THE MESSENGER
Term 4 Week 3 Friday 1 November 2024
A healthy social life is found only when, in the mirror of each soul, the whole community finds its reflection, and when, in the whole community, the virtue of each one is living.
Rudolf Steiner
Dear School Community, It was wonderful weather (blue skies and 21 degrees) for our annual Spring Fair this year, and with excellent attendance, it made for a great day. The significant contributions from all sections of our community are deeply appreciated. The day would not be possible without the efforts of parents, staff, and students
For the younger students, the Spring fair is a magical day with the chance to do some fun activities, coupled with the excitement of performing. The ‘Rainbow Tent’ is a favorite in our Morning Star Kinder and I saw some not-so-small students still lining up to choose a special handmade gift. For secondary students, the extra responsibility for helping on stalls, setting up, and longer performances gives them a sense of ownership of the day. We value their increasing participation in school events, and they regularly make us proud with how they rise to these occasions. A huge thank you to the individuals and businesses that donated raffle prizes and purchased tickets. While the primary purpose of the Spring Fair is to build community and showcase the school, the secondary purpose is to be the major fundraiser for our Parents and Friends Group. This year, we raised $15,000, which P&F plans to use to purchase stage curtains for the Melliodora Hall stage, which will be built in December.
Our Year 9s have set off this week on their Long Journey, which involves paddling over 230km down the Murray River and riding 280km, eventually ending up back at school. The students have developed and planned this 17-day trip. It is very different from last year’s trip and no doubt next year’s class will devise something different again. Parent assistance again makes this trip possible, and we thank those Year 9 parents who are part of the logistics around this trip.
The same day as the Year 9’s left, Year 7 headed off on surf camp to Phillip Island for 5 days of beach action. Finally, our Year 12 IB students are in the midst of their final exams. It is an exciting time as they approach the end of their 2-year courses, and we wish the best with the challenges that the exam period brings.
Glenn Hood
ALL SCHOOL EVENTS AND DATES: WWW. MANSFIELDSTEINER.VIC.EDU.AU/CALENDAR
GRAPEVINE
MORNING STAR Sandi Valerio
The Morning Star children had an exciting beginning to the term. With the Spring fair approaching we had t-shirts to dip dye, flowers to felt, paper flowers to create and we began modelling tiny bees wax gardens. Our hands have been busy learning new skills with all of our Springtime activities. We sang songs of Springtime in our morning circle, frogs came to visit, flowers were blooming and birds were hatching out of their nests and learning to fly. Warming our bodies each morning with singing and movement brought joy to the children and began each morning with a smile. Our stories have reflected our circle time and craft activities, ‘The little Pardolite’ and ‘Daisy and the bees’ were our told stories. We saw these stories reflected in the children’s play as they built cubbies, nests and recreated the stories themselves with nature pieces and wooden blocks at inside playtime.
ROSA MUNDI Jack Finegan
Spring in Rosa Mundi has been a time of change and preparation, both in the yard and in the children themselves. Flowers are blooming and birds are chirping as we sing of new blossoms and spring fairies. Our garden has been producing healthy food that we have been using to create our morning tea and provides the perfect toppings for our pizza each Thursday. Teeth are falling out, bodies are growing and children are asking many questions as they look through the fence towards Class 1.
CLASS 1 Liz Morrell
Class One have begun a Main Lesson called Ancient World Tales incorporating elements of History, English and Geography. The stories which are presented come from around the world including Africa, India, China, Finland, and Russia. Images of diverse traditional family life are brought, along with the cycles of the natural world and many other aspects of life from a distant past in different cultures. The class continue to learn new recorder pieces and playing for a large audience at the spring fair was a real highlight. Reading to their Class Five buddies is also enjoyed every fortnight when the two classes come together.
CLASS 2 Amy Burns
The Class 2 children are finishing their Extraordinary Lives Main Lesson, in which they lived into the lives to four people with different stories who left lasting impacts in the world. They explored new concepts in grammar, learning about Queen Noun’s ‘Naming Words’ and King Verb’s ‘Doing Words’, and created moving pictures of animals and characters doing special actions. Birds flew, women planted trees, windmills spun, and palaeontologists dug up special treasures from rocks and sand. Next week we will begin our final maths Main Lesson for the year, working with 2- and 3-digit numbers in horizontal equations and exploring vertical equation through the stories of a colourful collector named Colin.
CLASS 3 Ariel Stava
Class 3 had an amazing time working on their Money Main Lesson, especially when they got to Market Day and were able to put their skills with money into practice. Each child created a very clever hand-crafted product and sold them at their stall at lunch time. The proceeds of $532.65 were donated to a very appreciative Cathy Raeburn from Jameison Wildlife Shelter. Thank you to the students who visited the stalls on Market Day. The students are now embarking on another engaging Main Lesson working with the concept of Time. They have heard how the understanding of Time first developed from indigenous cultures who observed the food sources that changed with the seasons and have begun working on artwork to construct a calendar.
CLASS 4 Lou Pullar
Class 4 worked hard preparing for the Spring Fair making orange and mango icy pops and practicing their instruments for our Class orchestra performance. When the day arrived, it was wonderful! Highlights included spinning wool and weaving on the loom with Bec and Lou in the craft room, painting mushrooms in Rosa Mundi and listening to the bands. Thank you to everyone for a terrific day. In Class, everyone has presented their Animal Project, and we have learned so much about creatures from across the globe. We finished with Tom’s lion, whose gesture of total satisfaction and peace thoroughly captured this majestic king of the jungle. We have now started our Geometry Main Lesson and are creating beautiful freehand forms whilst learning about angles and dimensions.
CLASS 5 Clare Bennetts
Thank you to everyone for helping to make Spring Fair such a great success. It really was a beautiful day to be apart of. The curries that you all contributed to making were delicious! Class 5s have been entranced by the Ancient Greek myths and history. We have learnt about Prometheus bringing fire to humans and more recently the Trojan war leading to the journey of Odysseus, which we have mapped and written about. We have made clay jugs, drawn the Trojan Horse, painted the Parthenon and started to recite hexameter poetry. As we revisit Decimals and Fractions in the coming weeks we will continue to learn about Ancient Greece. Sam has continued to teach Geometry and will revisit flowering plants as part of Botany in the coming weeks while Spring is in full splendour!
CLASS 6 Jacinta Walker
Class 6 have finished their Geometry Main Lesson although we will still construct various shapes as part of our form-drawing for the rest of the year. Students struggled with protractors and compasses building on skills from last year as they learned how to work with shapes in space. They have now started their Geology Main Lesson with an introduction to the structure of the Earth so that they can understand how earthquakes and volcanoes happen as well as how the various types of rocks are formed. Class 6 have also been busy practicing for their upcoming orchestra tour to Ballarat which they are very much looking forward to.
YEAR 7 Seamus Kavanagh
The Year 7s have just finished up with their Wish Wonder Surprise Main Lesson, before heading off on camp. This poetry Main Lesson explored the emotions, imagination, and wonder of the world through the written word. They have then travelled off to go on a four day surf camp on Phillip Island. This has tested some other their abilities, and the skill development has been impressive.
YEAR 8 Dion Hall
Physics of liquids and gases. This Main Lesson is connecting students’ understanding of solids, liquids and gases to the influences of gaining or losing energy. Exploring the effects of changing pressure and temperature, we will make balloons expand and contract with a constant gas content, observe the movements of a fluid with hot and cold sections, and use compression and stored energy to shoot rockets into the sky. Along the way, we will reflect on how the physics of fluids have shaped the surface of our planet, apply our learning through some practical experimental activities, and learn about famous thinkers such as Archimedes and Bernoulli.
YEAR 9 Nicholas Koschitzke + Suze McKay
Year 9 have been looking into the world of Conic Sections, learning how the circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola are all related. Students also studied some of the famous historical mathematicians who helped discover these concepts. Amongst this they’ve returned to some platonic solid shapes while applying these concepts to real world building and crafting activities.
Year 9 will embark on their 17 day epic Long Journey. After weeks of preparation, adjustments, packing and preparation we will drive out to Yarrawonga and launch our canoes for 10 lovely days on the Murray River. Once we have paddled to Echuca, our bikes will meet us for our return ride towards Mansfield over 7 days.
Congratulation to Year 9 for their creation of what is sure to be a Long Journey filled with laughter, tears, creating memories and solving problems on the go.
YEAR 10 Seamus Kavanagh
Having switched into a 6 period program this term, and having all returned from France, the Year 10s are gearing up for an exciting diploma program. One highlight has been their engagement with humanities, developing a question, and then exploring the answer through art, research, and their personal experiences. They will be displaying their work at the upcoming TOK exhibition evening with the Year 11s on the 26th of November
MUSIC Celeste Cleason
Congratulations to all the students who performed at Spring Fair. What a wonderful showcase of our school music program! To hear the progression from the first Class 1 recorder performance to the final senior rock band was a delight. The music faculty has a busy schedule for the rest of the term so please make sure to mark down these two special events (dates and times are in the Sentral calendar).
WEEK 8 – Secondary Ensemble Night at the Mansfield Golf Club featuring Year 7/8 & Year 9/10 ensembles, Petrichor and Deceptive Biscuit Tin Bands
WEEK 9 – Strings and Choral Concert at St Mary’s Church Hall featuring Primary & Senior Choirs, JPO, MSPO, MSCO and Snowgum Strings.
COMMUNITY NOTICES
Little Yarra Steiner School
Open Day & Fair
Saturday 16th November
10am - 4pm
Ghilgai Steiner School Spring Open Day
SUNDAY 10TH NOVEMBER 10 AM – 3 PM
of
FOOD MUSIC STALLS
295 Liverpool Rd, Kilsyth 03 9761 8369 www.ghilgai.com.au
IB - 15 Years at Steiner: A Retrospective by
Mackenzie Henderson
Ever since our noses endured the odour of Steiner’s signature blue paint, we all longed for these culminating moments, finishing year 12 and becoming an ‘adult’. But now, now that we are all 18 and are almost at that finishing point, I am certain that I am not alone in asking: ‘Why does it have to end?’.
As we (the Year 12s) approach the final weeks of our Steiner education, it is finally time for me to officially hand over the reins of this publication to my co-chair, Willow Matthews. In the spirit of one final contribution, I have a brief story that is emblematic of the class of 2024’s journey of subverting Steiner’s rules.
In the later years of primary school, it is no secret that countless occurrences of conflict arise. However, there was one event that, despite its seemingly conflict-ridden nature, was a unifying factor for not only our class but all of us at the time. At the start of every consecutive term, without fail, someone would take the initiative and rename ‘British Bulldogs’ to something that the teachers would never find a connection between, such as ‘Spanish Cocker Spaniels’, ‘French Terriers’, or ‘Banana Split’. How this feat of linguistic deception persisted over so many years is anyone’s guess - all I know is that I am thankful that we could continue this game of unity, and I am grateful to the teachers who undoubtedly saw through our use of synonyms and nevertheless allowed us to continue.
IB YEAR 11 - Willow Matthews
It has come time for the penultimate undertaking for the year 12s, with exams to make up their grand finale at Steiner. Meanwhile the year 11’s recently managed the annual students vs teachers game, with a final score which I don’t feel inclined to share the results of. The 12s exams take place over the course of 4 weeks, with there being 2 exams for each Standard Level subject and 3 for Higher level, (with there being 3 HL and 3 SL subjects, with the exception of visual arts, which has no exam). Following the conclusion of this tremendous accomplishment, the 12s will journey through the younger years of the school, recounting their respective journeys through their years at Steiner. Their subsequent departure will mark the beginnings of classroom changes and preparations for next year, with myself and the Year 11s beginning to take on student leadership positions within the school. So it is with a heavy heart that I will be usurping the duty of messenger writing from Mackenzie, though we still both appreciate the opportunity to write these articles for you all, hopefully aiding in informing about the IB along the way.
These last weeks, it has been more than a little heartwarming to see the 12s choose to come and spend break times between exam study kicking the football and chatting under the shade of our blossoming trees (no “British Bulldogs” by that name or any other mind you ��). The rhythms and routines of our learning and living life are an integral part of what carries us through all manner of things – a truth so strongly cultivated and felt at our school Play on, wherever you find yourself
Leith Pierce Head of IB
