If you have any old shoe boxes or small to medium sized boxes of any kind we would love them! Please hand them to your child’s classroom teacher to help us create our final inquiry.

Grade 1 Team 🙂

As part of our inquiry unit this term ‘What’s in the Garden?’ we have all been learning about mini-beasts and talking about how they have different features. The children are loving the opportunity to research and find out interesting facts about their mini-beasts. Look at our lady beetles.

Some interesting facts that we have discovered are:

Did you know that lady bugs can play dead when they are being threatened by another insect?

Did you know that ladybugs live for about two years?

Did you know that ladybugs can be blue, have spots, stripes or no markings at all?

Did you know that farmers love lady birds because lady birds eat aphids and other pests?

Wow! What an action packed fun day!

As you will have noticed if you were in the vicinity of the playground on Thursday, there were 100 excited Year One children dressed in their ‘olden day’ finery. The rule of ‘ladies before gentlemen’ was observed at all times.

In our classrooms we recited the pledge and followed it with the singing of the National Anthem (both using the olden days’ words).

 Ma’am Oates very skilfully taught both boys and girls the old fashioned skill of finger knitting. We have seen many fine examples of these around the school since!

Ma’am Blanch was in control of the ‘games room’ where children played board games, such as Monopoly, card games, such as UNO, and the odd games of marbles, knuckles, dominoes and jigsaw puzzles.

Ma’am Moncrieff took the children out for some fresh air and outdoor games – hula hoop fun, hoop races, quoits and skipping were the order of the day.

Ma’am Gibney ran a strict classroom program where the children completed all their handwriting, spelling, dictation, maths, drawing and Social Studies on their chalkboards.

All the teachers commended the children on their wonderful efforts throughout the day. We were very proud of them and think that they will have slept well that night!

The grade ones have been finding out about life in the past.  One of the activities we have completed in class was to look at a variety of pictures to determine if the picture was of something that was old or of something that was relatively new. The children worked in teams and then had to see if they could match up the old pictures with the new ones.  Lots of discussion took place and the children then evaluated how well they worked together in their team.  Jack, who worked with Daniel and Archie, was impressed with how well his team worked. He thought they listened to each other’s ideas, took turns when speaking and they all had a role to play to make sure that they completed the task.  A great example of our schools values of respect and responsibility. Well done boys!

This week all the grade ones have enjoyed starting to learn about life in the past. We worked hard to create our family trees, and are very proud of the finished products! Thank you to all the parents who helped record family members’ names for homework.

We will continue to learn about the similarities and differences in family life from the past to the present over the term.

We are sure the children would love it if you could talk to them about what life was like when their parents and grandparents were young.

They are all eager to learn more about everyday life in the past including school, games, jobs/chores, technology and entertainment.

Fitting in with our Inquiry topic we will begin looking at time. Talking with your children about different times of day and looking at analogue and digital clocks is a great way to support their understanding of how time works.  Discussing time duration such as how long it takes to drive to school or the length of activities or tv shows may also be a good conversation starter.

Please refer to the Grade 1 newsletter for more information about this term’s topics.

The Grade Ones participated in a hands on and engaging session with the CSIRO. They conducted several experiments exploring chemicals mixing and changing. Look below to see them hard at work!!!

For homework, Grade 1 had to collect information about how they have developed since they were a baby. These are some of the timelines they have created to show how they have changed.

One student realised that nearly everyone started school when they were five years old. Another learnt that when you get older you can learn new things. They discovered that most children’s first word was dada. And several students found out that some children were walking by the time they were one year old.