Mystery box reflection

On our return back from drama, we found some boxes in our classroom. We didnt know what they were and thought they might be chocolates. There was a code on the box like black and white sketches. We read the code on Mrs Marrinens phone and told us to look on the blog for the next clue. We looked on the blog and there was a Voki and it told us to look in the boxes. We worked in groups and we looked in the boxes to see what was inside them. INside there were lots of different things like sand, seaweed. They all looked like they had come from a beach. We thought we might be learning about the beach this term.

YOUR MISSION

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MRS M?

Mrs. M left Brisbane on Monday 22nd of June. Her first stop was in Auckland, New Zealand. Today she will be visiting some of the local schools to observe their work and learning. While she is away, our teacher will be Mrs R who is teaching us to become real "artists".


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We hope she has a great time and brings back some wonderful ideas for the classroom.

PS: The 2m gems miss her already!

MONEY FROM AROUND THE WORLD

We have been learning about money from different countries. Holly brougt in a container filled with coins from around the world. Her Dad has been collecting them from all his travels. Some of the coins were very different to what we use in Australia. The coins from the Phillipines were made from copper and were very tiny in size. Some of the coins had a large value number on them, like 1000. Mrs M explained that the coin wasn't worth $1000, that people in other countries counted their money in different ways.

SJV CELEBRATES UNDER 8's WEEK

Today we participated in Under 8's week at SJV. Mrs M, one of our Prep teachers helped organise all the activities for the morning. All classes from Prep to Year 2 joined in the fun games and activities. Each group had children from Prep, Year 1 and Year 2.

Some parents helped the teachers run the activities, while other parents helped a group work their way around the rotational activities. We had 10 minutes at each activity. There were painting activities, craft activities, dress-ups, outside play activities, a fishing game and lots more. We were lucky to have the fire brigade and police who let us look in their fire truck and police vehicle.

Each child received a large paper bag to collect all their craft in, which they could take home with them. At 11am when all the activities had finished, we participated in the National Simultaneous Storytelling of "Pete the Sheep". We have made a picture trail to show you how much fun we all had together at Under 8's Day.

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!

With Love...

We were very busy this week creating Mother's Day wordles for our Mums.

We thought we'd include the wordles in a slideshow for all Mums to enjoy.

Happy Mother's Day! 

With Love...on Mother's Day on PhotoPeach

OUR FIRST WORDLE

Today we learnt about a cool tool called a WORDLE. 

A WORDLE is a word cloud.

To make a WORDLE, you add in some text. The words that are used the most are the biggest words in the word cloud.

You can choose what type of font, layout and colour you want.

Here is a WORDLE we created about wordles.

WORDLES are fun to make and easy to make too.

In fact, WORDLES are cool!

We hope you have fun making wordles too.

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)

OUR FIRST 'HOW TO' VIDEO

Last week, on Earth Day we created pictures in KidPix to show how we could care for the Earth. 

We wanted to be able to make a slideshow of our images to put on our blog.

In the past, when we have worked in KidPix, we have saved our pictures in KidPix.

To make a slideshow, we needed to know how to export our picture out of KidPix and save it as a jpeg.

Mrs M only showed one of us what to do. They then helped another, who helped another and before too long, many of us were not only 'export' experts but 'expert mentors' too.

Do you want to know how to export from KidPix?

Here is a video showing you how, made today by Georgia T, Connor and Jack D using the Flip camera.

We're really proud of our first video and can't wait to make more.

What do you think?