What a Wonderful Year!

We ended the year with a whole lot of wonderful activities. We visited the zoo, made beautiful birds, we had an amazing open night when our parents came to look at our hard work, we played "which beak is best"  and we made our own beak books. We wrote heart-breakingly beautiful poppy poems for Remembrance day. We had a visit from a dog and a visit from a little bird called a 'greenfinch. We learnt about snow in summer, planted sunflowers AND a magic crystal garden. With Moya we made crocodiles and marvellous mosiacs. We watched an Italian puppet play and we presented posters on our favourite birds. We collected data on Beatles songs, we ate (breakfast cereal) crocodiles and we cooked roast potato chips and garden salad for our class party to celebrate the end of a fabulous year!

 

Sad to say, this is also the end of the blog for the moment. As everyone in this internet savvy day and age is aware, there's no point writing a blog if you can't keep it up regularly and unfortunately technological issues and personal demands mean that the blog won't be continuing next year. It's been lovely and who knows, maybe we'll be back someday...

Before we go, here are a whole lot of photos of our end of year fun. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Ciao Bella!

Even Group's Extreme Multiplication

In term four, the even group completed a marvellous unit on multiplication. We've worked very hard and learnt alot about what multiplication means and how it works. We did lots of fun, hands on activities and we learnt that multiplications can mean times, repeated addition and of course "groups of". We discovered that we already knew lots about multiplication - doubles, sharing evenly and skip counting are actually also multiplying!

We began by talking about arrays... this are when a number is laid out in equal columns and rows, it's a good way to see how many "groups of" you have. We looked at different ways of making groups of for the same number and how to write number sentences using the x symbol. We did number investigations, learnt about square numbers and drew factor trees for different numbers. Finally, we made our own times tables charts for our portfolios and times tables cover up to play at home. It was a wonderful, multiplicative, learning adventure!

Clarrie – I learnt that maths is sometimes fun.

Mariana – I discovered that 6 times 3 equals 18 and 3 times 6 is 18 as well.

Riley – I learnt that 4 +4+4+4+4+4 = 24 is also 6 times 4

Sean – 6 multiplied by 4 equals 24

Max - I had fun!

Audrey – I learnt all about 24. I found out that 24 is a cool number because it has lots of different ways of making itself.

Aimee – I learnt that four rows and 6 columns are 24.        

Sophia - I was looking at 18. I discovered that I knew more about it than I thought I did.

Lewis - One row of twenty four equals 24.  

Sarah - We weren't just learning about Multiplication. Multiplication is repeated addition. 

Dan P - I looked at 24. I found out that two rows of 12 equals 24.

     

More Beautiful Birds' Nests

Moya's grade were the last class to visit during science rotations to make gorgeous nests. They worked beautifully, collecting materials for their nests, putting their nests together and writing wonderful specimen tags. On their tags they wrote.... the name of the bird species who the nest belonged to, where the nest was found, the collector's name, and the date it was collected.

Today in 1/2 L we were with Lauren. We made bird nests and I had lots of fun. Sophia

My bird was called the Amekian Falcon. It has purple feathers and it lives in a very fluffy nest in the tropics. Riley

My bird was called the Giraffe Flamingo, it has a Flamingo beak and body but a giraffe head. Sarah

My nest looked camouflaged, I used sticks. Damon

My bird’s name is the hot breath bird. I had lots of fun because I liked picking up things from outside. Vasco

My bird lives near waterfalls and it’s called a water wing. Lydia 

My nest is shiny, my bird is called crazy bird and the nest is a weird shape. Max

I had lots of fun designing my bird nest and thinking about my bird’s name. My bird is called the fashion fairy bird, it’s very colourful and its nest looks sort of like a cradle. Mariana

I had fun designing my nest. I used pieces of grass and plants. Chloe

My bird was called the yellow dragon and I had fun making my nest. Imogen

Spring blossoms and Sad Goodbyes

We made Mexican paper flowers to decorate our seasons tree. Wally the winter woolly fairy gave us the instructions in a letter. It's a while since the start of spring but the weather's only just started warming up. It was easier than we thought it would be but they looked goregous. Then we had a farewell party for Vivian who is going back to Vietnam, which is sad. It was a lovely party though. Gee we'll miss her!

 

Bird Nests

Our 1/2 integrated topic this term is animals with backbones. Each class is learning about a different group of animals. Betty’s class are the fish experts (ichthyologists), Jared’s class are looking at amphibians (herpetologists), Mr Griffin’s grade are learning all about mammals (mammologists), Moya’s class are the reptile people (also herpetologists) and we here in 1/2 K are the ornithologists (that’s bird experts). On Fridays, after morning tea we do science for 2 hours!! Every week. This week we stayed in our own classes, next week we visit a different teacher.

So this week we stayed with Lauren and made bird nests. First of all we looked at beautiful bird nest photos (http://twistedsifter.com/2011/05/25-photos-of-birds-nests-sharon-beals/). They were cool! Then we went outside and collected some stuff (plants, sticks, leaves, straw and other bits and bobs). After that we came back to class and used a paper plate and started sticking, cutting and gluing. Every now and then, we did a sticky test to check that it wouldn’t fall off our plate. Some of us did it and found that everything fell off but we got there in the end.

We made our classroom into an amazing mess! A garbage bin, a pig sty, our bedrooms, a dog’s dinner, a war zone and a bomb site. We had to clean and clean and clean and clean. We had to be cleaners. 

Here are some words to describe our nests: wonderful, sensational, beautiful, fantastic, tangled, feathery, fabulous, soft, garden-filled, twiggy and sticky (in every sense of the word).