Term 2, Week 10

The last week of term already! I hope that you all enjoyed sharing your learning folders at home. Please remember that these must be returned to school this week.

Please also remember if you have not returned your swimming form and fees ($40 to the office) you must get these in by the end of the week. Children who have not handed in their form will not have been correctly ability grouped for the first session next term, and children who have not paid will not be able to swim. 

This week in Room 3 we are going to wrap up our PE programme with a final session each of gymnastics and futusal. We’ve had such a great time keeping physically active in Room 3! We’ll complete our K-Pop video segments, publish our ideas about waste free lunches, create some waste collage, make some very special stone art and – of course! – read, write and problem solve. We’re looking forward to having the ipads and the laptops, and to our once-a-term movie afternoon. We’re also excited about our next visit from Sarah Langhi to talk with us about waste free lunchboxes. You are welcome to join us for this, our time is 11.30am on Tuesday 26 June :) 

Please note that while bookbags and homework books will not come home over the holidays, I will send home a newsletter on Friday with some suggestions for learning at home over the two week break, as well as a spelling list to learn. As a class, spelling should be our top priority for holiday learning and there will be a test on these words in the first week of Term 3 :) 

Term 2, Week 9

First of all it was great to see so many happy faces, outrageous dance moves and amazing costumes at the disco last Thursday! We have some very talented, imaginative families in Room 3, and it was fabulous to see this Home and School event so well supported. We also learned a lot about waste through our visit from Sarah Langhi (see our blog for more details!) and this week we’re going to think about our own lunchboxes – our favourite foods, how they are packaged, and alternative ways of enoying foods without all the plastic wrappings.

As well as continuing with our gymnastics programme this week we are looking forward to our first (of two) futusal training sessions (simiar to football/soccer) on Wednesday morning. We will continue to work on our muscle isolations, and begin learning a simple choreography to one of our favourite pop videos, so we’ll be well worked out by the weekend! 

Once again we are looking forward to seeing Mrs Fleur Jessop on Wednesday – the children are now working on some gorgeous spring art! :)

Sarah Langi visits Birchwood School to talk about waste!

Today we were visited by Sarah Langi who came to talk to us about waste - OUR waste! She showed us the rubbish which Birchwood School students had produced in just one day. This is what it looked like ...

There was all sorts in the pile - paper, cardboard, plastics and food waste. Some of the food "waste" included untouched fruit, sandwiches and yoghurt. There were even a few socks... What expensive rubbish!

The biggest problem is the amount of plastic, including lots of gladwrap ("sad"wrap!) and wrappers, which our children are bringing to school. This waste cannot be recycled and is going straight to landfill. 

Mrs Langhi's challenge to us all is to prepare and pack lunches which are free of any waste materials which cannot be recycled or composted (i.e. no plastics). We can do this by buying in bulk and using washable containers or lunchboxes with compartments, and we can avoid buying individually wrapped food portions. One of our Room 5 children even suggested that we could get busy in our kitchens and make and bake our own treats, to avoid buying processed biscuits, bars and snacks which are cellophane packed. Great idea! We are all busy people, so we may need to stock our tins, boxes and freezers full at the weekend to last us through the week ... Then, hopefully, our waste-free lunch boxes will look like this ...

And our waste-free valleys will look like this ... 

This will be our focus over the coming weeks as we get stuck into our sustainability unit :) !!!

ABC disco, ideas for alphabet costumes

SCHOOL DISCO!!!!! VERY EXCITING!!!! This Thursday, 6.30pm.

If you're feeling nervous about your costume (or you're still busy persuading Mum or Dad to dress up with you ;)!) or unsure about what to wear, check out this website for some super ideas ...

http://www.fancydresspanda.co.uk/costumes-by-alphabet

Term 2, Week 8

I hope (and am sure!) that you all had a fabulous week in Room 3 with Mrs Desiree Thiart. Miss Driver missed you all very much and is thrilled to be back in time for the school disco, of course :)!! The Home and School committee does an awesome job of organising these events and I hope to see you all there in your best ABC costumes (6.30pm Thursday).

This week we will continue with our gymnastics programme, stepping up the level of challenge for each task by adding extra styling elements, and will continue to use our bodies to respond to music. We will work on isolating and exploring movement to give us a wider range of options when we look to “echo” the beats we hear. We’ll also look at the way music videos enhance the music they support, and will look at a range of different music and video styles (carried over from last week). 

Once again we are looking forward to seeing Mrs Fleur Jessop on Wednesday afternoon to continue our fabulous winter art :)