FROM OUR PRINCIPAL MRS LEANNE SMITH

We have had 3 successful days with swimming and water safety for our grade 3 to grade 5 students and the weather has been very kind.  Hopefully the warm weather will continue for the next week.  Children have come back each day chatting about their successes and what they can now do.

Even without the coffee van we had a fantastic morning this morning for Outdoor Classroom Day.  There was such a great variety of activities for the children to be involved in outside around our school.  Thanks to all family members who were able to drop in and share some of the activities with their children. 

Last Thursday our class went to the MEC (Molesworth Environment Centre. We learnt about sustainability and how to recycle some items we might have laying around at home.

We looked into making paper into dominoes/bricks and invitations, bottle tops into naughts and crosses and yoghurt containers into garden pots.

• Paper dominoes/bricks: The paper dominoes were made from shredded paper; the shredded paper was mixed to become mash. The mashed paper was placed into a contraption that squeezed out the water and we laid them to dry out on a drying rack to become paper bricks. We plan to put black dots on them to become different numbered dominoes pieces.
• Invitations: We used the same shredded paper technique of mashing the paper into water. We then put a frame into the water to get the paper out into a rectangular shape. We then laid this out onto a material to dry.
• Naughts and Crosses: We used bottle top lids to create these pieces. We mixed plaster into water and had to get the correct ratio before pouring into our lids. Later in class we will sand them down and decorate.
• Garden pots: We collected yoghurt containers ready to decorate as garden pots. We had so much fun creating the other pieces of recycle items that we ran out of time on our excursion to complete these. Since our excursion we have started to decorate these. You might see them drying outside our classroom over the next few days!

We had a lot of fun learning many new ways of being able to use items we have at home in a new way.

This term, the 4-5 class are exploring ‘interconnectedness’ as a key concept in our ‘Sharing the Planet’ Unit of Inquiry. Last week, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to explore Steve Sutton’s dam on our Term 4 MEC excursion.

Returning to the classroom, we will continue to learn about feeding relationships in the pond ecosystem and investigate the lifecycles of some of the species. We collected data about the species found and will create graphs of their abundance.

Throughout the year the Prep/1 J have been investigating the seasons and how the four seasons affect the weather and environment we live in.

Spring is a great season to explore living things including plants and animals.

This term we have begun an inquiry into how things grow.

Some of the Year 1 students have written acrostic poems about Spring. We have looked at the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and been inspired to create our own Sunflower Pictures using oil pastels.

We received a lovely thank you letter from the Royal Hobart Hospital to thank us for the time and effort we put into raising money for the Children's Ward.

Molesworth Community Hall Badminton Courts every Monday from 7:00 pm

All ages and standards welcome.

$5.00 per person.

To book contact Jane on 0427 901 574