Measuring Our Plants.

Sophie, Lutie, Anika, Daisy and Jenesis worked very hard today to measure the height of the vegetables and to record their measurements on their clip boards. They helped to sound out the names of the vegetables as I wrote them down. They then carefully copied them from the whiteboard onto their clipboards.

The care and attention they took to write down the numbers and letters correctly was commendable. 

We had a conversation about millimetres and then introduced the term centimetres and the symbol ‘cm’. I explained that as centimetres was such a long word, ‘cm’ was a short way to write it.

The baking team picked some of our chives, silver beet and spring onions to put on the pizzas today. They were delicious!  

Fun in the pool!

 Thursday afternoon is always eagerly anticipated in the Foundation Class, as swimming is very much a highlight of the girls week. We are so lucky to have such a great swimming facility available to us, and it is always a pleasure to observe the girls as they develop in confidence and skill over time in the pool. 

We've taken some photos so that you can see just how well the girls are all doing:

Sophia and Ria practicing their kicking.

Anika loving the water.

Jenesis enjoying the water too!

Sophie holding her breath under water.

Sophia working with the flutter board.

Lutie is a great swimmer!

Here she is practicing her free-style.

Daisy doing a great starfish!

Zoe practicing kicking with the flutter board.

Isobella can do a great starfish too!

Our very own...

...beanstalk! 

Have you noticed the giant beanstalk that has appeared in our classroom?

Growing beans wouldn't be complete without thinking about Jack and his beanstalk. The girls love this story, in particular the parts of the story that they can repeat. Their favourite is, "Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an English man..." They have enthusiastically embraced the idea of making a picture story and the first step in this has been to create the beanstalk.

Over the last week the girls have been busy working to design and create this.

The girls looked closely at their own bean plants when it came time to draw the leaves, paying careful attention to the shape of the leaves as well as the veins. Painting the leaves with water colours was very exciting. The girls have practiced their cutting skills, working to cut out their leaves to stick in their books and have written short stories about them too.

Here are some photos of our beanstalk as well as the girls working to paint their leaves:

'Nothing without joy.'

Too much fun!

A picture tells a thousand words.

We had such a wonderful time on Mt St John this morning. We captured lots of beautiful images of the girls exploring the mountain and thought we would let the photographs tell the story of our visit:

Every instinct of ours is to know this earth, to know the land. We are born into an ecological identity. We must nurture, sustain and protect this in children, and in turn re-kindle this within ourselves.

- Ann Pelo

A very special gift.

Yesterday, we were presented with a very special gift for the classroom. Our very own light table, hand crafted by Shun Xie, who is a senior student here at Diocesan. She created this light table for us as a project for her technology class and worked very hard on it as you can see. 

The girls have been enjoying engaging with the light table in different ways. Several of the girls have been working to draw some of the pressed flowers which look stunning on top of the light, while others have created patterns and compositions on the table. 

Thank you so much Shun. 

 

Emma's Bean Diary.

Emma had a very creative way of documenting the process of her beans growth. She would record the date each day and then draw a detailed picture of her bean plant, alongside a ruler which indicated the bean plants height. 

We scanned some of her drawings to share with you all:

27th of September

29th of September

1st of October

12th of October

How to grow a beanstalk.

Over the holidays the girls had the special responsibility of nurturing and caring for their very own bean. This somehow turned into a beanstalk growing competition, and we had to laugh when during the last week of term, some of the girls father's began theorizing about how they were going to support their daughters bean to grow the tallest! 

The girls returned to school on Monday, bringing their bean plants as well as their 'bean diaries' which they recorded information in over the holidays, about their changing bean plant. 

We were surprised to see the variation in the size of the plants and enjoyed the excitement shown by the girls as they contrasted and compared each others plant. 

Here are some photos of our bean plants: 

"I gave my bean plant kisses. That helped it to grow taller, it just loves my kisses so much!"

 - Ria

"I singed songs to it...and the bean just kept on growing." 

- Anika

"I watered it lots, each and every day."

  - Isobella

"I put my bean stalk under the stairs by the window in a sunny spot!"

 - Sophia