East Hamersley Campus PPA
Kaya and Wanjoo! Hello and welcome to a new school year! Pre-primary A make up one half of the Pre-primary family at the East Hamersley LDC. The PPA children have started their first year of full-time school amazingly. From week 2 the children have shown excellent independence and confidence skills.
Over the past 5 weeks I have been blown away with how the Pre-primaries have supported each other and included each other, and especially how the children who attended Kindy at the LDC looked after the new LDC students. It warms my heart to see such kindness in such little people. We have enjoyed playing with our other Pre-primary friends in PPB at recess and lunch time on the nature playground and on Friday afternoons. The adults have witnessed some wonderful social language and pragmatic skills!
As part of the oral language program and Literature Based Unit, we have started learning about Australian animals and being brave through our story ‘The Koala Who Could’. The children have enjoyed pointing out some of the native birds in our school grounds. As well as encouraging each other to have a go and be brave, just like Kevin the Koala in the story.
We have also started engaging in our chemical science topic of ‘Objects are made of materials that have observable properties’. Recently we dressed up as scientists and explored our school environment looking for natural and not-natural materials. We decided to call not-natural materials ‘man-made’ materials.
Finally, our visit to the Library has quickly become a fun and exciting weekly highlight.
After such a fantastic start to Term 1, I can’t wait to see what the children of PPA achieve throughout the year!
Miss Kate Brennan, Mrs Pauline Acott, Miss Elin Wee and the PPA Koolangka (children)
Classroom Teachers and Speech Pathologist
East Hamersley Campus PPB
Pre-primary at our East Hamersley campus has settled into their brand-new purpose-built classroom. I am so pleased how well the children have settled into their new environment considering all the workmen and noise. The students have established strong routines and are ready for learning each day. The students are establishing friendships and are “greeting” each other in the mornings.
Compy, our classroom monitoring lizard has been teaching us about “Whole Body Listening”. The students enjoy singing our “Whole Body Listening” song each morning. We are learning to acknowledge our country and children are enjoying learning “Wanjoo” which means “welcome”.
We have been reading “The Koala Who Could”. We are learning about Australian Animals and trying new things at school. We made our own Koala ears and learnt what the word “clunk” means.
As part of our writing program the students are building their core strength and fine motor skills which are essential to becoming confident writers.
We are looking forward to a positive and productive year with our Pre-primary class.
Mrs Nash, Miss Bates, Miss Wee and Mrs Carbonne.
Pre-primary East Hamersley team – Class Teachers, Speech Pathologist and Education Assistant.
Padbury Campus – PPA
We have had a great start to the year. We are learning to work, to play together, to share and take turns. We created a class painting of our friend Compy, who helps teach us about whole body listening and how to monitor our comprehension. In science we have been exploring with our senses to look at, feel and sort many items by the kind of materials they are made of.
We are learning to build words, to spell, read and write short words. We are becoming more confident in counting, sorting by size or colour or category and we are starting to make patterns.
Our pop-up clothes shop has been very popular. We have fun and we can roleplay as shop keepers or customers. We are learning to roleplay with money and to match the right Australian dollar notes to the items we want to buy.
We are currently online learning from home, but hopefully we’ll be back at school in person soon. Keep up the good work everyone.
Miss Nguyen, Mrs Giltrow, Mrs Stopher and Mrs Hopper.
Class Teachers, Speech Pathologist and Education Assistant
Padbury Campus – PPB
Hello everyone
PPB at Padbury have been working hard and having lots of fun. In Science we have been exploring our senses and had an exciting touch walk where we stepped onto a prickly mat, into ice, flour and even gooey jelly. It was tricky waiting our turn, but we all managed and even took our shoes and socks off and put them back on J. We have been learning more sounds and letters and loved our turtles. We even had some cool weather so we could eat outside. We are working on making up stories about some of our creations, for example “Dab the tiger was eaten by a crocodile.”
Mrs Rogers
Class Teacher
Poseidon Campus – PPA
We have had a busy and wonderful beginning to Term One and all the students have settled in wonderfully to PPA! The children have been working hard on learning about elements of a narrative with a focus on the stories “Where is the Green Sheep” and “Willbee the Bumble Bee.” We have been learning about characters and where the setting takes place.
Every day the children have been practising blending syllables in words e.g., what word am I saying: el/e/phant = elephant; and compound words: book – shelf = bookshelf. We have also been listening to the first sounds in words.
In Maths, our focus has been on recognising collections at a glance and continuing and creating patterns through several hands-on activities. Importantly we have been developing our counting skills by making sure we touch each item once; counting orally in the correct order and knowing that the last number counted tells us how many. The class love playing the counting circle game where we take it in turns going around the circle to count in order and see how high we can get. The highest number we have reached so far is 49!
Our focus in Social Skills has been greetings and manners. The kids are remembering to smile; look at the person they are greeting; say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’; and say the person’s name. We have been playing games to encourage our use of manners and remember to use ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’
This Term in Science we have been exploring our five senses – sight, taste, touch, hearing and smelling. We have been loving dressing up as scientists and exploring and investigating our senses when completing experiments. We have also been doing lots of sorting of objects and using our senses to describe how it feels e.g., soft, hard, and flexible or bendy.
Wednesdays with Mrs Young are also very busy! We have been creating lots of beautiful and colourful pieces of artwork. In Health we have been learning about germs and personal hygiene. We are practising our movements for pre-writing skills in handwriting in fun ways. Finally, we love going to the Library to discover and borrow new books to take home.
We are all looking forward to a happy enriching and fun remainder of the term.
Mrs McDonell
Class Teacher
Poseidon Campus – PPB
We have had a busy start to the year! The children in PPB have been engaging in lots of different activities through the week, settling into the new routine of full-time school and making new friends.
So far, we have been focussing on classroom rules and learning all about ‘Whole Body Listening’ to promote active listening. The children can tell you how they listen with their eyes, ears, mouths, hands, legs and brain! We are learning to move safely around the classroom and playground by being the ‘boss’ of our bodies. The children are learning to be kind and polite to each other by learning how to greet their friends and adults using good manners, and by learning how to join into play with others.
In our Narrative lessons, we have been learning about characters and settings, so that we can become great story tellers. This term we have learnt about bees, using our narrative ‘Willbee the bumblebee.’ We have taken walks around the school gardens and are also reading non-fiction texts about insects to extend our learning.
In Science we have been learning about our five senses, and in one of our lessons we explored the school using our fabulous ‘listening ears’! Our focus is now moving to materials that are used in the world around us and how we can describe them.
In Maths our focus has been on recognising small collections of objects at a glance, without counting them, and counting objects to 10 in different ways. We are making patterns and learning about patterns in the world around us.
Wednesdays with Mrs Mayberry are also very busy! The children focus on Measurement and Geometry in Maths, and at the library, enjoy choosing a book each week. Sport takes place on a Wednesday and this lesson focuses on developing the students’ fundamental movement skills through different games and activities.
Already halfway through term one, we are all looking forward to a wonderful remainder of the term!
Mrs Foster
Class Teacher
Quinns Beach Campus – PPA
Pre-primary students at Quinns Beach have been busy learning to use their senses when exploring their world. We have been investigating the properties of materials and enjoyed an incursion with the amazing scientist from Science Alive.
Our knowledge of sentence construction is developing in a fun way using colourful semantics. We have been learning about the different actions that characters perform as part of sentence building activities.
Both classes would like to thank Mrs Johnston for helping us make a successful start to the year and wish her well in her next adventure.
Mrs Walters
Class Teacher