Art Work On Display

Hi Everyone,

If you would like to see what we are doing during art sessions, you can visit our Virtual Gallery by clicking on the brush. There is a link at the top of the blog too, right near our translator. Why don't you see what our blog looks like in German or Chinese!

Sue was away today but Helen came to work with us. We liked Helen and she liked us! Helen is coming back again on Thursday and Friday when Sue is away.
Pat is a new volunteer in our room she is going to help us every week on Tuesdays. Thanks for your help today Pat!

Addem and the Ants

Sue's maths groups are going to watch some of these Addem and the Ants maths videos during maths lessons this week. Addem shows us that maths problems are everywhere but the solutions are easier than we might think! You just need some good strategies!

An Email From Trish

Hi Junior Crew

Do you remember me – It’s Trish - I used to teach up in room 2 with Meaghan and the students I taught were Riley, Dodi, Jorden and Patrick.

I have just got a new laptop computer so checked out your site to see what you have been up to! You look like you are having lots of fun and doing lots of interesting things. I am sure Sue and Chrissie have lots of great things planned for you this year.

I have got an interactive whitebeard in my new classroom and will be trying out some of the things from your blog with my students.

Take Care and keep having fun !

From Trish

Science Experiment Disaster- We Are Not Fond Of Rabbits!

Where have our sun flowers gone?
One of our school rabbits escaped from the animal pen and ate all of our beautiful sunflower shoots!

Don't be fooled by the cute face and the floppy ears. This rabbit is deadly!

The rabbit chewed the lovely juicy green leaves right off the top and only left a little bit of the stalk above the ground. When Chrissie dug one up we were able to have a good look at the roots and see where the shoot started to grow out of the seed.

We planted some more seeds today.

Look - The next stage is stalks and leaves.

Hi Everyone,

Look at our mustard seeds now. They have leaves and stalks. They have grown so much in one week! The leaves are purple when they first start to grow and then they turn green as they get bigger. One cup has mustard sprouts with very long stalks, the other cup has very short stalks.

Our mustard sprouts really smell. If you put your nose into the cup and smell them it makes you want to gag. So we don't do that- very often!

Sue says she thinks it's time for us to take the sprouts home!

Marg says there's no way she is going to eat any!

Chrissie is very excited that they are growing so well.

Lorraine is trying to think of ways to solve the bad smell problem

Taylah's Birthday Disappeared!

We celebrated Taylah's birthday at school today because her birthday has disappeared! We were really worried because it was there last year. We had a cake and sang happy birthday but this year it has disappeared right off the calendar! Taylah was born on the 29th of February 2000. It was a leap year. The 29th of February is only on the calendar every four years. If she only celebrated her birthday on the 29th every year it would mean that she is only 2 and won't turn 3 until 2012!
We celebrate Taylah's birthday every year in the last week of February. She can pick which ever day she wants. Now that's special.
Happy 9th Birthday Taylah!

Sprouting, Sticking and Reading!

On Tuesday afternoon one of our science groups planted some mustard seeds on cotton wool in some plastic drinking cups. Chrissie found a bright , warm window sill for them to sit on in the blue room. No one was allowed to touch the seeds but everyone was allowed to look at them. Today at lunch time we noticed that our mustard seeds are beginning to sprout. Can you see what looks small white tails sticking out of some of the seeds? We can't wait to see what happens next

In Sue's art class today we started work on a pasta and match stick collage. We stuck the pasta and match sticks on any way we liked with PVA glue. When we go into town tomorrow Sue is going to buy some gold spray paint. We are going to spray our collages with the paint and let them dry and then we are going to hang them in a group together on the wall. When they are finished we will take some photo's and post them in the Virtual Gallery. Sue has lots of pieces of our art work that she wants to exhibit there over the weekend too.

On Thursday mornings we go to the primary school across the road and borrow books from the library. We saw Deb there. Deb used to work at our school last year and she was really happy to see us. Kimmy works in the library and she helps us to find books.

Last week we borrowed narratives from the downstairs area. This week we borrowed information texts from the upstairs shelves. We like information books the best. The library has thousands of them! We are learning how to choose books that are easy enough for us to read by ourselves but we still like to borrow books to read with an adult too. We love sharing our books with a friend at partner reading time.

What kinds of books do you like to read?

Science Groups- Gardening

Hi Everyone,

Last week the gardening group planted some sunflower seeds. This week we saw the first shoots pop up from under the ground. It is not the right time to plant sunflowers but it will be interesting to see how well they grow. Today we planted some more. We will compare the two groups of plantings over the next few weeks.

This week's gardening group also planted some mustard seeds in cups of damp cotton wool. They put them in a warm sunny place on the window sill. We will look the sprouts every day and hopefully watch them grow!

Assembly Awards

Tim and Jeremy both received reading awards at our Monday morning whole school assembly. They are both using initial and last letter sounds to help them figure out tricky words. Well done boys!

Science Groups

Hi everybody,

We have science groups on Tuesday afternoons. We have 3 different activities to do. This week some kids learnt about magnets. They watched a 'Curious George' video and then used the information to find lots of hidden magnets in the classroom, like the one in the fridge door! They tested for magnets using paper clips. They also had a great time playing around with washers and magnet wands.

Another group did some more experiments about floating and sinking. It was to see that the shape of an object helped it to float, not just how heavy it was or what it was made of. A lump of plasticine sinks but if you shape into into a boat it floats. Cody and Sam are pumping the water from our water experiments into our garden bed, using a hand pump that Gail's class made!

The last group went into the garden to plant some seeds. We are going to take care of them and watch them grow. We found a good place to plant them that had just the right amount of shade. What kind of seeds did we plant? We will tell you next week!

100 is a Big Number!

100 is a really big number! We have been using fingers, toes, paper clips, cotton buds, buttons and all sorts of things to make collections up to 100! The Junior Crew classroom is a buzz with the sounds of counting.

Assembly Award Winners

Taylah, Luke, Lauren and Sam got awards at our whole school assembly this morning. Chrissie is holding up a beautiful painting, that Sam made last week, out of nappy wipes painted with food dye.