Lucy's+Page

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==**Welcome to Lucy's page. Lucy teaches in the Preparatory Year in Bundaberg. She is passionate about teaching in the early years and this is obvious in the wonderful work she does with the children. Lucy has also held the position of Early Years co-ordinator within her school. Lucy has presented workshops at Early Years Conferences in the Diocese of Rockhampton where she has shared her teaching practices with other professionals. The example of learnings that are described below occured in Term Four of the school year and Lucy was continuing with a theme the children had been investigating earlier in the year.**== .

Our class liturgy at the end of Term 3 focused on caring for each other with a link to the words of Jesus "Love one Another as I have Loved You." The connected activities for the focus were to:
 * dramatize the Rainbow Fish where the teacher in role asked the children to convince her to share the scales - this lead to lots of reflection on how Rainbow Fish didn't understand that being NICE didn't mean LOOKING NICE. We discussed the specific ACTIONS of caring rather then statements that they made initially of being "nice" or "good".
 * Children drew pictures of specific ways of being caring at Prep. These ideas were then used to help act out scenarios and photographed with captions for a **photostory** ( backed by some recorded narration by children and the Andrew Chinn song "//These Hands//".) This photostory was incorporated into the liturgy.
 * The scripture story of the "Jesus meets Four Fishermen" was told in prayer circle formation. The class held onto a real bait net as the fishermen and one child dressed as Jesus asked them to follow. This reenactment was used to conclude the liturgy backed by the song by MIchael Mangam "//Love one Another"// as the children followed "Jesus" they collected a tea tree light candle to give to their parents.
 * links were made across curricula topics with caring for each other extending to the Personal Learning Area with diversity.
 * An excellent big book text " W is for World" by Kathryn Cave and Oxfam. (ISBN: 9781845070267) was used a source of ideas to write our own **prayers** to appreciate others from different cultures and in different circumstances.
 * These prayers were used to open our "Around the World" day a sharing lunch with families on the last day of term.
 * A link was made to Investigating Environments with a focus on caring for our world. The children drew their own "Wishes for the World " this came from their prior knowledge (some children made reference to ideas from W is for World e.g. 'My wish for the world is for everyone to have good eyes to see with"



Early the next term we began to focus on our actions for sustaining our world and the children collaborated to construct our WALL. E to help us recycle.
 * WALL. E moved on a scooter board and visited other classrooms to collect their rubbish. He even was on the school stage at assembly to get his very own award.
 * Links were made to the focus for our Art Gallery topic //"From Little things Big Things Grow.!"// with the event in the WALL E movie where a new plant life was discovered as a sign of the world becoming healthy. We have been busy making sculptures, giant paintings and drawing of insects for our Art Gallery display.
 * other linked play projects were negioated with the children ; making our own paper, using recyled materials by creating planned and designed box collages e.g playground, a farm with water tanks to save rain water.



Links were made to Investigating Natural Phenomena with observation of other signs of new life with the interest in silkworms.We followed the silkworm life cycle through to the silkmoth stage.

Links were then made to the seed parable with the message of listening to God.

The seed parable was told in the prayer circle formation. Objects were laid on the prayer cloth to tell. Stiff brown cloth for the path where seeds fell, pile of small stones, tangled green wool for the weeds, and dark brown felt ( with green leaves hidden underneath), All these objects were taken out of a "Parable Box" and removed as the story progressed. associated activities were ; - in stony ground. - in dry ground - in compost soil (made by Yr 5 students) other play projects were negiotated with children choosing to keep caring for our growing plants.
 * retelling by children by laying objects on the cloth prior to prayer meditation time.(**flip movie)**
 * small group tasks of planting seeds in a variety of places,

To begin our exploration of the Infancy Narratives we had a told story ( Godly Play style) using our "Jesus" Box. We discussed how the stories in this box told the events of Jesus life and our "Parable" box had stories Jesus had told to teach messages.

We opened the Jesus box to discover another box inside with Lukes name on it. I placed the bible next to the boxes and discussed how the bible told us of Jesus and inside the bible were story books. This one is called Luke's Gospel. The story was told as the box was unpacked and laid down. Mary, Jospeph, donkey, sign post to Bethlehem, Inn keeper, stable, swaddling cloth (wrapped around the baby as story is told), gift box ( then used as a manager), angels, and shepherd.

Before the birth of Jesus was told the children saw that a gift was brought to Mary and Joseph and children were asked to whisper to each other what they thought was inside. The children shared that they thought it would be a baby Jesus. We shared the idea that Jesus brought a gift of "peace" to the world.( possible link to the ideas of Helen )

I asked the children at the end if they was anything different in Christmas stories they had heard before. One child said there was no star. I explained that the star was not in Luke's Story. We concluded the story with a song "Jesus Lullaby" which focuses on the Luke narrative ( just one mention of "Come gather Kings")

A follow up to the story experience was a play task of drawing the objects from the Luke story box ( and to not leave anything out or add extra)

Our next plan is to create a home play area of the stable using the same objects from our box. We will follow this exploration with Matthew's Narratives and discover the parallels ( see reference to Infancy Narrative notes) We will have a Matthew box to unpack inside the Jesus box with Mary, Joseph, baby, Wise Men, treasure chests, star and camels and Bethelem sign for wise Men to follow.

A new school, a new beginning.... In 2010 I was appointed to new postion at Assisi Catholic College