During the Primary School years, each year level is connected to an overarching theme known as an ‘epoch’. These year-long themes are closely aligned with the developmental stage of the students and are designed to help them explore complex ideas and concepts across the curriculum, in a meaningful and engaging way. The connection of each class to a particular epoch, and the corresponding developmental age of the children, ensures that the curriculum meets the changing needs of the students as they grow and mature.

Noticeable physiological, psychological and cognitive changes take place in the child during this year. The nine/ten year threshold, also known as the ‘Rubicon crossing’ or ‘nine year old crisis’, represents a very significant step in self-awareness; moving out of the experience of the ‘we’ into that of the ‘I’. Children realise they are separate from their surroundings (and parents) and meet the world as individuals, often resulting in increased questions, self-doubt and wonder. Children at this time develop significant friendships – best friends and friendship preferences arise in a new way, and they are less tolerant of what doesn’t align with them personally.

Shearwater gives our Class 3 lessons a practical orientation. In their Main Lesson, the children study how humans, both past and present, have lived and worked. In maths, they work with time, money, and measurement.

Hearing Old Testament tales, and listening to the creation stories of the Hebrew people, speaks to the nine year old child’s changing consciousness – in the words of one Class 3 student, “I wish these stories would never end!”

The lucky Class 3 children at Shearwater also have access to the large biodynamic working Farm on our School site. This allows for weekly Farm immersion year round and, thanks to our Term 2 working-bee in which the Farm shed was reinvigorated back into a classroom – we now enjoy full days on the Farm each Friday.

So far this year, the children have stirred and spread a biodynamic 500 preparation and cleared, dug, weeded, seeded and maintained a green manure crop, ready for Shearwater’s first sewing of the indigenous grain Curly Mitchell Grass, which was a staple in the traditional diet of First Nations people for millennia. As an important food source, indigenous grains were processed into flour and cooked. It is believed that grains and seeds were likely consumed as early as 65,000 years ago. The children are so excited to be the first Shearwater students to sew this precious grain and wait for the reward of bread next year – Henny Penny would be proud!

In our second semester this year we look forward to performing our class play ‘Noah’s Ark’ and the perseverance and creative endeavour this process demands.

Another area of study that supports the Class 3 child’s Rubicon crossing, is an immersion into the history of human dwellings and shelters, which we study as part of an intensive Main Lesson block.  The children will work as a class to design and build a shelter, as well as working at home on creating a model of their own. An interesting observation has been the sudden interest in cubby building during our afternoons at Crystal Creek – reminding me of the rightness of a child-informed curriculum that perfectly compliments the children’s needs and interests at each stage of their development.

Lastly, we look ahead to our three-day camp at an internationally renowned permaculture farm where the children will forage and graze on berries and fruit, giggle, milk cows, play, feed animals, laugh, swim in the river, sing, tell stories around the fire with a marshmallow or two and create memories for life!

Shalom Aleichem! 

Lisa Hylan
Class 3 Teacher