Learning Celebration

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our recent Learning Celebration. Here are some photos from the day, taken by Kim Percy.

Happy holidays from all of us here at the Dharma School!

Puppets

When asked to create an artwork about mindful consumption Ozzy created these incredible puppets. If you are lucky enough to be part of the school community you will see these puppets in Ozzy's performance at the end of Term Four.

Pauline Hanson

Mama Cass

This is What

By Andromeda

This is what the earth would look like if we stopped polluting. It would be peaceful and beautiful. Everybody would have enough to eat.

Nature Adventure

Instead of having our morning in the classroom, today we met at the Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens for a morning of nature adventuring with Bec, Patrick and Meg.

We started off by dispersing like seeds in the wind then writing about what we found once we'd landed.

Some of us were more creative with our writing implements.

We talked about the forest and all the different things we can do with wood.

We carved trees.

We jumped out of them.

We sat in their shade and ate our lunch.

Then we used them to try and light a fire.

Some of us even tried to eat them.

After a while we even started to look like them.

Our minds and our bodies were becoming one with our environment.

Until soon enough, the transformation was complete.

Tipperary Springs

By Isobel 

In the morning we went down to Tipperary Springs with Katarina and Meg.

It took a long time to get there.

We walked........

And walked.....

Until I thought we were there...
But we only got to go to Boomerang Ranch.

All the boys sat together.

While Andromeda and I sat together.

We were looking for shapes within nature.

After about an hour we went back to school. We had a really great time.

Aspirations

Of course we all have hopes and dreams, but how often do we sit down quietly and actually ask ourselves what we value and what we aspire to become?

Here are some of the aspirations of our students:

Spelling Test

Unlike most schools, at the Dharma school we only have two classes: Prep to Grade 2 in the Small class and Grade 3 to Grade 5 in the Big. Because there is more than one age group and more than one level in each class, our teachers sometimes have to teach a few lessons at once.

When the Bigs have their spelling tests, for example, rather than just read out ten words for all the class, Bec calls out each student's name then says a word that she believes is on their education level.

So instead of reading out 10 words, she reads out 10 words for all 8 students - that's 80 words. It's amazing our teachers don't lose their voices by the end of the week!