Wow! What an exciting week it has been at TVPS! This week, after many months of rehearsing our songs and dances, we finally got to perform our level one routines “Splish, Splash”
“Twist and Shout” and “Surfin USA” at the school production. All the children looked fabulous with the help of some very talented parents. A big thank you to those parents who made some gorgeous costumes for the preppies!  Also, a big thank you to the brilliant choreography by the level 1 teachers. And of course the show would not have gone ahead without the amazing talent of Ms McCormack! Well done level one you were all brilliant!

On Tuesday the 27th of November it was weird hair day at T.V.P.S, and all the children looked fantastic in a weird way! There were many different styles and hair colours to be seen, some had crazy pony tails and coulours  while it gave others a reason not to brush their hair and come along with the very groovy ‘bed hair’ look. The only trouble with weird hair day is that with so much going on up top, at time it was hard to fit our hats on our head!

On Monday the 25th October was our first TVPS Numeracy Day. The prep children were matched with a friend in the same house to do some Maths activities in the Hall. The children were given house points for each activity they completed. The Prep activities were Farmer Joe, block towers, ‘10’ snap and paper  tear. There were lots of Mums to help the children record their scores. A BIG Thank you to Mr. Walsh for organizing this fun day. Now we must wait and see which house got the most points!

On Monday 19th October, we had a special assembly at TVPS to officially open our new ‘Sustainability Garden’ and to welcome our two new chooks.  We have already had our first egg laid!  Students celebrated the event by meeting our special mascot for the day ‘Mr Chook,’ danced to the chicken dance and after cutting the ribbon, entered the garden and admired all the creative art work displays and planting.

We have some special friends that come to visit us every Tuesday in Miss Mercuri’s room during reading groups. Our friends come from Bulleen Heights School. This week the Bulleen Heights children joined in some fun reading group activities. First, we began with a big book called “Dinosaur Days”. We looked at how to decode some tricky words by sounding them out and using the pictures as clues. We enjoyed reading the story as a class and showing the Bulleen Heights children how great our reading has come along since first term. They were very impressed!  Then we went off to our groups. Some children read with Miss Mercuri, or played a computer game called “The Spelling Ship” others completed an activity about “true or false” and played tic tac toe with some of the magic words we are learning. The children in Prep P should be very proud of the way they are so helpful and polite when we have visitors. Well done!    

On Tuesday 1st September the Prep students went on their very first excursion to the Melbourne Museum.  We boarded the buses, which was very exciting and headed for the city.  We visited many different exhibitions including; Bugs Alive! The Melbourne Story, Marine Life: exploring our seas, The Human Body, Forest Secrets, Dinosaur Walk and 1,2,3 Grow.  We also took part in the Dinosaur Skeletons program where students became junior paleontologists while exploring the world of dinosaurs.  Students learnt how dinosaurs lived, ate and moved by touching and examining fossils and casts of dinosaur bones.  It was very exciting!!! We ended our visit in the Children’s Gallery where students had a wonderful time taking part in various hands on activities.  The sand pit with buried fossils was particularly popular!  A great day was had by all!   

On Friday we had the Little Friends/Big Friends Teddy Bear Picnic! It was a great success! We made delicious teddy bear biscuits to share with our big friends. We coated them with icing sugar and sprinkles… they looked and tasted great! Thank you parent helpers for helping to keep the mess in the classroom to a minimum! We also did some fun teddy bear activities like making a teddy hat and dressing up a teddy bear. In the afternoon, we had the teddy bear parade. Some children received awards for the cutest teddy, the brightest teddy, the best bear pair, the fluffiest and smallest teddy bears too got a prize. The prep little friends would like to say a big thank you to our big friends for being so wonderful and for looking after us in our first year of school!

All the students from TVPS went on an African Safari this week!  On Monday the 24th August TVPS celebrated book week with a parade in the school hall.  All the students had to dress up as their favourite book character. The Prep’s did a fantastic job and all looked fantastic in their costumes. We had characters from all different books such as ‘Jack in the Bean Stalk’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ ‘Cat in the Hat’, ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Hannah Montana’.  Throughout the week we have been reading a variety of books and enjoying all the adventures of our favourite characters.

On Tuesday the 18th of August TVPS celebrated our 40th Birthday. We had a special assembly in the hall. The whole school had our photo taken by a hot air balloon camera. The parents had a special morning tea in a marquee. Then every class had a class party followed by a disco with a duke box. Everyone got a special birthday present. The teachers had a lovely garden party in the marquee too. We had the best birthday ever!!!!! The children and staff would like to say a BIG THANKYOU to Mel Robertson and Donna Smith for all their hard work on the 40th birthday committee. Another BIG THANKYOU to Dina Goudis for another fantastic cake to celebrate our birthday. Thanks Mums and Dads for our lovely party foo. Happy 40th Birthday TVPS xxxxx

Ahoy There!  We have been learning all about pirates in Prep! On Friday 7th August the Prep children participated in a Pirate Parade.  Everyone looked the part in their excellent costumes!  We had a wonderful time!  Thanks parents for your support in making this event so successful.

This week was the TVPS cooking week. In Level 1, we made healthy fruit skewers. We used a range of yummy fruits like banana, apple, grapes, pear, orange, mandarin and pineapple. We also went into Mrs M’s room to learn about the different food groups on the interactive whiteboard.   The food groups are meat, fruit and vegetables, “sometimes” foods and breads and cereals.  We then went out into the sunshine to enjoy our fruit! It was great fun!

The Preps have been busy in class with the unit on Fire Safety. Last week we had a special visit from the local fireman who came in their big red fire truck and educated us with some very important information. They showed us the suit they wear when they enter a building that is burning and we liked the breathing apparatus they use and the sound that it made, it sounded like ‘Darth Vader’ breathing.  We learnt what to do if we see or smell smoke in our house and how important it is to ‘stop, drop, cover and roll’ if you ever get fire on your clothes. Thank you to the fireman who came to the school and taught us how to be sensible when we are working with fire!

The Prep children have been talking about the fireman this term. We have learnt the difference between a good and a bad fire, the emergency number 000 and stop, drop and roll.  We have read many fire stories and we have learnt how to label something during our writing sessions. We labeled a fire man and a fire engine. 

This is Timothy, our class Teddy Bear.  He goes home each night with our ‘Worker of the Day’ in 1/P E.  Timothy has already been on many adventures with our grade and still has many more to come as he continues to travel home with children in our grade!

Prep P is enjoying using the terrific “new” computers we have in our classroom. We have been using some great websites and digital learning objects in our daily Reading and Numeracy Groups. The interactive nature of these games, engages the children in their own learning. It also allows each child to work at their own pace, whilst scaffolding each child’s development and allowing them to experience success. We hope everyone has a safe and restful break over the school holidays. Well done to a wonderful Term 2!   

The Prep children have been working hard on the unit about ‘Friends’. It has been very interesting couple of weeks, getting to know different people and what they enjoy doing on the weekends and their favourite food! We have learnt lots of new thing about everyone in the class and made many new friends.
Megan is my friend because she is kind.- Ava
My friend is kind to me. I love my friend. Sometimes we play Mum’s and Dad’s. –Montana
I like playing footy with Joshua and we play Markers up!- Joel
I play with Ben. We play on the monkey bars.-Stefan

In 1/P E last week the Prep students were learning the letter ‘Jj.’ 

The children in Prep M have been working with graphs. We have been creating our own graphs by gathering data and reading graphs for information. We made our favorite lunch order graph, our favorite fruit and vegetable graph and our favorite color graph. We were all given our own box of smarties and we used these for our maths session. We sorted and grouped our smarties into colors, found the most and least colors in our box and compared our results with our friends. After all that hard work , we got to eat them!

This week in prep we have been doing some great ‘hands on’ math’s activities. We read the story by Eric Carle called “Rooster’s Off To See The World” and had to use our mathematical minds to work out how many animals went off to see the world with the rooster. We used different things to work it out, like counters, our fingers and some of us just did in our heads. Afterwards we drew some great pictures of how we worked it out and shared them with our classmates. Here are some photos of our great work! Well done everyone! 

Open Day was a lot of fun, a big thank you to everyone who joined in! One of the main highlights for the Preps was when we got to go and visit Farmer Will and his animals. There were chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, a lamb, and cute little guinea pigs.  Trying to catch a chicken proved to be the test of the day as they dashed around the pen and jumped all different ways. Once you had one you had to hold on tight so they didn’t flap and wriggle out of your sight!

On April the 29th the Prep children had a visit from the ‘Wild Action’ animal show. The children learnt about lots of different types of animals- reptiles, mammals and marsupials. Everyone patted the snakes, lizards, frogs, wallabies, tortoises and a crocodile. Bumpy Stumpy was a blue tongued lizard and it is really hard to tell his head from his tail. There was a big python that took 4 children to hold! The children had lots of fun and learnt many things.

On Wednesday the 29th of April the Prep students participated in a ‘Wild Action Zoo’ incursion.  The Prep students saw many Australian animals including a turtle, a wallaby, a parrot, some lizards, some snakes and even a baby crocodile! 

The children got to touch the animals and even held some of them for some great photo opportunities!  We had some very brave students and teachers, some of whom had never held a snake before!  Well done everyone!

To celebrate Easter, the preps participated in the whole school “Easter Bonnet Parade”. The array of colourful hats and bonnets featuring little chicks, Easter bunnies, chocolate eggs and feathers looked truly amazing! After an enjoyable and long earned break, the children have settled back into school this week. This week, we began the “You Can Do It” program in Mrs M’s room. We looked at one of the keys called “confidence”. To teach us about confidence we met the puppet called “Connie Confidence”. It was lots of fun to sing songs and talk about ways we can be confident at school by having a go and not being afraid to make mistakes.   We are all looking forward to a busy and exciting term 2! 

All the Preps are back and feeling refreshed after a nice 2 week break! The weather was great and it sounds like all the children had a wonderful time going to the park, seeing movies and away on family trips to all different destinations. It is going to be a busy term so here are some important dates for your diary:
April 29th- “Wild Action” incursion
May 11th- “Drama Toolbox” incursion
May 13th – “Coach Approach” Sports incursion
May 18th- Education week, special Assembly at 9.00am
May 19th- Open Day/ Night- Prep children to visit Farmer Will (at school)
June 8th- Queens Birthday- Public Holiday
June 12th- Curriculum Day
June 23rd and 24th- Parent Teacher Interviews

Today the Prep children celebrated ‘Wishy Washy Day’. The children dressed up as the characters from the story ‘Mrs.Wishy Washy’. There were pigs, dogs, cats, Mr. Wishy Washy and lots of Mrs. Wishy Washies. The children played wishy washy concentration on the interactive whiteboard and completed a Mr. Wishy Washy sequence the sentence activity. Wishy Washy day is always lots of fun in the Prep rooms. Thank you to our Mums and Dads for helping us with our costumes!

Last week the Prep children in 1/PE were learning all about the letter ‘R’.  During Reading Groups, the Prep children completed their ‘R’ page in their letter books by colouring in a robot and sticking rats on to the letter ‘r’.  Here are three fantastic examples of their hard work!  Well Done Preps!

In only 6 weeks of school the Prep children have learnt so many new things. They have been working very hard during class time with their Maths, Reading and Writing. They are all doing so well identifying the letters of the alphabet and knowing the sounds that we have moved forward onto learning some words and are now using them when they are writing in their Journals, Super! All the students have been practicing their letter formation and are producing some lovely sentences with capital letters and full stops along with beautiful bright illustrations to match. Wonderful work!

The Prep children have settled into the school routine well and are enjoying their first school experience. Each Wednesday in February the children do not attend school so the teachers can complete the Early Years of Literacy and Numeracy Testing. As of Monday 2nd of March the children will be attending school each day. The Level 1 children have been enjoying their weekly Specialist lessons. Music with Mr. Whelan, PE with Miss. Ginn, Art with Mrs. Nikolakakis and Library with Mrs. Marshall. We have all been reading “Mrs. Wishy Washy’ big books in preparation for our special dress-up on Wednesday 25th March.

Sherie Matrakis

Welcome to 2009 at Templestowe Valley Primary School. The Level 1 team this year is Mrs M, Miss Dunn, Miss Mercuri and Miss Mardjetko . We would like to say a big THANKYOU to Mr. Jackson and Mrs Renfree who kindly volunteer every year to help in the Prep rooms on the children's first day of school. The Preps had a fantastic first day of school and have many new and exciting things to look forward too throughout the year. Your all doing a great job Preps, keep up the great work!