WELCOME TO TERM 4!

Welcome to term four. We're excited to be back and we can't believe we only have 9 weeks left of Year 2. There's so much learning still to do!

Right from the start of the day, we were reminded of how connected we are in our learning, that it's not just us and Mrs M. 

We had 'welcome back' tweets from the Kinderkids and Mrs Glynn's class in Houston, Texas, plus a surprise skype call from Mrs Cassidy. 

She showed us all the leaves in her 'fall' backyard. It was cool to see her autumn trees. We don't notice the changing of the seasons as much in our climate. We found if amazing that it was a 27C autumn day in Moose Jaw and only a 25C spring day in Brisbane. Mrs Cassidy was having a heatwave!

Then Mrs M surprised us with some gifts - books from Mrs Cassidy and Mrs Knee, plus lots of books that Mrs M bought for us while she was overseas. 

We can't wait to read them. Some of them are even signed by the author! We already think, just by looking at them, that many of these books we'll want to read over and over!

Because Mrs Knee knew we were planning a marine inquiry this term, she also sent us some marine stuffies (a horseshoe crab, hermit crab and a moon jelly) and some shells and a whelk egg case from the beaches of New Hampshire. 

We can't believe how BIG some of the shells are and we've never seen anything like the whelk egg case before! We wonder if there is anything like this in our Moreton Bay habitat?

We ended our first day back with the biggest surprise. Last term, we were closely following Mrs Knee's daughter Abi, a marine biologist, while she was collecting data about marine life on Lizard Lsland, up on the Great Barrier Reef. 

We skyped with her and after she sent us some photos, we had LOTS!!!!! of questions. We were expecting for her to just email the answers to us, but guess what she did? She created a site on Shutterfly and made an ebook for us. We were amazed to get our questions answered this way and think Abi should write more books. What do you think?

Click here to view this photo book larger

What a way to start the term! We're so lucky to be part of a network of classes and people from around the world.

We are really excited about our learning, about the conversations we will have and the connections we will continue to make.

Come back to see what we're doing and PLEASE leave a comment because your comments help us LEARN!

MRS CASSIDY'S CLASS CALLS FOR HELP

This morning we noticed that Mrs Cassidy's class had put out a tweet asking for help.

They have been taking part in the Monster Project, a project where classes around the world each describe a part of a monster, then all of those classes 'make' the monster based on all of the descriptions.

We find it fascinating that the monsters that are finished all look SO different even though they have been created from the same descriptions.

Here's the really cool monster that Mrs Cassidy's class made.

They now need help in naming their monster...in coming up with the perfect name to describe it.

The hard part is coming up with a name based on ALL of the parts of the monster.

What do you think it should be called?

It's time to put on our creative thinking caps.

When you think you have the perfect name, leave your suggestion on Mrs. Cassidy's blog. Share your bright idea with us too, in a comment.

HELLO MOOSE JAW!

Yesterday, we finally got to skype Mrs Cassidy and her Grade 1's in Moose Jaw, Canada.

Mrs Cassidy's class had a literacy night at their school, so they took the opportunity to talk with us - and we talked for ONE HOUR!

It was SOOO exciting to meet our blogging buddies and talk to them in 'real' time. It was 10 am Wednesday here but over in Moose Jaw it was 6 pm, Tuesday evening.

We started our skype call with a big HELLO and then we gave each other a tour of our classrooms. We noticed that there were tennisballs on the legs of the chairs in Mrs Cassidy's room. They told us they helped keep the room quieter. We thought they looked cool! Mrs Cassidy recorded this part of the call. You can view the video on Mrs Cassidy's blog.

Then we spent the rest of our chat asking each other questions. Some of the things we talked about were - what we learn at school, the sports we like, the games we play, what our school looks like, the foods we eat, our pets. We discovered that even though we are thousands of kilometres apart, we have a LOT in common.

Skyping with Moose Jaw on PhotoPeach

One of the questions we had for Mrs Cassidy's class was - why is your city called Moose Jaw? We wondered if it was because, long ago, there were lots of moose wandering around.

Mrs Cassidy told us the native Indians had a name for the area that meant 'a warm place by the river'. To the white settlers, this name sounded like Moose Jaw, so that became the name. Her class also showed us a picture of Mac the Moose, a REALLY big statue of a moose in their town.

Skyping with Mrs Cassidy and her class was lots of fun. We loved talking to them and know we are lucky to have such SPECIAL friends on the other side of the world.

(2M, what did you enjoy most about skyping Mrs Cassidy's class? Share with us in a comment. Mrs M)

GETTING READY TO SKYPE

Tomorrow we are skyping Mrs Cassidy's Grade 1 class in Moose Jaw, Canada. 

We love skype. It's a great way to meet and chat to others when you can't talk to them face to face.

To get ready for out skype chat, each of us wrote two lists - a list of the questions we would like to ask Mrs Cassidy's class and a list of statements about us 

that we would like to share.

We found that we had LOTS of questions.

What question are YOU going to ask?

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.

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 MRS CASSIDY

Guess what we did today?
We spoke to Mrs Cassidy in Canada!

Last week we had problems with Skype so we were really excited when Mrs M told us she had fixed the problem and we could talk to Mrs Cassidy.

We got to see her and we got to hear her too.
She used the webcam to show us some snow outside the window. Some of us asked her about our buddies. We couldn't talk to them because it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon and they had gone home

It was fun talking to Mrs Cassidy. She was very nice too.
We can't wait to talk to her again.

by Tierney