Primary School Notices

To welcome the Spring, Class 1 held a Wattle Ball. We heard a story, sang, recited poetry and danced the “Wattle Polka” in order to celebrate the change in our local environment. The blooming of the wattle is important to Indigenous Australians and gives an indication for Bundjalung People
that hunting the Eastern Long Neck Turtle should cease as this is the time which marks the beginning of the turtle’s breeding season.
The children made wattle crowns and necklaces in preparation for the day and were accompanied on the violin by Ayla, Coco, River and Nina from Class 6.
What a beautiful way to welcome spring and the class will be performing this dance at the Spring Fair this Saturday.
James – Class 1 Teacher

The Kindergarten children have just finished creating felted soap and wooden soap holders as gifts. The children have worked for many weeks on rasping, sanding and waxing their pieces of wood. The wood was sourced from the Melaleuca Trees near the Vegetable Garden. The trees were originally planted over ten years ago by students who are no longer at our school. After completing their gifts, the children visited the Melaleuca Trees to gather the paperbark to wrap their gifts. Whilst on our excursion to the trees, Gavin visited and shared his memories of the trees being planted.

We have had several parents visiting on Friday mornings to garden. The children were very keen and enthusiastic to help weed, dig and lay large rocks to shape the garden. Bricks were wheelbarrowed over to the garden and the children helped to bed them into a spiral design in preparation of a sensory garden. Mulch has been added and strawberries planted. The gardening project will continue over the next few Fridays.

In our current main lesson we are learning about the inland exploration of Australia, the history and geography of our land. Working in small groups, the children are researching a particular explorer and their expeditions. Each group is preparing a lesson to teach the rest of the class, and is working from a list of supplies to calculate how much food and water they are consuming and how the weight of it can be shared evenly in the packsaddles of their horses or camels.

This theme will continue in our upcoming camp at Gibraltar Ranges National Park where we will experience the landscape in a very practical way – walking, camping and exploring the landscape.

Matt

Class 5 Teacher

Class Two went on their very first excursion out to Ann Poulson’s (Class 5 teacher) farm in Burringbar. The children drew from nature, fed a lovely herd of black and white show cows and observed, groomed and interacted with a small herd of horses. Watching how each child approached a horse, braving their fear, and experiencing their joy, when a large animal responded to them was fantastic! It was such fun to be out and about with the class. They were so respectful, well mannered, joyful and appreciative. Steiner teachers are one lucky group of professionals.

Naina
Class Two Teacher

Class 6 have had their gaze up in the night sky over the past couple of weeks as part of our Astronomy main lesson. To further our celestial explorations, we went on an excursion to Brisbane to visit the Planetarium where we very much enjoyed the dome show. We then visited the museum to see the exhibition ‘NASA: A Human Adventure’. It was fascinating to learn so much about humanity’s journey further into space, and to see some objects that had actually been to space and back. Class 6 spent most of last week sharing their fabulous and well-researched Astronomy projects with the class. This happened to coincide with the 50th year anniversary since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first human beings to set foot on the moon on 20 June in 1969.
And to top it off, Class 6 did a marvellous job presenting some of the southern hemisphere Winter sky constellations at our Winter Festival on Friday.
‘One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind!’