Leigh's published writing.

Mowing the lawn with my Pop.

I mowed the lawns with Pop.

Written by Leigh on December 3, 2012.

Writing a response to the story: ‘Grandma’s birds’.

The toast was cut for eating.

Written by Leigh on December 4, 2012.

A joke from Leigh

What fruit is the funniest?

Lemons, the person who squeezes the juice will pull faces as they drink it because it is sour.

Written with Leigh on December 5, 2012.

Maths outside ??

Last week on an early Thursday morning there was a buzz in the air as children were arriving to school. Two busy bees, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Berg were hastily sticking up posters and envelopes all around the infants playground !

Kindergarten were learning about position, using a variety of words to help us locate things and to help us direct people to different places. We had discovered so many new words some of which even meant the same thing like beside and next to.

After lunch one Mrs Berg and Mrs Carter took everybody outside and explained that today for Math's we would be playing a game of position orienteering ! The whole class were split into teams and given a clipboard with a clue on it. Teams had to read the clue and follow the directions that would lead them to the next place for the next clue. Each clue started with a position like.. "Under the slippery dip". Children really had to know and understand the position terms to be able to work as a team to collect their clues. Along the way each team was on the look out for a secret envelope that no team was allowed to open until the end.

When each team arrived at the final destination we opened the envelopes to find a secret word. We realised if we put the words together it might uncover a secret message. And it did. Our secret message read... "Knowing position words can help us find things".

Helping each other uncover the position word ! 

Discussing the first clue ! 

Which team will collect all of the clues and get back to the final destination ?!!

We had a great time taking our learning outside whilst keeping our bodies fit and healthy !!!

The Mission of Jesus

Kindergarten have really felt the impact of what it would be like to only survive on one glass of water and half a cup of rice a day !

As Mrs. Berg and I sat the the children down to eat their meal for the day we explained to everyone that in some countries this was a reality. Some children would live on this food everyday and nothing else. Kindergarten thought about how boring that would be and how it couldn't be good for your body when you need so many different things for your body to be healthy.

We started to learn about the Mission of Jesus. Through doing different activities we realised that Jesus's Mission was to love and help others like you would like others to love and help you. We learnt that there were so many people in the world already living out the Mission of Jesus, just like the volunteers of Penrith Kitchen whom we collected and donated food to. They were giving up their time, money and food items to cook for people of our community that don't have enough to eat.

We learnt that it's not just people in our community living out the Mission of Jesus. People all over the world are loving and helping others in many different and creative ways. A man from America created a website for his children to help them to study. He set the website up so that you have to answer a multiple choice question and if you get it right the website donates ten grains of rice to a third world country. We played the game to see how many bowls of rice we could get to feed as many people as we could. By the end of the activity we had answered enough questions correctly to fill 124 bowls of rice !!!!!!!! We were thrilled at how many people we could help by doing something so fun !

We realised we don't have to create websites or just donate food to live out the mission of Jesus. Anytime we show love or help others we are living out the Mission of Jesus. What we know though is that there are many people all over the world, in Australia and in Penrith who are less fortunate than us. It's up to people like us, to get in there and "Do something about it!". All you need to do is think about how you can best help others with what you can do and what you have.

So thats exactly what Kindergarten decided to do. We came up with an idea to grow a vegetable garden. We thought if we looked after the garden and helped it grow we could use the fruit and vegetables to make up baskets of food to share with those people who are in need in our community. We were all so excited to get moving on our idea and before we knew it after some careful planning and a bit of help from Mr Cry and Mr Meredith, Kindergarten had their very own vegetable garden.

Before long we were thrilled to find that two scrumptious looking strawberries had grown. We pondered over who would benefit from our first pickings and the result was unanimous. We invited Mrs. Jackson down to visit our garden and presented her with our first fruits ! We thought seeing Mrs Jackson is someone that works at the very heart of our school community and does so much for us we thought she deserved a yummy treat for crunch and sip.

If you get the chance, feel free to come down and have a look at our garden and see all the wonderful fruits and vege's growing. We are sure it won't be long until we can put our first basket of fresh food together to help our community in need.

How many bowls of rice can we get ?????

Everybody trying so hard to feed as many people as possible ! 

MMmmm I wonder what the answer is ???

Give junk food the boot and switch to fruit !!

Kindergarten were apart of fruit and vegetable week recently which is aimed at encouraging a healthy lifestyle under the Live Life Well program, a current school initiative.

All classes in the school incorporated a variety of activities that centred around being healthy and nutritious. At the end of the week we celebrated the weeks events by coming together and sharing some of the learning that had occurred. Every class had the challenge of creating a mascot based on the theme of the week.

Kindergarten were involved in many activities from fruit and vegetable tasting, to making their own fruit and vegetable person. Have a look at the fun we had playing around with our class mascot, Healthy Hero !!

What is fine motor?

Fine motor development contributes to the development of communication skills in young children. Fine Motor skills are those skills that require children to manipulate and gain control over a variety of materials and tools.

The components of fine motor skills can be considered to be:

• Grasping -eg using a crayon, pencil, brush, glue stick, beater, blocks
• Manipulating - eg playdough, clay, unifix, centicubes, paper, sewing, scissors, fingerplays
• Hand-eye co-ordination - eg writing, cutting, threading, moving a cursor, using a glue gun

In Kindergarten we provide opportunities every week for the children to develop their fine motor skills through a variety of structured activities. The children have so much fun engaging in these activities that they don't even realise they have been organised for a specific purpose, targeting specific areas of fine motor development. 

Have a look at some of the activities the children have participated in so far !!

String Painting 

Grasping pegs with letters on them to make words

Drawing and writing in powder

Using tweezers to pick up different objects and transfering them to a different spot.

Using fancy scissors to cut and create our own artworks.

Using different types of blocks to construct our own cities

Aboriginal For A Day

Last Friday, all students at our school were invited to take part in an Indigenious cultural experience, when we had the opportunity to be an Aboriginal for a day. The family of four consisting of Big Al, Leonie, Pancakes and Azza enthralled us all day with storytelling, art and dance that is unique to the Indigenious people.

Children learnt about traditional Aboriginal symbols and how to use them to create an artwork that tells a story. Big Al taught us about Dreamtime stories and how they are so important to Indigenious culture. He told us about how the echidna got its spikes. We learnt that these stories teach us lessons and the moral of this story was not to steal and be greedy. Pancakes and Azza taught us how to be a goanna, eagle, emu and kangaroo through dance and we were amazed at the sounds of the didgeridoo. We had a fantastic day experiencing the Indigenious culture and value the traditions and customs of Indigenious life. 

Who can Zumba?? WE CAN ZUMBA !!!!

This afternoon for buddies, Kindergarten and Year six joined together to learn some incredible Zumba moves from our talented Miss Treble. Year six helped to show us the moves and after a few practices we were on our way to Zumba stardom ! Some of us felt a little bit shy to start with but year six helped us to see how much fun joining in can be. Mrs Berg was able to capture some of our movers and groovers whilst Mr Carr and Mrs Carter attempted to Zumba as good as our students ! Have a look at our video to see if you can spot any familiar faces ! You might even learn a few moves for yourself !

Olympic Fever Hits St Joseph's !!

With the upcoming Olympics just around the corner, our school held a special Olympics fun day. We wanted the children to get into the spirit of the games as well as encourage having fun being active.

We held an official opening and closing ceremony, even including the lighting of the torch. All the children in the school were placed in countries to participate in mixed events. Countries cheered, or rather roared chants and team songs as they went from one activity to the next !! Athletes supported each other throughout the day showing great sportsmanship.

At the end of the day we congratulated Germany for winning the day's events and also celebrated the wonderful day had by all.

Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi

Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi

Aussie OI Aussie OI

Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi !!!!!!!!!

Joey's Bush Dance the Night Away !

Looking for a family friendly, fun filled evening ???

Then next year you have to pull out your country flannelette's and pull on those dancing boots and get yourself down to St Joseph's Country Bush Dance !!

What more could you ask for when you will be treated to a sausage sizzle, live band, awesome raffles and some boot scootin fantastic fun !! 

Start practising the Heel and Toe polka now and don't forget to warm up for the egg and spoon races too !

Start preparing for this annual event now and support our school community !!

This year Kindergarten got right into the event and scrubbed up beautifully for the occasion. Much fun was had by all and we even learnt some new bush dances too !

Animal shelter models

Kindergarten were very excited to make a shelter for an animal they had seen during our farm excursion. The children (and their families, thankyou!!!) spent time gathering materials for their models over the last few weeks. The children compiled their resources for everyone to share and discussed different ways the materials could be used. Everybody had a great time creating their models and the children even enjoyed presenting their finished products to the class.

EMU Games

Emu (Early Mathematical Understanding) Games are a big part of our Mathematical lessons. The children learn a variety of concepts and skills through playing these games. Some games are tailored for individual use and some are aimed at partner work. The children love playing these games, so get them to teach you how to play at home too !

Subtraction and Addition Scenario Cards

Friends of 10 with Lima Beans

Cops and Robbers

Golden Ridge Farm Excursion

Last Wednesday, kindergarten had thier first excursion to the farm ! Mrs Berg and I had some very excited children who were awake bright and early and ready for an adventurous day !

On the bus we talked about the kinds of things we might see and do at the farm. Have a listen to Isobel, Emma, Maia and Cooper who share thier thoughts on the day ahead !

When we arrived we had some lunch to prepare us for the energy we would need learning about how a farmer needs to take care of all his animals.

After our lunch we were taken into the big barn shed to meet some of the animals at Golden Ridge Farm. We held ducklings, chickens and rabbits and some of the animals were only three days old !

Once we had experiecned the smaller animals it was time to meet the bigger farm animals ! We couldn't wait to find aout about thier shelter and what they ate and where they slept. We really enjoyed feeding the sheep and goats some bread, even if we were a little scared when they licked our fingers !

We also learnt about how milk gets from a cow to our fridge !! Even Mrs. Berg had a go at milking the cow ! We were so amazed at how many products actually came from a cow ! Have a listen to what we learnt...

 We finished off the day with feeding some milk to some baby goats (which we learnt are called kids!). We had such an enjoyable day and learnt so much about the different environments farm animals live in. We learnt about their needs and what they provide us. We even got to ask some of our own questions at the end of the day, have a listen to a few !

A big thank you to our parent helpers on the day and to Golden Ridge Farm for providing us with a fantastic hands on experience with animals !!!