The Messenger T2 Wk 4

THE MESSENGER Term 2 Week 4 Wednesday 14 May 2025

Dear School Community, Many thanks to those who were able to come to the Autumn Festival last Friday.

The children love to see their lanterns lit up and to see what the other classes have made.

It is a festival that has occurred in many forms across time and cultures to celebrate the harvest. The simplicity and magic of their families and community gathering around a fire to sing is a kind of goodness and beauty that lives in the children’s hearts for years to come.

Our AGM is this Thursday at 7.00 pm in the Meliodora Hall. At this short, but important meeting, we thank members of the Governance Committee who have completed their service, Scott Ersvaer, Nicole Nye and Sarah Watts, and welcome new and returning members. All parents are welcome.

A reminder also, that a link to the annual Parent Survey has been sent out via email and Sentral. Thank you for completing this. It is an important element of the feedback that helps us to meet the needs of our community.

Some initial comments collected as part of the survey indicate the need for the school to continue to explain the International Baccalaureate

Diploma Program (IBDP) at Year 11 & 12 so that our community better understands the reasons why it is such an excellent choice for most students.

One aspect that needs to be understood is that the IBDP aims to keep students thinking as broadly as possible for as long as possible. This means undertaking subjects from each area of study. Students must do a math, science, humanities, a language other than English (LOTE), and English. The course is designed to explore areas of keen interest through the different lenses of their subject studies. We believe students are better served by keeping their options and intellectual capacity as wide as possible.

The tyranny of choice.

We offer the subjects within each area of study, which allow students to access any university course or tertiary pathway they may want to choose. We have chosen these subjects as they work best with our intention to provide a platform for broad and deep thinking. What the IBDP does that other courses do not, is help students understand how interconnected areas of study are and delve into how we create and understand knowledge itself. This is an instrumental priority that Steiner education in the lower years lays the foundation for, and this program supports us very well in exploring

these connections. Our children will likely have multiple careers, and they will need to understand the interconnectedness of the modern world to apply their knowledge and skills to different situations (including future employment). The subjects are gateways to learning to think, to understand and appreciate complexity, and to develop work ethic and determination; particular subject choices within the learning group areas matter less than we may think.

However, we will continue to pursue additional subjects to best meet the needs of our students to provide appropriate avenues to develop the skills we understand as important to their individual growth as adolescents and their futures within our community and the wider world.

In addition to information evenings, please feel free to contact the staff at school to discuss the IBDP program or specific questions in more detail.

Warm regards, Glenn Hood | PRINCIPAL

ALL SCHOOL EVENTS AND DATES: WWW. MANSFIELDSTEINER.VIC.EDU.AU/CALENDAR

GRAPEVINE

MORNING STAR Sandi Valerio

The Morning Star children have arrived back after an Easter break with a full program to embrace. We have been singing in a festival circle working towards our Autumn Festival. The stories we have brought the children are all leading to the elements of our festival day. Stone soup introduces soup and how we can enjoy this as a community together, sharing, kindness and empathy is felt in this story. Brother acorn brings rhythm and a learning of the planting season we have in Autumn. The magic pumpkin shows again how people can work together for a common goal and for the good of the community. We have painted with golden colours to make our lanterns. We have all made leaf windows that will light up in our lanterns and the final touch was the woollen twistie we shared making with a friend, to attach to our lanterns, to carry home from our festival.Now all we have to do is make the golden soup to share at our festival with all of the families.

ROSA MUNDI Jack Finegan

Rosa Mundi have been busy this term preparing for the change in weather and our upcoming Autumn Festival. The Autumn leaves are falling and providing our yard with a beautiful autumn blanket. The morning circle and verses we sing represent this change and our meeting place is beginning to turn back into our much needed fire pit. This week we have finished off our lanterns and played outside, enjoying the lingering warmth as father sun holds his strength just a little longer.

CLASS 1 Samantha Charlotte

Class 1 have spent the last three weeks exploring the local surroundings and enjoying the freshness and colours of Autumn. We have been on nature walks, and enjoyed stories about the local Alpine flora and fauna. The children have done beautiful drawings, created collages from collected nature items and written short sentences in their Main Lesson books. This week, we have returned to the Land of Numbers, where the class will embark on a journey building their counting skills and increasing their familiarity with numbers and informal number processes.

CLASS 2 Liz Morrell

Class 2 have been busy with a Times Table and Number Patterning main lesson. Number patterns and the relationship between the tables have been discovered through movement, drawing and geometry. Making of lanterns for the Autumn festival was a real highlight with much perseverance and problem-solving required to use the tissue paper to create the lantern. The festival walk and singing was thoroughly enjoyed.

Gardening has been undertaken in this cooler weather with much weed pulling as the main event. As we move further toward the colder weather and into the year with new learning and experiences, challenges are faced and more determination required to face the challenges. The image of facing the dragon can epitomize this. The students drew and painted their dragon each bringing their unique aspects to it.

CLASS 3 Amy Burns

Class 3 have spent the beginning of term in the school’s beautiful garden during our Gardening Main Lesson. Following the story of a little girl and her wise gardening neighbour, students have learnt about the many ingredients that make a great compost pile and helped to create a new pile in the vegie garden. They’ve investigated worms and their role in soil, and used the magnificent ‘black gold’ left to us from last year’s Class 3 worm farming efforts to propagate and plant new strawberry plants. They explored the many types of mulch in our school gardens and planted a green manure crop for the winter. Finally, they’ve worked with their will to carve and create their own gardening tool: a digging stick/dibber that we’ll use throughout the year. A big thanks to Finella for her extraordinary efforts and company in our gardening adventures!

CLASS 4 Julie Beer

Having embarked on our journey into the Norse myths, we are experiencing the sympathy and antipathy evoked by the tales of Loki and the gods of Asgard.

We have been absorbed into the driving rhythms of ancient Norse poetry whilst having great fun exploring alliteration and scouring the thesaurus for apt adjectives.

CLASS 5 Lou Pullar

Class 5 are preparing for their class play next week, Ekalavya’s Sacrifice. We started with a basic script and the students have written dialogue to add interest and build the storyline. Excitement is building for our rehearsals to start in the hall on our new stage tomorrow, as they learn to work with stage wings and real curtains. We have welcomed Carol into the Class on Wednesdays and thank Lou J for teaching the class on Wednesdays last term. The beautiful weather has been perfect for the start of our cross country running on Wednesdays and well done to everyone who ran at the golf course for the recent district event.

CLASS 6 Clare Bennetts

How lovely to finally welcome Autumn into our school. We are embracing this change of season with lantern making and autumn leaf origami. In Main Lesson we have been learning about the planets in our Solar System and far flung constellations.

This has opened up discussions about star signs, navigation and Dreamtime stories. In practice sessions we have worked hard on our grammar, spelling and handwriting as well as rounding numbers off to make calculating the area of shapes simpler. Looking forwards we will head back to Ancient Rome and learn how the empire expanded and how their ideas influenced our society. Tania will continue to look at sentence types, poetry, handwriting and wordplay. She will also introduce black and white drawing and shading of three dimensional objects.

YEAR 7 SEAMUS KAVANAGH

The Year 7s have continued there journey into Middle English, learning about Geoffery Chaucer’s classic poem, ‘The Canterbury Tales’. Featuring four tales as told by a Nun, Knight, Pardoner, and Physician. This play demonstrates the different social hierarchy, and humour of Medieval Europe.

YEAR 8 Dion Hall

In the Sacred Geometry main lesson, our Year 8 students have journeyed into the harmonious world of the Platonic Solids—the archetypal forms through which ancient civilisation’s perceived the order of the cosmos. With compass and ruler in hand, they have created nets for the geometry of the five elemental shapes, experiencing with both heart and hand the quiet perfection of their symmetry. They shaped some forms from clay, letting the tactile bring understanding where words fall short. As their hands worked, so too do their minds: calculating angles and solving mathematical problems through speaking the language of logic and proof to understand a deeper truth that beauty and reason are not strangers, but kin.

YEAR 9 Kate Hood

Year 9s have been studying the anatomy of the human form both in relation to the animal kingdom and its uniqueness with capacity for living with intention. The students study the skeleton in relation to their own bodies and other animals and learn that life choices and experiences shape their skeleton. With the study of intentions comes an opportunity to teach consent laws, prosocial choices, and positive and safe interpersonal relationships. Building healthy respectful relationships with peers is something that they will put into practice while on their canoe journey on the Murray River this week.

YEAR 10 Andrew Raftery

To start the term in Main Lesson, Year 10s have been learning about the slow and precise process of land surveying. Becoming very familiar with a dumpy level, string line and wooden stakes, they have endeavoured to map the newly landscaped area east of “the creek” at school. By methodically measuring heights at over 300 points in the area, the students have created a drawn to scale map. From the data they have plotted approximate contour lines to determine whether the new lay of the land will effectively drain into “the creek”.

MUSIC Celeste Cleason

Last week, Candlebark Strings and some members of Snowgum Strings took part in a mentoring session with John Noble, a violinist from Orchestra Victoria. The students worked intensively on their chosen repertoire, developing ensemble and performance skills. They particularly enjoyed hearing John’s wonderful violin playing and tone as well as his performing insights. The workshop was part of Musica Aviva Australia’s Strike a Chord Competition, a national chamber music competition, which four students from Snowgum Strings are entering later this month. Many thanks to Danielle for organising this opportunity for our students.

EVENTS CROSS COUNTRY Rachel Delany

On Friday 2 May, the schools in our District (Jamieson Primary, Merrijig Primary, St. Marys, Mansfield Steiner and Mansfield Primary School) were greeted with a beautiful day and perfect location for a cross country run. We are so grateful to the Mansfield Golf Course for allowing us to run there and to Mansfield Athletics for setting the cross country course and running the events. All 9 and 10 year olds ran a 2km course and 11 to 13 year olds ran a 3km course.

The students ran very well, and students who placed in the top 8 will go on to run at the Yea Golf Course next Friday. The Year 8 & 9 students from the Steiner School who were lead bike riders and marshals along the course did a great job.

Thank you to all of the teachers, parents and students who helped make the day a success.

MANSFIELD MARATHON Tim Ross

There was a great turnout from our school families with the many students competing on the day, plus several parents and siblings.

Several of the 2km runners were in the top 3 of their age group (U8, 10 or 12). Well done!

COMMUNITY NOTICES

IB DIPLOMA YEAR 11 Saskia Schultz Place Ceremony at Shearwater Philosophy Camp in April, Mullumbimby.

Five Year 11 and 12s took up the opportunity to travel to Shearwater to engage in a three-day camp with approximately 120 other Steiner school students from up and down the East Coast. Before we even started the first day of workshops at Shearwater, we woke up well before dawn and stood barefoot in the cold dewy grass outside the Gunyah. We lined up youngest to eldest to enter the grounds, rhythmically stepping around the communal fire, breathing in the smoke and greeting the grandfather sun, grandmother moon, father sky and mother earth, drawing on these reflections as a chance to then be introspective inside the Gunyah, symbolic of mother earth’s womb. As we exited the Gunyah, we embraced each other before starting our day.

YEAR 12 Willow Mathews

After the recent performance of the monologues, the 12s have been busy engaging with their higher-level English essay. The characters and motivations drawn upon to construct the 12s performances paralleled their essays’ that explore notions of language and the self. Personally, I found the portrayal of characters’ motivations and perspectives in a monologue useful in then expanding upon these in my essay.