What’s happening in 1/2J
Welcome to class 1/2 J! We would love to share our learning!!
This term so far students have been diving into the vibrant and imaginative world of abstract art. We have been exploring the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, discovering how artists can express ideas and emotions without painting things exactly as they appear in real life. Students were fascinated to learn that abstract art is not about being “perfect” or realistic, but about using colour, shape and line to communicate feeling.
Through hands-on activities, we explored warm and cool colours and discussed how different colours can make us feel calm, excited, happy or thoughtful. Students experimented with primary colours on the colour wheel, learning how red, blue and yellow can be mixed to create new colours. They created their own abstract artworks inspired by Kandinsky’s bold shapes and expressive colour combinations, as well as Mondrian’s use of primary colours, strong lines and geometric patterns. It has been wonderful to see students confidently talking about their artistic choices and explaining the feelings behind their work.
In Science, our focus has been on the seasons and how weather changes throughout the year. Students have been busy investigating and experimenting in engaging, hands-on ways. We designed and made rain catchers to measure rainfall, created “rainclouds in a jar” to observe how precipitation forms, and built working windmills to explore how wind energy can be harnessed. We are so excited for when we make and test solar ovens. We will investigate how the sun’s energy can be captured to create heat. We will place different substances inside our solar ovens and observe what happens over time, watching items such as chocolate and marshmallows melt as they absorb the sun’s warmth. Students will record their observations and compare which materials melt faster, helping them understand how heat energy affects different substances. After the amount of rain we experienced over the week, we were able to examine our rain catchers, discuss which designs were most effective, and re-evaluate our ideas using higher-order thinking to improve our models. Some students were even putting measurements on their designs to see how many cm of rainfall they caught. We are very excited to start on our next topic of inquiry in science this term which is sound.
In maths we have been learning about place value where we do rotations on different maths games such as ‘place value basketball’, Using the MAB blocks with Miss Jones, and fun games like; snakes and ladders, bingo, place value knockout, and ‘I have, who has’. We make maths really fun while also doing learning.
In Hass, we have been learning about families and communities. Community is the schools global concept focus for Term 1 in 2026. We are very excited for students to eventually create their own community and describe the different places and people they have in it. Once students have built their communities, we will use the bee bots to program them around the communities and learn direction vocabulary. Students will then choose a person from their community and present about them in a way of their choice to improve student agency (poster, presentation, video etc).
Throughout these learning experiences, students have been developing their inquiry skills by asking questions, making predictions, testing ideas and reflecting on results. It has been an exciting term full of creativity, curiosity and discovery across both Art and Science.