Another Bad Week of Coughs and Colds.

What a week we have had in Prep C with many of the children coming down with this dreadful cold.  By the end of Friday we were down to 9 children!  I do hope that one and all have had a good rest over the weekend, and that those who are well will return to the grade on Monday.

Earlier this week I individually assessed each child's reading this week.  I am so thrilled at their progress as little readers.  They have taken a great leap up the reading levels over this last 5 weeks, which I am sure that you have seen at home too.

A reminder to you all that we fly off to Canada on Saturday, and Mrs Kate Hutchinson will be taking over for the rest of the term.

Spelling Investigation

This week we have been looking at the 

Bossy Fairy E.

We collected a variety of words from our readers.

We looked for patterns.  Then we sorted the words into common groups.

We discovered that sometimes the Bossy Fairy E did absolutely nothing.

But generally we discovered that it makes the vowels say their name, not their sound.

We played this game where words would totally change their meaning by adding a Bossy Fairy E.

Such as slid to slide and slim to slime.

Mass

The children have shown a growing skill in carefully weighing a variety of objects,

then, recording their findings,

and ordering their objects from lightest to heaviest.

Place Value

Using bundles of paddle pop sticks the children quickly made numbers to 99.

 They recorded the numbers as an addition sentence,
30 + 4 = 34.

We learnt a new game called "guess my number".

Ask your child how they played this game.

Counting On

Counting on is an addition skill where the children put one number in their head, and then count on to add two numbers together.

They played this new game to practice this skill.

Ask your child how they played this game.

Welcome to Week 4 of Term 3

Congratulations to Archer who was our 'Student of the week' this week.  He has made a huge effort in all reading and writing sessions.  Well-done Archer.

This term we are discovering some amazing facts about the little creatures that live in our back yard.  Do come in and have a look at our back wall as we add new bugs each week.

Ants.  

Dragonflies.  

Butterflies.

We have been looking at the different text features of the nonfiction books that we read.  Tane finds more information from the picture than the text tells us, as well as how the change in text size tells our voice how to sound as we read.

We took notes using pictures and important words as we read our book about ladybugs.

We used these notes to help us to write our own page on ladybugs in our own nonfiction books that we are compiling.  I hope to have an evening where we share these books at the start of Term 4 when I am back from my trip to Canada.

The unit on bugs will conclude with a trip to Wonga Wetlands where the children will be guided to find and learn about many different bugs.  

Friday 4th September

Wonga Wetlands ~ Grades - All Preps 

and Grade 1/2D

More information concerning this excursion will be coming soon.

I am very pleased with the children's continued success in reading.  Congratulations to all of you wonderful parents out there who do the daily ready and word study.  It makes a huge difference to your child's reading progress.

We continue to thank our amazing volunteers, Mr Krake, Mrs Lloyd and Mrs Salathiel.  They all help to lift the learning in our room to amazing heights!

Maths

In Maths we have continued to work on Place Value, where we order non sequential numbers from smallest to largest.

The children did very well with this activity.  Last week we worked on numbers to 15.

This week we went to 25.

Some went to 100!

Then we used paddle pop sticks to make teen numbers.

We worked as a team helping each other in our learning.

We discovered that bundling up 10 made this activity very quick and easy.

When making a teen number we say "10" and then count on as we add the ones.