What a fantastic start to the year for our wonderful combined Class 5/6 as they expand their awareness of the world around them.  After the cultural and culinary richness of Ancient India and the Wonder and Wisdom of Words, we launched ourselves into the study of Astronomy.

The secrets of the Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars slowly revealed themselves, much to our constant amazement.  Our stargazing evening on the oval was an eye opener!  The Moon in its first quarter was side lit and the stark shadows of lunar topography leaped through the lenses of our telescopes!  This main lesson defined ‘awesome’ and inspired some beautiful art work and an original song!

The mind-boggling distances involved has given us cause to review our understanding of our base-10 counting system, place value and decimal fractions.  Did you know that the closest star besides our Sun, (Proxima Centauri), is 4.2465 light-years away?  That’s something like….40,025,600,000,000 km.  That’s right!  More than 40 trillion kilometres.  An astronomical figure indeed!

Luckily we didn’t have to travel anywhere near that far when we went on surfari to Cosy Corner, but there were definitely some rising stars.  It was a truly memorable day.  Blayke even tried his hand at underwater photography!  It was high time Ashley invested in a new phone anyway?.  Many thanks to our amazing games and physical education teacher, Sam, for organising such a great day and to Mez for being a warm and knowledgeable surf coach.

Term 1 really brought us together as a class and we are looking forward to the adventures that await in the year ahead.

Warmly,

Renee and Ashley