The Indigenous Plant Trail is now open!

The Grand Opening of the Indigenous Plant Trail on Tuesday afternoon was a fantastic celebration of this exciting project! Mr Bolger cut the ribbon and declared the trail officially open and all of the students did a fantastic job of introducing their plant and explaining its indigenous uses. Thank you to everyone who joined us on Tuesday and another huge thank you to all parents and grandparents who assisted the students during MAD Week to research and create their signs. Many teachers and students have already used the trail and expressed what a great job the Year 1s have done! We encourage you to explore the trail for yourselves, if you haven't already.

Next week is Enviroweek. All students at Cornish have been encouraged to take up one of the Enviroweek 'Smart Ways to Live' challenges in order to live more sustainably.
See the Smart Ways to Live video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFTErew9-8A&list=PLkx05KBpWgKHf_G_JLUTw8nESXGYi6bFI
Each Year 1 student has chosen a challenge. Please discuss your child's chosen challenge with them to help them decide how they will fulfil this. Perhaps you would like to take up a Smart Way to Live challenge as a family.

Next Tuesday students will have the opportunity to purchase poppies and wristbands for Remembrance Day. The MAD Leaders will be visiting our classroom selling these. Items will be $2, $3 and $4.

You may have heard about the fantastic ‘Bottle for Botol’ enterprise that the VCE Business Management class at Cornish has been involved in to actively ‘make a difference’. Bottle for Botol is a non -profit social enterprise, which aims to empower students worldwide to move beyond single-use plastics towards an environmentally sustainable future. The dream of Bottle for Botol is to link Australia and Indonesian schools in cross-cultural environmental discussions, where students come together to brainstorm ways to solve their local environmental issues.  The plan is to achieve this by selling stainless steel water bottles, one-for-one.  For every purchase of a stainless steel water bottle in Australia, a ‘botol ‘will be donated to a student in Indonesia.  These bottles are printed with a unique logo designed by the students and have a special friendship message attached to them hand-written by the students in Indonesia. For more information please see the Bottle for Botol website: http://www.bottleforbotol.org

The VCE Business class has taken on the challenge to sell 650 bottles.  Once all of these bottles are sold every student at our partnership school in Bali will be given a bottle. Everyone in our school community is encouraged to become involved in this very worthwhile project. You can buy a bottle for $20 from the front office.  Order forms are available on the school website.

Prep - 2 Sports Morning is on Friday 31st October. Your child will need to wear their Sports uniform  to school on this day.

Show and Share for this week relates to our next unit of inquiry titled 'Lots of People, Lots of Needs'. We have started looking at the difference between 'needs' and 'wants'. For Show and Share we would like each student to talk about the thing they 'want' most.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Creativity abounds in Year 1!

All of the children have returned from their holidays cheerful and rested and have settled well into Term 4. The children have already had an exciting start to the term! They thoroughly enjoyed our Invertebrates Drama Workshop on Wednesday where we saw some very fine acting skills as they explored what it would be like to be an invertebrate living in the garden. With the help of some colourful costumes the students were transformed into scutttling slaters and spiders, wriggly worms and caterpillars, vibrant butterflies and ladybirds, leaping crickets and zooming dragonflies! 

The grand opening of our Indigenous Plant Trail will take place next Tuesday the 21st of October at 2:15pm.  We would love it if parents would like to join us for this event. This will involve walking around the property in order to "plant" the signs, so please wear suitable walking shoes and a sunhat. Please let your child's classroom teacher know if you will be coming.

By this time of year we strongly encourage the students to further develop and demonstrate their independence and ability to be responsible for their own belongings. Please encourage your child to pack their own school bag in the morning, if they don't already. We have many shoe-lace-tying experts already in Year 1! If your child is still mastering this skill please encourage them to continue to practise. It may take a little extra time, but mastering skills such as these helps to develop independent and confident young people.

Have a wonderful and sunny weekend!

Welcome to Term 4!!

Welcome back! We hope you and your families have all had a wonderfully relaxing break.

A reminder that students are required to wear Summer Uniform during Term 4, and are also required to wear their school hat when out in the yard.

During her visit to Botswana, Mrs Jenkins' distributed the stationery that you all kindly donated. It was gratefully accepted and she will be visiting our classrooms early this term to tell us more about her experiences.

We are extremely excited to announce the official opening of the Indigenous Plant Trail this term!! The students worked so hard during MAD Week to produce their amazing and informative plant signs which have now been printed and are ready to install. The grand opening will take place on Tuesday the 21st of October at 2:15pm.  We are hoping that Mr Bolger and Ms Forrest will be joining us to officiate the opening. We would love it if parents would also like to join us for this event. This will involve walking around the property in order to "plant" the signs, so please wear suitable walking shoes. Please let your child's classroom teacher know if you will be coming to this event.

Please see the updated App List and ensure the required app for Term 4 is downloaded into your child's iPad. We have also included a list of apps that may be deleted.

Looking forward to yet another exciting and action-packed term!!

It's the holidays!!!

Welcome to the September School Holidays!

All of the children have taken home multiple books to read during the holidays. With many of the children progressing to the next reading level within a 3-4 week period it is important to keep their reading up over this long holiday break. They can also work on IXL Maths as well as invertebrate hunting and observation whenever they are out and about.

We have set up a blog to track the caterpillars that we have been observing in the classroom. Many of the caterpillars are getting very large and 2 have already become pupas. The blog can be accessed by following this link http://cornishcaterpillars.blogspot.com.au and we will endeavour to take regular snaps of our "Benjis" and "Bobs."

If you are looking for something to do over the holidays the Melbourne Zoo are offering "Be A Bug Explorer." Have a look at this link for more information http://www.zoo.org.au/melbourne/whats-on/be-a-bug-explorer

Mrs Jenkins left for Africa on Saturday, taking with her the stationary and letters that the students wrote. Thank you to everyone who donated stationary during the week. We wish Mrs Jenkins and her husband a safe trip through Botswana and Zambia and we look forward to sharing their experiences on their return.

Could you please bring in during the first week back of Term 4 a clean, plastic 2 litre soft drink or juice bottle? They will be used as the body for their 3D imaginative invertebrate that they are creating as part of their summative assessment.

Have a fantastic holiday!

Bug hunting!

Our new unit of inquiry titled "Little Creatures, Big Wonders" commenced this week and has been embraced by the students with huge enthusiasm. The children have been out exploring the grounds and discovering all sorts of creatures.

The Melbourne Museum and IMAX excursion was a terrific way to consolidate both our light knowledge and introduce us to the fantastic world of invertebrates. A big thank you to our marvellous parent helpers.

We would also like to thank Paul Hirst who visited us recently and shared his extensive knowledge on electricity and light. Many of the students incorporated parts of his presentation into their light posters.

There will be no Show & Share this week as we are still busily presenting our light posters and completing unit reflections. Show and Share for Weeks 9 & 10 will focus on invertebrates that the students have observed either in their back yard or when they are out and about. Remember that invertebrates aren't just found on land. The students need to tell the class their invertebrate's special features and why they think they may have them e.g. a stick insect uses camouflage to protect itself from predators. They have a great app on their iPads - Melbourne Museum Field Guide, which should help them to identify most locally found invertebrates. The app does have quite a lot of writing in it, so they may need your assistance to help navigate the pages.

Please ensure that we have received your RSVP for the Fathers' Day Breakfast by Monday morning as we are finalising our catering needs.

Finally the Year 4 – 6 Primary Production 'Alice – A Short Film' - a premieres September 11 and 12 over 3 screenings. Please see 'Parent notices' on College Website for more details. Tickets available from www.ticketebo.com.au/alicethemovie

Book Week 2014

What a brilliant Book Week! We were so lucky to visit the Lynley Dodd Exhibition at the Mornington Regional Gallery on Wednesday. The children loved every minute of it. As part of Book Week, the students have been invited to participate in the stuffed pet parade which will be judged on Wednesday. The children need to bring their toy in on Monday or Tuesday to register them and then the winners will be on display on Wednesday.

We are off to visit the Melbourne Museum and IMAX cinema on Wednesday to kick off our new unit "Little Creatures, Big Wonders." We are aiming to leave at 8.50 a.m. so please arrive at school by 8.40 a.m. The children should be in full Winter uniform and have a small backpack containing their lunch, snack and water.

There is no Show and Share this week as we are presenting our Light Posters. These posters are amazing - the children devised their own questions and then researched and answered them using a range of resources. Once the children have received feedback from their classmates, the posters will be displayed in the shared area. Please pop in and admire all of their hard work.

If you haven't returned your Fathers Day Breakfast RSVP could you please do so ASAP.

Year 1s are scientists!

There are several exciting events coming up this term. Thank you to everyone who has returned their permission slips for the Melbourne Museum excursion and the Lynley Dodd exhibition. If you have not yet returned yours, please do so this week.

A request from Mrs Hueneke and Ms Hinton:

Could students please use their iPad to take a photo of their pet - dog, cat, bird etc. or a pet of a friend/relative. Please don't include people in the photo! We will be using the photos as part of our unit of inquiry focusing on the stories and  illustrations created by Dame Lynley Dodd.

We have been trialling a new free meditation app and several of the children have expressed an interest in using it at home. This is the link if you would like to download it https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/stop-breathe-think/id778848692?mt=8

1M visited the secondary science lab last week (1S will visit this week) to work with Mr Byrne and to experiment with light. The children are thoroughly enjoying this current unit of inquiry and it showed as Mr Byrne was completely blown away by their knowledge of light. Both classes have also been experimenting with electrical circuits and we may have a few budding electricians or lighting directors in our midst!

The next two weeks of Show and Share will focus on the different ways to use light. This can be anything from a laser beam on a remote control to solar lights in the garden.

Please ensure that iPads are fully charged everyday for school and that they have sufficient memory to be used. Several students could not participate in iPad activities this week because their iPads were not charged or they had insufficient space (due to an excess of non school apps, photos and/or videos). Whilst we are keen for the children to be as independent as possible, the students all still need adult support to successfully manage their iPads.