Term 4 Week 9

Our last ever post!  :-(

Today is the last day of school for 2011.  It is very sad that we wont be together anymore but very exciting that we will be in year 2 and year 3 learning lots of new things.

This week has been a very short week.

On Monday we had a cleaning day.  All our desks and chairs have been scrubbed clean ready for the new year.

On Tuesday we had our class party.  There was lots of yummy food to eat. 

We also had a Christmas disco.  It was great fun having a dance at school.

We can't tell you about today yet because it hasn't happened!  We will be in our class this morning then we will have a special Christmas assembly.  Then a sausage sizzle for lunch will be the end of our day.

It has been a great year!  We have learnt lots of things and made lots of friends. We have had fun with Miss R and Miss D.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Term 4 Week 8

What a Christmassy week we have had this week!

We have painted a huge Christmas tree to go on the wall in our classroom and have covered it with lots of Christmas decorations.

We have been learning about the different gift bringers around the world.  We believe that Father Christmas brings our presents.  In Italy they believe La Befana brings their presents.  She leaves presents for all the boys and girls and hopes one of them might be the Christ child.  In some parts of Austria and Germany they believe Christkindl brings their gifts.

We have hung lots of shiny tinsel around our room.  We have made some stars to shine.   The star is a symbol of the Star of Bethlehem that showed the way to Jesus.

We read a story about a little girl called Lucida who lived in Mexico.  She had no gift to give the baby Jesus so she took some weeds into the Church and when she prayed beautiful red flowers grew from all the weeds.  The flowers are called poinsettias and you will see a lot of them around at Christmas time.

Today we made candy canes.  Candy canes have lots of symbols at Christms time.  If you turn it upside down it makes a J for Jesus.  The red stands for Jesus' blood.  The white stands for pure, with no sins. It also reminds us of the shepherds crook and reminds us that Jesus looks after us like a shepherd looks after his sheep. 

Advent is the season leading up to Christmas.  It is a time to celebrate Jesus' birthday.  We made a special Advent calender.  Each day we are trying to do something that would make Jesus feel happy.

This week we had our Presentation night.  It was held in the new recreation centre.  Each class had 8 award winners.  The prizes were for people that had worked really hard this year.  Miss R would have liked to give one to everyone but she wasn't allowed.  The prize winners from our class were, Haig, Cole, Madison, Deanne, Mekiyah, Georgia, Tess and Ethan.

At assembly this morning Stephanie got a special award for winning a space poster competition.

Only 3 days to go!!!!

Term 4 Week 6 and 7

What a BUSY two weeks we have had!

Here are some of the things we have been up to for the last two weeks.

Last week we finished our swimming lessons. Lots of people passed their stages and will be in a new stage next year.  We had a great fortnight of swimming!

This week has been a very multicultural week.

On Monday we had some visitors from Africa who showed us how to play the drums and do some dances.  The dancing and drumming were lots of fun.    The drummers played some wonderful music for the dancers to dance to.

On Tuesday  we went on excursion to Caversham Wildlife Park.  We saw lots of different animals from Australia.  Most people liked the kangaroos and koalas.  The koalas made a sort of grumbling sound.  We got to feed and pat the kangaroos.  Some of them even had joeys in their pouch.  We also got to pat the koalas.  It was a brilliant day.

On Wednesday it was red day.  We all looked very cool in our red clothes.  We also enjoyed a lunch from around the world.  We got to try foods from just about every continent.  There was pappadums from India, Swiss bread and chocolate from Switzerland, fortune cookies from China, gingerbread from Germany, seaweed from Japan, coconut milk from Africa, garlic bread from Italy, mango smoothie from Africa, Anzac biscuits from Australia, chicken tikka from India, pizza from Italy, hot dogs from the USA, quiche from France, nachos from Mexico and sping rolls from Vietnam, just to mention a few.  It was very yum! There was so much food that some of the teachers were still eating it for lunch today!

On Thursday we watched some youtube videos of different dances around the world and had a go at some of them.  We did the Viennese Waltz, the Mexican Hat dance, the Flamenco, the German slap dance, Irish dancing, the hula and some African tribal dancing.  It was fun.

This morning we had a Thanksgiving Mass.  It was a special end of year Mass to thank God for all he has done for us this year.  The captains for next year were announced at the end of Mass.

For news this week we had to bring in something from another country.  We shared lots of interesting things for news.

We also got a postcard from Stephanie today.  She is visiting Melbourne at the moment.  It sounds like she has been seeing lots of interesting things.  We can't wait to see her again next week so she can tell us all about it.

Term 4 Week 5

Literacy

This week we learnt about 4 different ways to make the long vowel i sound.  Here are some of the long vowel i words we found in our books.

Maths

We learnt a new maths game this week.  It is called Beat My Number.  The aim of the game is to use what you know about place value to make the highest number.  It is very cool. 

We have been practising our numbers and going all the way up to 4 digit numbers which are in the thousands.

We also learnt about measuring area.  Area is how much space something takes up, so instead of just measuring the edges you need to cover the whole object.

Integrated

We have been learning about North America.

In the United States of America there are a lot of cities.  Haig

There is lots of buildings.  Lachlan

There is four faces carved out of a mountain.  Tess

The American Indians make dreamcatchers.  The dreamcatchers catch the bad dreams in their web but the good dreams know how to get through the web and down into our heads.  We made our own dreamcatchers.  There will be no bad dreams floating around our classroom!

Decorating our dreamcatchers with happy thoughts.

Painting our dreamcatchers.

Threading our dreamcatchers.

The finished products

Special Events

We have been very busy with swimming lessons this week.  We have been going down to the pool every morning.  It has been great fun but a bit chilly.

This week our new friend Paula left to go back to her own school.  We have loved having her in our class and will miss her.  Good luck Paula!

Janu is also leaving this week but we will see him again next year.  He is leaving early so he can go to South Africa for Christmas.

We have had a fantastic week!

Term 4 Week 4

Literacy

This week we have been learning about the long vowel o sound.  There are six different ways to make the long vowel o sound.

o as in own

oa as in boat

ow as in show

o-e as in stove

ough as in dough

oe as in toe

Maths

This week we continued learning about mass. We estimated how much we would weigh in kilograms and then we weighed ourselves on some scales.  We also estimated how much Miss R might way.  We were surprised to discover that the tallest person is not always the heaviest.

We used scales to measure how much something weighs in grams.  There are 1000 grams in a kilogram.  Grams and kilograms are standard measurements which means they don't change wherever you go, just like centimeters and meters.

Measuring with uniform things.

Measuring with standard units- grams.

Integrated

This week Zero the Hero is in Asia.  He went to visit Russia, China, Nepal and Japan.

We did some origami which is the Japanses art of folding paper.  We made chatterboxes, dogs, hats, houses and birds.

We wrote our names in Chinese and used origami to make a beautiful Japanese fan.

Check out our origami and fans below.

 

Special Events

Today is the 11-11-2011.  It is Remembrance Day.  We had one minute of silence to remember all the soldiors that died in the wars.  We pray that no one else has to die in wars.

We had a marvellous week.

Term 4 Week 3

Literacy

We talked about all the good things and the not so good things about Africa. Then we had to give two reasons why it would be good or bad to live in Africa. 

They have nice beaches.

It is hot.

They have heaps of fun.

They have school.

They have food.

I love spices like African people do.

They have lots of friends.

They dance nice.

They have nice food.

You can balance really good.

I like rice.

It's hot.

They don't have clean water.

They have toilets outside instead of undercover.

They don't get much rain.

They have bombs under the ground.

They have spicy food.

They are skinny and they die.

Some people are poor.

They don't speak like us

Maths

This week we have been learning about mass.  Mass is how much an object weighs.  We have been using our bodies as scales to decide what is heavier and what is lighter.  When something is heavy the scales go down and the lighter object goes up.

Integrated

Zero the Hero is flying around Europe at the moment.  He sent us a letter and some photos to tell us all about Europe.  He has been to visit England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Germany and Italy.

Europe has beaches like us.  Madison
Europe has fountains like us.  Paul
Europe has a lot of castles.  Liam
Europe has buildings so close together that they are like hallways.  Cole
In Europe the schools are in the cities.  Shenae
They have food like us.  Deanne.

Europe is a very old continent.  People have been living there for a long time so they have lots of old buildings and statues.  Our activity for Europe was to build a castle because they have lots of castles in Europe.

Special Events

On Tuesday Miss R was away learning some more computer stuff.  Mr M came into teach us for the day.  At the end of the day Mr M gave a pencil to Ruby because she was working hard all day.

Today was a very special day.  It was Grandparents Day.  We invited all our grandparents to come and visit us at school.  We had a special assembly and the choir sang four beautiful songs. Then our grandparents came and visited us in our classroom.  It was great to show off all our work!  Then all the grandparents got to have a lovely morning tea in the Performing Arts building.

What a fabulous week!