Category: Pre-Primary Blue

Pre-Primary Learning this week.

March 4, 2021
Sharon Hofmeester
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold

What a busy week in Pre-Primary!

PHONICS – sounds, sounds and more sounds!

The children have been busy learning the ‘short sound’ that the letters: s, a, t, p, i, n make. Many children are putting these sounds together to make CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words such as: sat; tap; pat; pin; and nip. This is a very important step in beginning spelling and writing skills. We are now focusing on the ‘short sounds’ that the letters: m, r, h, e, d, c make. Please encourage your child to use letter ‘sounds’ as you go about your day. For example, you could point out the letters in ‘BIG W’ if you go shopping and say “B-I-G makes BIG”.

Our Community

The family photos are lovely and have been many a ‘conversation starter’ amongst the children. We often hear the children make comments such as “I have a brother, just like you!” or “You have a baby in your family!” It is wonderful for the children to see that every family is different and that they are all very special. We hope you can all make it to the ‘St Emilie’s Family Picnic’ on Friday, so we can celebrate the amazing families in our school community.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you all in Week 6.

From the PP Blue and PP Gold Teams.

Week 4 in PP!

February 26, 2021
Laura Bombardieri
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold

Another great week in PP!

As we have been settling in, we have been focusing on making great choices for ourselves and for one another – in and out of the classroom. We came up with lots of ‘green choices that help us to work and play in a safe and friendly way. We also identified those ‘red’ choices that stop us from being our best self.

We are striving towards making great choices such as; sharing, helping others, letting others join in, packing away, using kind words and gentle hands and we have been doing a super job! We are learning that making great choices is really valued and helpful – not only here at school but also at home! 🙂

We love learning through play!

We learn though exploring, investigating, singing, dancing, role playing and building and a whole lot more. We are able to learn from each other, the teacher and the environment. Here are some happy snaps from this week…

See you all next week!

Another exciting week in Pre-Primary!

February 19, 2021
Sharon Hofmeester
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold

Now that the children have settled into the classroom routines, it has been time to start our Specialist Lessons. The children were very excited to walk into ‘the big school’ to: visit the Library and borrow a book of their choice; sing and dance in the music room (the multi-purpose room) with Mr Dabbs; ask questions and discover new things during Science with Mrs Cogger; exercise and get their heart rate up at P.E. (Physical Education) with Mr Davis; and to begin to learn to speak Japanese with Mrs Aroozoo. To meet new teachers and learn their expectations and routines is a very big undertaking, so it’s not surprising that there have been some very tired children this week. They all did very well though, and we are very happy with how they have settled in and how hard they are all trying to engage and learn!

This week the children received a blessing with ashes, to celebrate Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent, leading up to Easter. We talked about doing something kind for someone else and trying to be more like Jesus in our everyday choices. Our whole school ‘Fruits of the Holy Spirit’ focus -‘choose to be kind everyday’ is a great one to talk about and model with your child.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing you back in Pre-Primary next week.

Warmest regards,

Sharon Hofmeester, Laura Bombardieri and the awesome PP Team.

Our first week in Pre Primary!

February 12, 2021
Laura Bombardieri
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold · Uncategorized

What a super busy and fun first week in Pre Primary we have all had! We have really enjoyed making new friends and playing on the big playground! Don’t be surprised if we are a bit tired this weekend from all the investigating, dancing, creating, and exploring we have been up to!

Independence

Now that we are in PP, it is important that we continue to build up our independence. Please support us with this by allowing us to carry our own school bag as it is very important for a number of reasons! It helps us to strengthen our core muscles which supports us to create good posture, sit upright on the mat, focus on learning and engage in physical activity. It also helps children know that you believe in them and in their ability to do things for themselves, which builds resilience and self belief.

There are many ways at home you can help us to become independent learners, such as getting us to help you with jobs like setting the table, hanging the washing, allowing us to dress ourselves (we are big enough to do this on our own now!), letting us make our own bed, brush our teeth and pack away our toys! The more opportunities you allow your child to do for themselves the better as it builds confidence, independence and wellbeing.

Here are some pictures of us getting busy!

We are excited for another week of PP! Check out our blog next week to see what we have been up to!

Bye for now, love to PPG & PPB!

PP Parent Information Booklet 2021

February 2, 2021
Laura Bombardieri
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold · Uncategorized

Dear Parents,

Please see the below link with the Pre Primary Parent Information Booklet for 2021. This booklet outlines important information about your child’s learning journey in Pre Primary.

We are very excited to meet you and your child when it is safe to return to school. Keep safe and take care!

From the Pre Primary Teachers

Miss B and Mrs H

Download (PDF, 1.3MB)

PP’s Letters to Santa!

December 2, 2020
Laura Bombardieri
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold · Uncategorized

Letters to Santa!

This week in PP we have been brushing up on our letter writing skills by writing to Santa! We have had lots of practise writing letters this year with our PenPals interstate. We know that we must always start a letter with ‘Dear’ or ‘To’ and finish it with ‘From’. We used our incredible sounding out skills to form sentences and remembered to use a capital letter at the start, finger space in between words and a full stop to finish.

We looked up our home address to write on our letters so that Santa knows where to send his reply! (Although- we are sure that Santa already knows where we live because he is always watching us!)

Every day we update our class calendar so we are very familiar and always updated with the day’s date so we included this was at the top of our letter as well.

We had so many questions and things we wanted to say to Santa! We all tried to focus on not just asking for things that we want to have but to focus more on things we would like to know about and things we would like to say thank you for.

Some of our clever and creative comments were;

“How many reindeers do you have?”

“I have left cookies out for you.”

“I am sure you are very busy Santa.”

“Is it cold in the North Pole?”

We have so generously been supported by Jenaelle’s mum, Marie, who has arranged our Santa’s letters to be sent off with Australia Post to the North Pole. Thank you Marie for helping us get our Christmas messages out to Santa! We are very excited for our reply!

We have been counting down the days until Christmas and we are all very excited! We cant wait to spend this special season with our friends and family. While we are all excited about Santa, presents and yummy festive food we have been remembering that the focus of this special season is the birth of Christ and remember how special and important this time is in our Catholic faith. We have spent a lot of time role-playing, reading and creating artwork from the Christmas Nativity Story. What a wonderful and special time.

We wish you all the very best through this Christmas season!

Bye from PPG & PPB!

NAIDOC WEEK in Pre-Primary!

November 23, 2020
Tracey Poinen
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold

Term 4 – Week 7 – 20th November 2020

NAIDOC WEEK

ALWAYS WAS. ALWAYS WILL BE.

Last week was NAIDOC WEEK! A special time to recognise and celebrate Australia’s First Nations People. In Pre-Primary we continue our discussions and learning journey about the First Australians and the sacred land that we walk on here – Whadjuk Noongar land. This year’s NAIDOC WEEK theme acknowledges that our First Nations People have lived and cared for this continent for over 65, 000 years. The footprints of this land, Australia, were that of our First Nations People.

We read some big books about Australian bush and sea animals. We discussed the meaning of the word “billabong” and we examined the illustrations, taking into account the patterns created and earthy colours used in the artworks. We talked about common themes in traditional indigenous artworks. The children chose an Australian animal from our text and composed their own artwork. We also used earth coloured tones when we painted our drawings. We have been learning about Fiction and Non-Fiction texts and how to distinguish between them, so the children are now writing a short factual account about their chosen Australian animal – this will accompany their final art work.

As parents and educators, we all have such an important role in promoting reconciliation and teaching our young children to respect, value and learn from our First Nations People. This is important to build cultural competence, promote tolerance, inclusivity of all people and their cultures as well as to teach the true history of Australia.

The following video is for parents to view. Sheila Humphries tells her story:

The Pre-Primary children are so good at their writing now! We are very proud of how far they have come with their development. During NAIDOC WEEK the children examined the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander flags. They wrote about what the symbols and colours on the flags mean.

Keep raising awareness, building knowledge and making positive connections!

Love from Miss Bombardieri, Mrs Poinen & all the PP’s!

PP’s exciting week!

November 8, 2020
Laura Bombardieri
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold

It has been another great week in Pre Primary. We are constantly on the go with new learning opportunities!

The Water Corporation

This week we had a special visit from the Water Corporation to teach us some good habits we can create to save water.

We played a fun game where we looked at a picture with different ‘bad water-saving habits’ and we had to replace the ‘bad habits’ with ‘good water-saving habits.

Here are some of the helpful tips we learnt:

“Wash your car on the grass.”

“Report any leaks.”

“Use the small flush on the toilet when you can.”

“Don’t leave the tap running when you brush your teeth.”

“Have a 4-minute shower only.”

“Only put the dishwasher or washing machine on when it is full.”

We love our beautiful world and love learning about ways to care for it. Here are some pictures of us!

We then got busy creating our own artwork to display how we can save water in our own homes.

Mrs Wishy Washy

This week we have been focusing on our story retelling skills. We have been looking at the story ‘Mrs Wishy Washy’ and recalling the main events of the story. Specifically, we have been looking at the beginning, middle, and end to a story. We have also discussed different parts of the story such as the characters and setting. We know that this story is a ‘Fiction’ story which means it is a made-up story read for pleasure. We have been learning about the difference between ‘Fiction’ and ‘Non-Fiction.’ Ask us at home if we can retell this story to you!

Bye for now! Love PPG & PPB!

Pre-Primary Week 3

November 1, 2020
Tracey Poinen
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold

30th October 2020

Wow! We have had a full and busy week in Pre-Primary with BBB, Sport, Book Week Incursion, meeting up with our Buddies, Year One lunch time transition and Year One uniform try ons…always so much fun!

BOOK WEEK 2020 CELEBRATIONS!

Our school celebrated Book Week this week. On Wednesday we had a wonderful incursion and we dressed up as our favourite book characters! Thanks mums and dad for helping with this. We were amazed at everyone’s costumes! During the interactive incursion we learnt about this year’s Children’s Book Council Award winning picture books. Reading to and with your child is so important for their language, literacy skills, knowledge, creativity and to develop a love of reading! In Pre-Primary we LOVE reading and our children have come a long way this year with their own personal reading development – we are so proud of each of them! Here are some photos of our dress up day, please click on the photos to enlarge and browse through the gallery:

BAPTISM

The Pre-Primary children have been learning about the Sacrament of Baptism. This week we visited our beautiful St. Emilie’s Church and spent time in the church discussing Baptism, looking at the symbols of Baptism and role playing what a Baptism ceremony entails. We also talked about the items present on the altar and we prayed together. We know that Jesus’ followers are called Christians or Catholics and when we are Baptised we become part of God’s family. We viewed a story called,”Tomorrow I’ll be Kind” and talked about how as followers of Jesus, we too are called to use our gifts and to show kindness to one another. Check out the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pllHEjR6LbE

Our visit to the Church – please click on the photos to enlarge and browse through the gallery:

We are looking forward to what Week 4 will bring! Have a happy weekend everyone!

Love from Mrs Poinen, Miss Bombardieri and the Pre-Primaries!

Week 2 in PP!

October 22, 2020
Laura Bombardieri
· Pre-Primary · Pre-Primary Blue · Pre-Primary Gold · Uncategorized

Welcome back PPB and PPG we have missed you!

We have had a busy start to our Term 4!

Numeracy!

PART-WHOLE

We have been developing our understanding of part-whole in Mathematics.The part-whole reasoning is the concept of how numbers can be split into parts. We used different materials to model this and see the relationship between the whole number and the parts. This is helping us learner the connections between simple addition.

SCOOP AND SPILL

This week we also played scoop and spill to build on our addition knowledge. We had to scoop out some counters from the bucket, spill them on our page and record how many green, how many red and how many all together.

Keeping fit!

It is so important to keep our bodies moving and stay fit. Physical exercise helps us learn, stay focus, be healthy, coordinate our body and feel good! PP has been so busy this week with BBB, EDU dance, PE and Walkathon! Here are some snaps of us staying fit and healthy as we move our body!