AN ACTIVE DAY 70

Last Tuesday was a 'ZERO the HERO' day.
It was DAY 70!
As it was a slightly chilly day, ZERO had a plan to help us get warm and practise our counting at the same time!











We started the day by running up and down the netball court.
How many laps?... 10 of course!
Next was a circuit on the fort - up the stairs and down the slide 10 times.
We were up to 20 - 50 to go!

After lunch was our third activity, 10 star jumps... that made 30!...

followed by hopping - 10 hops on one foot... 40... then 10 on the other... we had reached 50 - 20 to go!

After Snack we did 10 big jumps like crickets... we were up to 60!...

and the last 10 - skipping.

WE HAD REACHED 70!

What a day! We enjoyed ACTIVELY counting to 70... and we were much warmer by the end of it too!

We wonder what ZERO has in store for us next?

(2M - there aren't too many more opportunities for ZERO to help you with your counting.

Do you know how many ZERO the HERO days we have left before we celebrate DAY 100?
What are your ideas for what ZERO might have you do next?

Share them with us in a comment... and while you're waiting for ZERO's next visit, there's a game you can play to help you practise adding on 10 - just scroll back up and click on the picture of ZERO. Mrs M)

WHY NO POSTS?

We've been quiet over the last week and it's not due to us not having anything to share.

We have been experiencing problems on our network for most of this term - problems that have been slowing down our 'conversation' to the point where, over the last week, our ability to view websites, to comment, post or access any of our files was severely restricted.

It's been a very frustrating time for myself and the children and the situation has not been helped by my computer at home also being out of action!

Our wonderful techie is working tirelessly to find the cause of our problems.

In the meantime, now that my home computer has a new hard drive, I can start uploading the posts the children have drafted.

They have missed sharing about their learning and can't wait for the 'conversation' to begin again.

Mrs M

AND HERE'S THE LINK...

Peter Gooch's interview with us is now online.


2011 Update:
Unfortunately, due to an upgrade, this interview is no longer hosted on the ABC Brisbane 612 website but you can now listen to the interview right here!





Thank you to Peter Gooch and ABC 612 for providing us with the interview audio.


Here are some links to sites and posts the children mentioned during the interview.

• GeoGreeting
• Mrs M Getting Interviewed
• Mother's Day

ANOTHER INTERVIEW FOR MRS M

Today Mrs M was interviewed by Peter Gooch from ABC Radio.

He had read the article about us in
'Education Technology Solutions' and wanted to hear more about how we 'blog to learn and learn to blog'.

Johanna, Callum, Patrick and Ben M were also interviewed. They showed Mr Gooch their blogs and although nervous, told him about how we use our blogs to show our learning and connect with others. Callum showed a post that he had already put up about the interview.

The interview will be on the ABC Radio website by the end of next week.
Keep watching our blog for a direct link.

A CLOSER LOOK

2M, want to know more about our new class member?

Just click on the praying mantid.

A NEW CLASS MEMBER

Sophia was so inspired by her trip to the museum yesterday, that she went on a 'backyard safari' when she got home and look what she found...



some grasshoppers...

and look what was on the bottom of the bug viewer - FRASS!!

Sophia even found a skin! - evidence that one of the grasshoppers has just moulted.

But the last of her 'finds' we have really fallen in love with ... and it doesn't want to leave!

So meet the newest member of 2M.

MUSEUM ADVENTURES

Yesterday we went on an excursion to the museum.
Our day was filled with 'hands-on' insect workshops and exploring all the exhibits.

There was a lot of exploring, observing, examining, touching, classifying, drawing and discussing - and almost some sleeping on the train trip back to school!

There's so much to tell - from acting out the stages of metamorphosis, handling stick insects and sorting their frass (insect poo) from their eggs to examining specimens through powerful microcopes - that we can't do it all in one post.

So for now, here's a movie to 'show' you some of the sights and experiences of our day.
Watch out for future posts that will explain in more detail what we saw, did and learnt.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

PHEASANT UPDATE

2M - the pheasants in Mrs Cassidy's classroom have hatched!
You can read all about this exciting event and view a movie of some of the hatchlings here!

How do the baby pheasants compare to the baby kookaburras we saw on the movie we sent Mrs Cassidy's class? Are there similarities? differences?

Tell me about your observations in a comment.

LEARNING ABOUT PHEASANTS

Mrs Cassidy's class have pheasant eggs in their classroom.
They are waiting for them to hatch.
We didn't know what pheasants looked like, so Mrs Cassidy sent us the link to this video.


We hope we get to see their pheasant chicks on their blog!

(2M - you can learn more about pheasants by going here.)

THE DAY HAS ARRIVED - HELLO MOOSE JAW!!

We had a WONDERFUL start to the day today.
An event that we have been eagerly waiting for, finally took place.

This morning we skyped Mrs Cassidy and her Grade Ones in Moose Jaw!

Even though some of us were a little shy, it was SOOO exciting to meet our blogging buddies and talk to them in 'real' time. It was just after 9:30 am here but over in Moose Jaw it was just after 5:30pm, Wednesday afternoon.


We took our turn in front of the mic and webcam and talked to each other about what we like to do, what our schools look like, our favourite toys, TV shows and sports we play.
For some of us, our buddy wasn't there so we chatted to Mrs Cassidy.





Some of the things we learnt were:
* they don't wear a uniform (we do)
* our schools are similar in size although they
go up to Year 8
* we enjoy the same TV shows and movies
* we play with similar toys - like Barbies, PSP
and XBox
* we love reading stories
*except for 'before school', they have 3 recesses ( we have 2)
* some choose to go home for lunch and even walk by themselves ( we eat lunch at
school and are not allowed to leave by ourselves)
* they (girls and boys) play hockey and soccer -in fact, some of our buddies left
the chat early because they were going to soccer
* they call a 'footpath' a 'sidewalk'; we say we're going to 'training', they say
'practice'
* they have a gym ( we have our sport outside on the oval)
* they have squirrels and gophers but not as many types of insects as us because
it's too cold

We were so busy chatting, that we were surprised when our lunch bell rang and we realised that we had been chatting for nearly 1½ hours!

Skyping with Mrs Cassidy and our buddies was lots of fun. We loved seeing them and know how lucky we are to have such SPECIAL friends on the other side of the world.

(2M, what did you enjoy most about skyping today? What did you learn about your buddy? Share with us in a comment. Mrs M)

SKYPING WITH MEMPHIS

We had a REALLY early start to our day today because this morning we skyped Mrs Jarratt and her Grade One boys in Memphis, Tennessee.


We had to be at school for an 8 o'clock chat. In Memphis it was 5 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. We were VERY excited and just a little nervous too because this was our first skype chat with another class!

Mrs Jarratt's class had some more questions for us about Australia. We tried our best to tell them about crocodiles, dingoes, sugar gliders and Australian Rules Football. We even told them about our adopted elder, Aunty Delmae.
Of course, we had plenty of questions for them.
We learnt about how they stay safe during a tornado and that they call a stick insect a 'walking stick'!

We realised though, that we have a lot in common with the boys in Memphis.

• We learn about the same sorts of things at school, like Maths, Reading, Writing, Science ( except that the boys learn Spanish too)
• We travel to and from school in cars
• We watch the same TV - eg Cartoon Network
• Our homes are similar
• We eat the same sorts of food
• We love to play sports - they play soccer too!
• We wear a uniform - the boys have to wear a collared shirt and certain types of pants.

We really enjoyed meeting Mrs Jarratt and the boys. Even though we talked to them for nearly 45 minutes, we still have more questions and we've already posted them onto their wiki. We hope we can continue having a 'conversation' with them.

We just LOVE skyping!!
And to our parents who brought us to school early so we could chat - THANKYOU!!

IT'S DAY 60 ALREADY!

It's hard to believe that it's 10 days since Zero the Hero's last visit and that it's now DAY 60!

We are working with big numbers now, so Zero gave us 'numeral expanders' to help us understand 'place value'.

We rolled special 'tens' and 'ones' dice
and used blocks or paddlepop stickes to represent what we had rolled.

Then we checked how many bundles of ten and loose ones we had and recorded it on our numeral expander.

We could then fold the numeral expander in to see the 2 digit number we had made.

With a numeral expander, we can easily check the value of each digit.

Here's Jarvis explaining the number 53.

Want to play some on-line place value games?

Try RAINFOREST MATHS, Level B, Place Value and SHARK POOL

'AI' CHALLENGE

Today we were investigating words containing 'ai' because one of our word wall words this week is 'explain'. We have explored 'ai' words before, so to make it more interesting, Mrs M challenged us to think of COMPOUND WORDS that contain 'ai'.

Patrick started us off with the following words -

railroad

rainforest
rainbow

chainsaw

paintbrush

raincoat

sailboat

CAN YOU ADD TO OUR LIST?

THERE MUST BE MORE!

WALK SAFELY TO SCHOOL DAY

Last Friday we had WALK SAFELY TO SCHOOL DAY.

This day is held each year to encourage us to become more active and healthy and to improve our road safety skills.

Most of the children at our school come to school every day by car but on Friday many of us left the car at home or drove part of the way, then walked to school. We had a choice of six different places to walk from like the pool, the War Memorial or the train station. Those who walked from the pool had a BIG walk up the hill!

We walked with our parents, teachers and our Adopt a Cop, Sgt Joe. When we arrived at school we had a healthy breakfast of fruit, cheese, bread rolls and milk.

It was a great way to start the day. We think we should do it more often.

How did YOU get to school today?

Click Here to take survey

OUR BBC LOGO

After many views of the fabulous designs on offer for our BUGS and BOULDERS CLUB logo, we finally cast our vote for the logo we'd most like to represent our laboratory.
We even had some of our parents and Lindsay, a student at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada vote for their favourite logo. The results were close but the favoured logo is.....

logo number 4 - designed by Emily.

This is how it looks on our lab pass.Now we are all set to access the lab. We can't wait!