TAKING UP THEIR CROSS

Year 1s River,Yusrah, Charles, Charlotte and Aryanna were excited to receive the crosses that the Year 4-6s made for them

We teach the Year 10 Religion, Philosophy & Ethics class that a symbol is “a physical expression of an abstract belief”. The Gospel reading set for the second week of Lent includes Jesus’ metaphoric invitation for his disciples to “take up your cross”. This can be tricky for all of us to understand, but for our younger Junior School students in Prep to Year 3 it can be especially difficult.

Fortunately, the students in Year 4 to Year 6 were up to the challenge of making a physical expression of ways that the younger students could “take up their cross”. With the support of their class teachers, the students constructed physical crosses on which they wrote practical ways that the younger students could put this idea into action. Their encouraging statements included practical inclusion, acts of care and kindness. Bright colours and inspiring ideas decorated the purple crosses that were handed out in the P-3 Chapel Service in the second week of Lent.

The smiling faces in the photo above show the impact that this small gift had on our Year 1 students, and the crosses show the deep understanding our older Junior School students have of practical acts of love, kindness and integrity. One Year 4 student wrote: “Do the right thing, even if no-one is looking!”

THE CEE d (SEED) SWAP

“Do you have any seeds at home that we can grow at kinder?”

The Treefrog Kindergarten children have been learning about seeds and the lifecycle of a sunflower, after Miss Forrest brought in a sunflower head full of seeds from her garden. The children used their fine motor skills to harvest the seeds out of the sunflower head with tweezers.

The experience led the children to talk a bout what they were growing in their own gardens at home and how we look after plants and nature.

We discussed the possibility of growing food at Kindergarten and how we could create a vegetable garden.

While the children were very keen to plant the sunflower seeds they harvested we also knew that we could not plant them until spring. We had lots and lots of sunflower seeds and we wondered “what could we do with them all?” The children wanted to take some home, which they did, but they also thought we could give seeds to somebody else……but who and how? “We picked a thousand of sunflower seeds and wanted to share them with somebody!”

Miss Forrest suggested a Seed Swap and explained this concept to the children. They were very excited, especially by the prospect of getting seeds they could grow now and not have to wait until spring! We decide to create a video to encourage the school community to participate in our seed swap and support us to get some vegetable gardens started in our outdoor Learning Environments at the CEEd.

Watch the video by going to this link on our Facebook page. You can still view it even if you don't have a profile on Facebook yourself. fb.watch/4_capfmv0A/

Treefrog Kindergarten children picking out the sunflower seeds and putting them in envelopes ready for the CEEd Seed Swap