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!

SKYPING WITH BENDIGO

Today we skyped Mrs W and her class in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. They are 7 and 8 years old and are in year 2 just like us.

It was their first time skyping and we were excited to be skyping another class in Australia.

View Bendigo VIC in a larger map

We learnt that they don't have a river or beaches. We told them about the view of the bay and islands from our classroom. We have lots of water, especially when it floods but in Bendigo it hardly ever rains. They have been in drought for a long time.

Their school is slightly bigger than ours but they have the same number of children in their class as we do. They go home at 3:30 and we go home at 3 o'clock. It is a very long day for them!

Some of the kids live on farms and some of them live in homes like ours. We discovered that we enjoy the same sports and learning about the same things but there's so much more we'd like to know so we are going to become email buddies.

We can't wait to connect with Mrs W and her class again!

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?

SKYPING WITH FLORIDA

Today was such an exciting day.

As a class, we made our first Skype call.

We skyped Mrs Tolisano and some children from San Jose Episcopal Day School in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

They are on a mission to travel 'around the world with 80 schools', connecting via skype and today it was our turn.

Here is a Google map to show all the schools that the children

from SJE are going to visit. The blue lines on the map show their journey so far.

Many of us had not skyped before, so we were a little nervous as we moved in front of the laptop to speak. We had to remember to use a clear voice and look at the camera, not up at the big screen.

First of all we introduced ourselves. As the children in Florida were from the school Tech Club and not a class, they were many different ages.

Next we asked each other questions to learn a little more about each other.

We discovered that we have a lot in common with the children in Florida.

* they wear a uniform like us

* they learn the same sorts of things at school

* they have beaches near them just like we do

* they play sports like soccer, football, basketball, volleyball, swimming - we

explained to them what netball was

* their weather is very similar to ours - the temperature was nearly 13C there,

which is close to the temperature we have in Winter. Our temperature today of

28C, is similar to what they have in their Summer.

Some things that are different

* we are in different time zones -it was 11:50am Monday here, but it was 8:50pm Sunday in Florida

* they are in Winter when we are in Summer

We think it's amazing that we can talk to others around the world.
It's a great way to learn about each other.
We can't wait to skype again!

HOW CONNECTED WE ARE

Our 100th Day of school was made extra special by the arrival of this box - a box that had us extremely excited because this box contained a gift for us from Mrs Knee.

Trying to guess what the gift might be, got us talking about how connected we are (Jarvis' words!) - how others around the world are part of the conversations and learning that occurs in our room....that often it's because of these connections that learning occurs.


It all started with our post about Pancake Tuesday

Mrs Knee saw our post and left us this comment-






This comment really got us talking. What did 'tap the trees' mean? Johanna thought it meant putting a tap into the trees to get the syrup out.



Then we found a slideshow from last year on Mrs Knee's blog and then we understood.
We were fascinated and thought it so cool that Mrs Knee made maple syrup at her place!
Here was something we had never thought we would learn about this year or any year...but this is what happens when you connect with others- you share and learn amazing things!

At the end of last term, Mrs Knee and the Kinderkids made a VOICETHREAD to teach us more about how maple syrup is made. Mrs Knee invited us to join in the conversation by asking questions and leaving comments.

Mrs Knee told Mrs M that she was going to a conference where she would show other teachers how they could use Voicethreads with their class...and this is where the story gets exciting!


Sitting in Mrs Knee's workshop was Mrs Rablin from BCE, who had travelled all the way to America for this conference.

How amazing that out of all the people there, Mrs Rablin met someone connected to us.

Mrs Knee sent a gift back for us with Mrs Rablin and today, as part of our 100th day celebration, she came to hand it over to us.

We knew when Mrs Rablin was coming because she sent us a message on Twitter-

I'll be leaving work shortly... it's the highlight of my week! Need to find a shiny box for the 'gift' on my way.

First Mrs Rablin told us about how she met Mrs Knee

and then she handed over the gift. Mrs M got a gift too - Mrs Rablin's hat from Texas where the conference was.

And then came the magic moment. Sophia and Emily got to open the box because they had guessed correctly that Mrs Knee's gift to us was...

MAPLE SYRUP!!!
Can you see who else was present to see us open the gift?
MRS KNEE!!
She stayed up really late to be part of this special occasion too - by SKYPE!
To be able to see and talk to Mrs Knee made our day even more 'special'.

We all couldn't wait to have some maple syrup on pikelets.
Of course, we made sure Mrs Rablin had the first taste!

We knew there would be enough for everybody but wondered how much 1 pint was. Out came a measuring jug and we discovered 1 pint was about the same as half a litre.
Mrs Knee's maple syrup tasted NOTHING like the syrup we're used too - it was more like our 'golden syrup'.
We all agreed that it's the BEST maple syrup we've EVER tasted!!

Who would have thought, when we were learning about how Mrs Knee's maple syrup was made, that we would actually get to eat some.

Mrs M says "IT'S A SMALL WORLD" and we're glad we're 'CONNECTED'.
THANKYOU MRS KNEE!!

(2M, while Mrs Rablin was in Mrs Knee's workshop, she left a message on the maple syrup voicethread. Did you hear it? She also left us a comment on our Now We Understand post. I had to keep both of these a secret until today but now that the secret has been revealed, go back and check out the great comments she left. Mrs M)

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!!

A NEW CONNECTION

A week ago, Mrs M received an email from a teacher who teaches at Presbyterian Day School in Memphis, Tennessee.

The teacher, Mrs Jarratt wanted to know if we could help her class of Grade One boys learn about Australia.

Of course we said "YES" and for the last week we have been answering the questions they posted on their wiki.

The exciting news is that next Wednesday morning we are having a 'skype' chat with Mrs Jarratt's class. We imagine they might have more questions to ask us. They have already had a chat with Mrs Cassidy's class and now they want to 'meet' us! We can't wait!

You can see the responses we have made so far to their questions by going here or by going to the PDS wiki on the sidebar. Is there anything else we could add?

Is there some information or facts we have left out?

If there is just leave us a comment and we'll add it to the wiki.

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