There is always lots of fun, laughter and learning happening together in our class family.

We begin our day with Christian Meditation which is a chance to sit quietly and allow God into our hearts and minds. We will often finish with a song or prayer. This week we enjoyed our meditation in the beautiful sunshine at the front of the school.

We then move into investigations where the children have an opportunity to explore and extend their thinking through collaborative and sometimes challenging tasks. This term our dramatic play area is a doctor’s surgery, complete with waiting room and reception. We have had many injuries attended to, and along the way have learned how to tie a collar and cuff sling, use a stethoscope and measure out medicines. The waiting room is always full!

Our construction team has been busy making photo frames and decorative crosses, and our Science area is a hit with hands-on activities using a push/pull force with magnets.

Religious Education
We are finding out more about our Sacred Heart Church and why/how we can celebrate together as a church family. 

Last week, we attended a Mass led by Fr Eden who explained what was happening throughout the Mass and led us in prayers. Afterwards, Fr Eden showed us some of the vestments he wears and explained what the colours and symbols represented. The children had many questions for Fr Eden and he answered them all very patiently and with gentle guidance.

English
Our English sessions always begin with our Mat time and a daily review of known concepts. We are working hard every day to improve our spelling, vocabulary and phonics skills. This week, our focus has been to extend our sentences using interesting adjectives, while including tricky words. The children busily write on their whiteboards and enjoy sharing their learning with others.

In writing, we are exploring persuasive texts and working out the difference between a fact and an opinion - trickier than you think! 

I am so proud of the determination and hard work shown by all the children - their love of learning new words and reading stories absolutely shines through!

Mathematics
Each mathematics session begins with a daily review where we revisit known concepts and practise our number recall.  We have loved our lessons on measuring and comparing the mass of objects. In learning groups, the children used a weight unit of blocks to estimate and weigh various objects. There were rich conversations about estimations and much collaboration when counting the number of blocks. Some groups quickly worked out it was quicker to join the blocks together and then counted by 2’s, 5’s and even 10’s. Now that’s clever!

Dance
In Dance, we are excited to be preparing for our Peter Pan whole school Musical happening next term. Hayley is putting us through our paces and the children are picking up the dance steps so quickly! After our rehearsal, we can unwind with a few fun games such as lava land and corners. 

History
In History, we are finding out about the olden days through investigating artefacts, people and landscapes from earlier times. We walked around our local area to see what we could discover. Then we looked at photographs of Moruya people and landscapes from the early 1930’s onwards and wrote about what we could learn about the past from these photos. The children were so interested in finding out about our local area and stories from years ago. Mrs Connaughton shared her memories of playing in the park as a little girl and climbing the fig trees that were later removed. We found out that opposite our school there used to be a picture theatre. We will soon be visiting our local Moruya Museum to see what else we can learn about the past.

Art
As part of our History unit, we looked at an olden day playground and compared this with a modern one. In art, we designed and made our own paper sculpture playgrounds, including old and new features -  slides, roundabouts, swings and even monkey bars.

Mrs Fran Devonald
Year 1/2 Teacher