Mrs Bryan’s Bright Bunch

I hope you are able to enjoy at least some time off with your children these holidays We are certainly having some lovely weather at the moment, which gives us lots more options for things to do!

Bev and I went down to Victor Harbour on Monday to check out our camp site and meet with the manager. The camp itself looks very well organised and exceptionally clean. Their facilities will be great for kite making, with a big indoor area to make as well as a huge open space outside to fly them!!

On the first day of next term we are hoping that the equipment for our class Veggie Patch will arrive. Hopefully it will be ready for planting on the first Wednesday back. If you would like to help out by donating a punnet of fast growing veggies or herbs (lettuce varieties, carrots, parsley, tomatoes etc) we would love to hear from you We hope to use some of the vegetables in our next unit of inquiry ‘My body, my job’.

If your children are bored why not encourage them to visit some of the links on our blog? There are many links for our units of inquiry, as well as lots of games. I have recently added a page on our next Unit of Inquiry – My body, my job. Of course, I recommend that you visit these with your child, at least initially so that you know exactly what the sites that they are visiting have on them.

Don’t forget that the first Monday back is a student free day as all teachers are participating in a training day on ‘Inquiry’.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays…see you on Tuesday week

Thanks to all the wonderful parents who helped out today. We certainly learnt a lot!
We found things like bananas, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla at the Botanic Gardens, and loads and loads of different grains, beans and rices at the Central Market. One group managed to find 8 different types of Moon Cakes too.
When we got back to school we shared the lists we made of the things we saw and then wrote and drew about our day. The children did some really great work on this
Check out the photos that our budding photographers took.

Don’t forget that this Wednesday we are going to the Botanic Gardens and Central Market as part of our inquiry into Field to Table. Thank you to the many parents who have offered to come and help us at the market. See you there

Also on Thursday it is our Jump off Day. Please remind your child to wear comfy clothes and shoes for this.

What a week we’ve had!

The children really did themselves proud last night when they shared their knowledge about their country with you. It was great to hear all the positive comments! As parents you all did a wonderful job of helping your child through the process of an oral presentation, prompting them with questions – some of them quite tricky!! I believe this is an important part of PYP, and a skill that your children will certainly develop and become comfortable with over time.

Our next Unit of Inquiry is ‘ Field to Table’. I have added a page down the left sidebar under the PYP page. It has lots of web resources as well as all the information you need about the unit. We will be starting this unit next week and hope to begin our Veggie Patch next Thursday. I’m ordering the stuff that we need tonight Thanks Mr Bayly for helping to fund this…and for helping to organise the preparation of the site!

The children really enjoyed all of the science activities they were involved in this afternoon, and most had some interesting things to take home. Thanks to H’s Mum who came and helped me run the 4 activities in my room. I would have loved to share photos with you – but I was a bit busy to take photos

Next Tuesday is Bee Safe on Bikes. Children will need to bring their bikes to school in the morning. We will park them under the verandah outside our room.

Next Friday is Grandparents Day for Book Week -  the theme is Book Safari and we are encouraging all children to dress up to celebrate. They can dress up as any book character (or movie if you get stuck!) but we discourage Superheroes as the children can get a bit too excited and silly.

Currently I have 3 helpers for the trip to the market – the yellow note that went home on Wednesday night. I would love to have at least 1 more so that we can form groups of 5. Ideally I would like to have 2 or 3 more volunteers to form groups of 4.

Thankyou all for returning your notes so promptly – I know that it has been a really busy time lately and it certainly helps me a lot if I don’t have to chase notes!!

I will be out on Monday morning (Janita will be taking the class) but I will be in at 12.

Well, we’ve had a busy start to the week with cooking on both days so far!

Yesterday we made fruit skewers and pancakes. The children particularly enjoyed the fruit skewers, with one child who rarely eats fruit telling me that he really liked it!!!…a breakthrough perhaps?

Today we had a true science experiment moment when we tried to bake bread. The dough hook came apart from the mixer, consequently the first loaf did not bake at all well!! However we persisted and problem solved what went wrong and the second loaf worked out very well We also made butter to spread on the bread…the photos show the amount of effort the children put into the shaking of the jar!

Yesterday we experimented with shadows and light. You migh still be able to see our recording on the netball court! We also investigated how to make a shadow disappear. We did this inside using torches.

Today we began planning the Vegetable Garden that we are going to make outside our classroom. This links with our next 2 units of inquiry ‘ Field to table’ and ‘My body, My job’. On that, we are looking for a milking cow close to the school that we could visit to see it being milked. If you know of anyone who could help us with this please let me know.

We will be practicing presenting our country information at our Country Expo tomorrow ready for tomorrow (Wednesday) night. I look forward to seeing you there.