What great fun we had today making our Rainbow Wraps! Thanks so much to Phil and Woolworths who organised it all for us, donated everything we needed and came to run it for us. Many thanks too to the parent helpers 🙂
Thanks guys, we learnt a lot about preparing food safely, healthy eating and teamwork!

Zimmer Twins is a great site for making simple animated video stories. you can create your own story or use one of the ‘cliff hanger’ starters. You simply drag and drop to select characters, settings, actions and emotions. You can also type into the conversation bubbles.

For great online logic puzzles visit the following website: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
It will keep you thinking for hours if you let it!

Thanks to ‘Free Technology for Teachers’ for these great sites.

I went to a really good training session today on Neuroscience – which is basically the study of how the body, mind and behaviour interact. I’m sure you’ve all seen the Brain Training ads on TV. Did you know that you don’t have to spend a fortune to do this?
Check out the new page called “Train your Brain” for heaps of activities that will help you and your children 🙂
I’ve also added a page enititled “Holidays” with more online activities for your children – not only will they help your child educationally, (but they probably won’t realise the educational aspect, they’ll just think they’re fun), and you will have something at the ready in case your children start complaining that they don’t know what to do ‘cos they’re bored!!
Hope you find these useful 🙂

Wow! You guys are fantastic! We have made huge progress on the amphitheatre, with the old, enormous retaining bricks removed during the week. We cleaned the steps too. New retaining sleepers are in place, the steps have been painted and many plants have been planted. It already looks great!

We still have many more plants to put in. Unfortunately the ground is rock hard, so its a job for adults. If you have time to spare this week and are able to put a few in, that would be fantastic. (You’ll need a crow bar or similar, but the holes don’t need to be very large.) On Tuesday we are asking that all children wear closed shoes and bring a bucket so that we can lay the irrigation system and mulch the whole area.

By the end of the week we hope to have completed this project and be getting ready for camp 🙂

This term is flying by!!!

Also, Bernie is looking for parent volunteers to run a coordination program called Move to Learn for half an hour each morning. Please see me or Bernie if you are able to help on any morning.

Thanks again for all of your help 🙂

Well done to all of the children who have visited the blog and emailed me (or written up) their answers to the brain teasers. I’ll be updating the question later tonight 🙂
This has been a busy week.
On Tuesday we wrote to an Australian Olympic athlete. Some of the letters were very good, and clearly showed how interested the children are in their chosen sport. We are hoping to get at least a few replies like we have in previous years.
We also began our unit of Inquiry into Markets. Thank you to all of the people who have offered to help on our trip to the market and with the cooking. We have been amazed at the level of response for this.
In maths we have been practicing addition of tens and units, some people have been exchanging and some have even been working with thousands and hundreds too.
Today we made some Japanese carp kites in art and learnt many different ways to join popsticks and straws in technology. Hopefully we’ll build up quite a repertoire so that we’ll be less likely to rely on the warm glue guns!
Our class has also been learning how to participate in uninterrupted, silent, sustained reading, (USSR). We mastered it in the first few minutes, and already, after 2 days, our record for remaining totally silent while reading is over 5 minutes! We can be nearly silent for about twenty minutes! The main objectives of the USSR are:

to improve concentration span
to provide an adult model of reading
to provide a positive book experience
exposure to a wide range of literary genres
to help form good reading habits for extensive reading
to increase desire to read on their own during their free time
to develop a life-long love of reading

As you know Bev and I went to a course on this on Monday. It was very interesting and we are already implementing some of the exercises with the children. (There are 26 in all.) We do 1 set 3 times a day – at the beginning, after recess and after lunch, as well as others throughout the day to prepare for certain lessons. I am already noticing a more settled class and hope to see other benefits in the future.

Here are the exercises that we do 3 times a day.

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