Junior School Term 4 Week 3

Celebrating Community

A Warm Welcome for our Grandparents and Special Friends  

A beautiful sunny afternoon set the stage for another memorable Grandparents’ Afternoon at Junior School. After an inspiring choir performance and some lively Macarena dancing, the halls buzzed with our students proudly guiding their special guests on a tour of their Homerooms and Specialist rooms. 

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our visitors for their generous contributions, resulting in an incredible donation of 130 books! Your kindness is greatly and genuinely appreciated! 

Grandparents bring immense joy to the lives of our young ones, offering unconditional love, patience, support, and endless fun!  

Thank you for joining us on yet another special Grandparents’ Afternoon. 

What’s on at Junior School

This an up to date list of planned activities at Junior Campus that you can use for planning purposes.  Please be aware that these dates are set early in the term and occasionally items may need to be cancelled or dates/times altered.  This itinerary is altered each week to reflect any changes – please check this list of events EVERY WEEK carefully when you read the weekly VINE newsletter.

Week 4 

Monday 28 – Wednesday 30 October – Year 1 and 2 Intensive Swimming Program 

Monday 28 October – Year 4 Excursion, National Wool Museum and Geelong Art Gallery 

Tuesday 29 October – Year 4 Readiness for Middle School Information Afternoon, 4pm, Middle School Chapel 

Tuesday 29 October – Lunchtime Concert 

Wednesday 30 October – Prep Discovery Learning 

Friday 1 November – Prep Camp Experience 

Week 5 

Tuesday 5 November – College Wide Orientation Day – Details to come! 

Thursday 7 November – Emergency and Lockdown Drills 

Friday 8 November – Assembly 9am, Student Leaders’ Item 

Year 1 and 2 – Swimming Update

Years 1 and 2 have had the opportunity to engage in the Swimming Program this year, coordinated by Mr. Nick Rice and held at Middle School-Highton’s wonderful swimming pool. Beautifully timed for the increase in temperature as we come into spring, students enjoyed swimming lessons on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.   Some of our Year 2 cohort had the chance to join with students from other Year 2  classes for their lessons and enjoyed the time to practise their skills.

With differing activities for each of the nine groups, the instructors combined core swimming skills, water safety and fun activities for an exciting program. Students were challenged to continue building strength with kicking, stroke styles and breathing control. They showed strong resilience, persistence and maturity through the transitions to and from their lessons.

Amazing work Year 2 on a fantastic half week of swimming!

All about Vikings and Maths in 3G 

This week in 3G students were excited to learn a maths game called MADD SAM (Maybe Also Division, Definitely Subtraction, Addition, Multiplication) and showing their understanding of four different operations. The game uses dice and cards to generate random numbers up to 20 that students then need to add, subtract multiply and if possible, divide. Some students are able to divide with remainders creating some differentiation within the game. This allows students to provide three, and in some cases four, answers for each of two randomly generated numbers. We continue to work hard to find engaging ways to increase our students’ knowledge and love of maths. 

We have also started learning all about The Vikings as part of our core knowledge unit. One of this week’s fun activities was deciphering ancient Viking runes and writing our names using runes. We discovered that many of our current alphabet letters share similarities with Viking runes and some of our current consonants were not represented. This unit has also led to some fascinating conversations about the lives of Viking children and the jobs they were asked to do from a very young age and whether Viking children had it easier than children do today.  

Library News

Once again, we were delighted to take part in our annual Grandparents’ Day. The sun shone and our community gathered and celebrated school, learning and multi-generational relationships.

We would like to sincerely thank our greater Christian College family for your generous support of Grandparents’ Day. We were overwhelmed with the generosity of so many of our Grandparents. We had a large number of books donated, with over 130 added to our collection. Please be patient with us as we process, catalogue, print the book plates off and cover your donated books. As soon as they are ready, we will borrow them out to your child and send them home to share with your family. Once again, a huge thank you from the Junior Library.

Music and Performing Arts

This term is in full swing and there are lots of events to be excited about. Our students involved in last week’s Annual Music Evening performed at a high standard and represented Junior School beautifully. Congratulations to all involved in the Choir and String Ensembles.

We now look towards our next events and class time in Music and Performing Arts has been focused on our end of year Celebration Evening. Students are working hard learning lyrics and becoming familiar with the song structures to incorporate movement and performance.

It’s such a blessing to be able to work throughout the year on our musical skills; learning songs, finding the beat and singing with a group in tune. We’ve also built up our skills of expressing ourselves through Drama and Dance and this is all coming to a climax as we combine our lessons from throughout the year to perform on the big Costa Hall stage.

There’s lots of excitement and we can’t wait to share, with the school community, all our hard work. Psalm 149:3-4: Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp. For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.

Health and Physical Education

Year 1 and 2 students at Junior School have started their two week intensive swimming program with a splash! There was lots of excitement as we boarded the bus on Monday morning to commence the first lesson! After arriving at the Middle School – Highton pool, the students got changed into their bathers, cap and goggles and met their new swim teachers. It was great to see some former Junior School students, Kade and Harry Leigh, return as swim teachers! Our students had lots of fun swimming, splashing, playing, and working on their stroke technique and water skills during their lesson. Afterwards, we boarded the bus back to Junior School just in time for lunch. The first week of the swim intensive was a great success and we are looking forward to seeing the students’ swimming skills continue to improve in Week 2.

Camp Australia