31st August

No birthdays so a chance to share our Book Week. Each of the nine classes explored something in their classroom during the week that connected with the theme of 'Across the Storybridge'. They tried to start with a book focus. Some explored actual physical bridges and their stories, some chose bridges in art and their inspiration, others looked at metaphorical bridges where one idea was connected to another. Three picture books that proved very inspirational were Pop's Bridge, a story about two boys whose fathers worked on the Golden Gate Bridge; Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing, a story based on fact about the building and opening of the Brooklyn Bridge; and Building the Sydney Harbour Bridge, John Nicholson's beautifully illustrated chronicle of the dramas and details of this icon. Two classes explored bridges in the art of Monet, Van Gogh and Hosukai. There were many books to help with this. Another class took all the factual books about bridges from the library and researched six famous bridges in small groups. A class that had spent this term exploring myths and legends looked at the Willow Pattern Story. One of the kindergarten classes had fun exploring the bridges of Sydney with Fergus the Ferry books and website, and another used Sam Lloyd's Whoops-a-Daisy World books to create their own emergency on a bridge for the characters. At the end of the week we had a classroom expo. The children thoroughly enjoyed visiting the other classrooms, seeing the displays, listening to recorded stories, viewing Smartboard presentations and learning from each other. See other entry for 31st August for books used.