Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Welcome Back

Welcome back! I hope everyone has had a relaxing break over the holidays and enjoyed having time to do things with their family. We have started our term with a couple of busy weeks! Swimming got underway last week and I must congratulate everyone for getting to school early so that we could leave on time. It is most impressive to see everyone so organised and the same thing continued this week. Great work everyone!

In the classroom we have begun exploring simple machines as the next part of our Inquiry Unit, May the FORCE Be With You. JSS began looking at how wheels and axles work and talked about how clever the first person who invented the wheel must have been. They wanted to make their work easier by reducing the friction when they tried to move an object and the wheels worked beautifully for this. Much easier than trying to push or pull something along the ground! Changing the position of the axle produced some crazy movements of the carts we made! No wonder the inventor put the axle in the middle of the wheel, it was a much smoother ride.


In Mathematics we are learning about 2D and 3D shapes. Can your children explain what these terms mean? We found lots of different shapes in our classroom and in the playground during a Shape Hunt. The photos show children thinking about the attributes of different 2D shapes and sorting them into groups.
It back to the routine of home reading and spelling homework. Please try and make it a habit to keep the spelling books in with the home reading books. That way they will be at school on Fridays and Mondays when we need to test and update the lists each week.
Thank you to all those parents who have offered their help in our classroom this term. It looks like another great term ahead.