sorry for the brevity today.
I hope you all have a gorgeous weekend.
Jess x

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APDEC UPDATE

Posted on February 21, 2019 by wendyp

Exciting news!
The website is up and running and bookings for this event are now open!

For those who have missed hearing about it, APDEC stands for Asia-Pacific Democratic Education Conference and this year, Currambena is hosting it.
From July 15th to 20th, we are hoping to have almost 200 participants from across Asia, Australia and New Zealand staying at Naamaroo, next door to Lane Cove National Park. We have a fabulous line up of speakers already booked and music and art activities in planning stages. There will be lots of “open space” time in the program where conference goers can present their ideas or lead discussions on topics they feel passionate about… and in education there are many of these!

Please check out the website www.apdec2019.org or join our Facebook page and share it with as many people as you can!

The theme is “student voices” and we have some of our fabulous Currambena kids presenting as well.

WE NOW NEED VOLUNTEERS!!

There are many jobs associated with hosting something of this size and we’d love to have more members of the Currambena community involved.
Here is a list of some of the jobs: helping with registration on the first day, collecting overseas visitors from the airport, billeting visitors, assisting with conference activities such as music, craft, excursions, being part of the food team when we come to Currambena for the day, being at Currambena to help with the visit day here, cooking cakes and biscuits for the next fund raising stall at Bunnings….and of course the list goes on.

We are hoping to fund travel expenses for some poorer students from Asian countries so perhaps you have a business which could donate the airfare for somebody.

People to speak to are: Katrina, Michael, Wendy, Di, Shan, Julie, Brett and Kris. Others in the organising group are Cecelia, Chris P and Anna.

We’re looking forward to this being a fantastic event for Currambena and for education, as we bring passionate educators, new and familiar faces and exciting new ideas together for a week.

Please let us know if you can offer help! Thanks!

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Piano and Guitar

Posted on February 20, 2019 by wendyp

I more or less have guitar groups sorted but am finding the piano lessons more tricky. Apologies that it is taking so long. I hope to have some definite news by next week. Thanks for your patience! Wendy

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Wendy’s Group Week 3 Term 1

Posted on February 20, 2019 by wendyp

Hi everyone.

I hope I’ll see many of you at our WHOLE SCHOOL PARENT MEETING TONIGHT AT 6PM. This is a chance to meet our new teachers, connect with members of school council and chat with other parents in our group this year. After the whole school part of the evening, I will be talking about some of our class systems and outlining plans for the term and year. It will be a great chance to get to know each other a little better and ask any questions relevant to the group. Of course, always feel free to make a time to discuss with me privately any issues relating to your own child (or children!)

I will not be at school today, Susan is taking the group for the day, but I will be back this afternoon and will certainly be here for the parent meeting!

In our group this week, we are focusing on our English and Maths topics, reading and critiquing a book written by a friend of mine about an eccentric grandfather, putting in place systems for learning spelling and times tables and completing Unit 1 in our new Maths text books. We are working on Whole numbers, factors, multiples and then primes and composites etc. Next week, Unit 2 in both text books will need to be done. This could be a bit challenging but plenty of help will be available.

We have been learning about Nickson our sponsor child in Uganda who is now 15 and coming to the end of his sponsorship with World Vision. We have also begun working on our PIPs and many have started functional clay projects in the art room with Crafty. Lots going on!

This week we welcome our Dutch PE teacher, Eva, who is going to be working with our group on Thursdays. She will be at Currambena until May, three days each week, as an intern. I hope she enjoys her time with us.

Many thanks to Jennifer and Christine for offering to come with us by public transport to Greenwich Baths. We will do this next week, weather permitting. To my surprise, it’s not proving too crowded at Lane Cove Pool and I have been working with the children in groups of 6 to 8 at a time in the lap pool which does give me a chance to make suggestions and help them with whatever they need. We voted yesterday at Class Meeting to try going to Greenwich and then reassess the situation. Not everyone is keen but we’ll give it a go. Please make sure they all have their swimmers and towels on Tuesday, something warm to put on afterwards and something on their feet. We’ll use the school Opal cards.

Please read the section about the APDEC conference in July that Currambena is hosting. We are at the stage of taking bookings and looking for helpers from the Currambena community during the 5 days of the conference. I’ve written a bit about it and begun a list of the type of help needed. We have a wonderful active group working on it already but please speak to me if you can offer help in any of the areas mentioned. It will be a fabulous event to be part of!!

Thank you to Susan for taking the day today! I am hoping to be back at school in time for guitar and piano.

See you at 6pm tonight! Love, Wendy

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Preschool News Term 1 Week 3

Posted on February 20, 2019 by katrinaa

Hi Everyone,

We’re now in the full swing of our preschool program. We started group time this week giving children the choice in regards to what they would like to do. We’ve began implementing our structured component of learning how to resolve conflict, looking at emotions, labeling different feelings and discussing how we deal with them. For example, it’s okay to be angry though it’s never okay to hurt another person because that’s the way you feel. We’ve discussed the importance of talking to others about your feelings and letting them know what you need. We’ve also done some puppet shows in relation to how to join others in play. The children have been enthralled by the puppet shows, putting on many of their own throughout the day.

We plan on having a bit of a party this week. The children have been interested in the story “There’s a Hippopotamus on my Roof Having a Birthday Party.” So we’ve been reading it a lot. In the story the child has a fancy dress party making animal costumes with paper plate masks. We plan on making some in craft today and then wearing them at an end of day party, celebrating with the cookies we’ll be making in the morning. We’ll continue with mask making and cookie based on the children’s interests.

The children are very keen on music at the moment. They’re loving having Michael play the guitar throughout the day. Currently the Rattlin Bog and the Octopus’s Garden are songs many of the children are really interested in learning. The children have also been busily creating self-portraits in craft as well as preschool. We hope to have these displayed shortly.

A huge thank you to Susan, Kai’s Mum in Rosie’s class, for the cane basket and to Christopher in Wendy’s class for the block game and the wedgits.

We’re look forward to seeing you all Thursday night for the whole school information night starting at 6pm. We’ll start on the decking and then move into preschool to discuss our upcoming year.

Lastly some of the families in preschool are trying to start a soccer team with Lane Cove football club with children in preschool. Children joining will need to have turned 5 by the end of the year. If you are interested in joining please email Tim, Harry’s Dad: tangchristian@gmail.com or Tomas, Tom’s Dad: tzafortezay@dragados.com

That’s it for this week.

Love

Katrina, Michael and Hannah

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Leesa’s Class T1 W3

Posted on February 20, 2019 by leesaj

Hi Everyone,

Another week down, time is flying past. The children are settling in well in the classroom environment and we are learning new things daily.

Each week we will focus on a sound through the use of our ‘Sound Waves’ textbooks. The children will complete a range of activities to further enhance their spelling and reading knowledge and understanding.

We have begun our personal interest projects with questions that the children have about their topic. All children are very excited to explore their questions, and some have borrowed books from the Lane Cove Library on our recent visit.

Our second visit to the Lane Cove Aquatic Centre on Tuesday was fantastic. The children are enjoying showing me their technique with the various swimming strokes and we also went through some survival skills.

In Mathematics we have explored rounding numbers, two-dimensional shape features and a variety of mental number strategies. Through various activities children’s knowledge and understanding has allowed me to gain where they are up to in their learning journey.

On Tuesday we continued with our Rainforest topic and started a mini project on a rainforest animal in groups with Sarah’s class. The children will be researching the life cycle of their chosen animal, the habitat it lives in, what it eats and a description of the animal. The harder questions focus on comparing the life cycle of two rainforest animals and how the animal relies on the environment to survive. I look forward to observing how the children work collaboratively in their groups and viewing their progress over the weeks to come. We will be looking at the text ‘The Lorax’ in class and discussing deforestation, characterisation and literacy techniques.

Today we viewed an animated short film called ‘Pip’. It was about a small dog, who really wanted to become a guide dog. It was a beautiful short film that the children thoroughly enjoyed and showed that sometimes things don’t go to plan but in the end things work out.

The children have had time to do some creative writing over the last week. For those that need some inspiration we will be viewing different texts (comics, illustrations, animated short films) throughout the term.

We have started looking at the picture book ‘The Eleventh Hour’ By Graeme Base. Over the next few weeks we will be examining the figurative language, the rhythm and rhyme in the text. We will also be deciphering the hidden messages throughout the text to find out who ate the feast.

Thank you to all who have brought in shoe boxes and newspaper. If you have any of these items at home and would like to get rid of them we will gladly accept them.

I look forward to seeing many of you on Thursday evening at 6pm.

Leesa x

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Sarah’s Class Week 3 Term 1

Posted on February 20, 2019 by sarahm

Hi Everyone!

This week we had a couple of visitors in the classroom! A teacher called Emily visited us and did a lesson with the children on Place Value. She has moved to Australia from the UK and is looking for casual teaching. Emily’s specialty is in Maths and she was very keen to spend some time in the classrooms and school. The children looked at 3, 4 & 5 digit numbers. They discussed what place value was; made the biggest and smallest numbers with a number of different digits and wrote as many numbers they could using digits. We will continue with this topic over the next couple of weeks. The other visitor was a Dutch student teacher called Eva. Her specialty and teacher training focuses on PE. She came swimming with us on Tuesday morning and will take the children for a PE lesson each week -until she leaves in May. It is fabulous to have these resources in the school. It not only exposes the children to a different approach but gives us teachers (at Currambena) an opportunity to observe and learn too! It also provides the visiting teachers with a chance to experience a Democratic & alternative approach to education.

As part of our topic on rainforests, we watched the short animated version of “The Lorax”. We then had a discussion about the message it conveys. The children drew what the land of the Lorax looked like before and after – The Once-Ler took over and chopped down all the trees. We then looked more closely at the characters and the children wrote a description about them. Our session with Leesa’s class this week included the children working collaboratively in small groups on a mini project. We gave them a list of things they needed to include (in their project) on a chosen insect/animal from the rainforest. Some of the things they need to include are: it’s life cycle, habitat and diet.

Last week, we had the first of our weekly spelling quizzes. It’s always a bit messy when we first get started with this routine. But the children are beginning to embrace expectations and take ownership & responsibility for their learning.

A couple of dates for your diary:

  • Welcome Breakfast is on Thursday, 28th February at 8am
  • Currambena Birthday celebrations will be held on Saturday, 21st September

I  look forward to seeing you tonight for the Parent/Teacher night – kicking off at 6pm sharp!

Love, Sarah

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