Pet Day

Yesterday was pet day. I took Lilly's puppies to school. This is a group photo of all the puppies.
This is Jemma holding one of them. Don't you think that that puppy loves her.
Look at this one. It is asleep on Shaun. There are two puppies that are always asleep at the back of their cage.
Skye would love to take this little puppy home- can't you tell!
Then a man came and his dog rounded up ducks. I thought that that was amazing. How it did not eat them because I know that Mikey and Lilly would eat them.
This is Rachel and her pet lamb. I don't know it's name but it was so cute.

Wow look at Hugo's dog Moko. He is huge.
After that we did some pet day activities. We made play dough animals and drew animals using Kid Pix. I wonder who made this dog and snail. It is so cool.
Look at Alex and her bunny. I wonder if the bunny is Alex's favourite animal.

Look at this movie. It is of the lambs feeding. Look at the tail wagging.

The Observatory Visit

We went on an Observatory Visit last week on Thursday related to our project on Space this term. This is George looking at the Moon book. He is looking at the part of the Moon that you could see in the telescope that night.
This is one of the telescopes that the owner of the observatory ( Mr Knowles) has. This particular telescope happened to be looking at the Moon. Up the top is a picture of the telescope. If you looked through that telescope you would have seen a quarter of the Moon. That quarter of the Moon was on the right, top side.
This is a photo of Mr Knowles. He came to our school and talked to us about space. The observatory was round and small. There were two telescopes there one looking at the Moon and one looking at Jupiter. He turned a telescope around so that we could look at two stars circling one another. Most of us enjoyed the experience and thank you, Mr Knowles for letting us use your telescopes and teaching us about space.

My Last Week in Moturoa

Wow talk about time flying! I have had the pleasure of sharing the learning experiences with Moturoa for the last month and what an action packed four weeks that has been. Allanah must be exhausted by the end of each term.
With all the studying, assignments, and exams that have had to be done over the last year, spending time in the classroom has reminded me of the real reason why I have chosen to train as a teacher - the children. What a great bunch Moturoa are. I will surely smile when I remember some of the things that we have done together, although I do not think that my attempts at playing the recorder will make me smile, laugh perhaps.

Allanah has put so much time into my training and shown so much patience, that saying 'THANKS HEAPS' can not start to cover it. Thankfully today is only Wednesday and tomorrow is Pet Day, so there is still time to fit more learning into what has already been a fantastic experience. Although I would really love to bring my dog JJ to Pet Day, I think that being at school all day would not be very fair for her. So I have posted a couple of photos to share with you instead.

This is JJ when she was just a puppy. So cute and look how tiny she was. Her favourite things are: food, sleeping, food, playing fetch, food, swimming, food, going for a walk and did I mention FOOD. Her favourite person is me of course, oh and anyone that will feed her!

This is JJ now. She is just over five and a half years old. Her coat is so soft and cuddly. She is a very affectionate dog and loves to give you hugs. She has an extremely annoying habit of stealing your shoe and taking it into her kennel to sleep with. She only takes one of each shoe, not a pair, a very strange habit indeed.

Sylvia

Book Your 2012 Holiday

It will cost $5 million for a three-night stay at the the Galactic Suite Space Resort.

A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $5 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.

What do you think of that idea?

Shelly Park School

Room 11 at Shelly Park School in Howick, near Auckland are following our blog. Last term they were learning about historical Howick in the same way we were learning about old Nelson. This term they are studying Space like we are. Here is their latest posting. You can say what you think through our comments or click on their link and reply to their blog directly. What do you think of their question?

This is a video of the Ares 1-X Rocket finally being launched on Thursday 29th October 2009. NASA is trying to return astronauts to the moon instead of the space shuttle programme. The test launch did not have astronauts inside it this time but eventually it will. During the past 3 years it has cost $620 million and it was all over in 2 minutes. Do you think sending astronauts to the moon is a good idea?

Calendar Art

This week we have been doing our calenders about space. First we painted the piece of paper black, then we splattered our page with white paint. Then we started to draw our planets. We cut them out and glued them on. This is what they look like. I think that they look awesome.

Spelling City

Lots of teachers use Spelling City and I have only just the hang of how to use it myself as I thought you HAD to pay for it but you don't. It is brilliant.
To find the lists I have made for you- click on Find A List and search for Allanah.
You will find the Spell-Write Lists, Commonly Mispelt Words and a couple of Ashley Spelling Lists.

By clicking on the list that fits with the list that you are learning you can learn to spell the words, play games and even test yourself if your parents are too busy to test you.

Each week you can also write in your own individual spelling words and have a set spelling words and games made just for you.

You can also make up your own spelling list by adding your own words by clicking here. Or looking along the side bar on the right.

Clever eh! Cool Bananas!

Space with Mr Knowles

This is Mr Knowles. He came to Appleby School to teach us about Space.
He talked to us about Earth. This is part of his solar system. In this photo he is showing us about the seasons and how they work around the world.
This is Mr Knowles' whole solar system. He has used a light bulb as the sun. Bella and I thought the solar system was creative and an amazing way to show children how the solar system works.
This is one of the planets. It is called Saturn. He had little models below the big solar system and this was one of them.

What's the Moon Doing?

Last night some of us were able to go to a real observatory and we will post about that later but in the meantime here is something like we saw but way up closer still.
Here is what the moon will look like for the month of November. For our homework this week we have to share some of our learning at school with our parents. You may like to share your thoughts on why the moon looks a little bit different every night like on this moon phase calendar.

Remember to add your new learning to our Space Learning Wiki.

Here is another great site where you can find out what the moon will look like on any day. What about you have a look and see what the moon will look like on your birthday.

Learning Our Mihi

Today we tried something new. Remember earlier in the year when George taught the children at Melville Intermediate how to make a pivot animation well today Room 8 at Melville Intermediate taught us how to say our mihi. The children at Melville had never used video Skype before and they had a bit of trouble connecting at first but their teacher, Myles W, got the audio going which got us started.

I edited the call down but left the beginning test runs in there because they were quite fun. A big thank you to Arahia, Janice, Emily and Georgia.



Here is how it looked from Melville Intermediate.

Recorder

We have been learning the recorder since the beginning of term. At the beginning it was not great but we have come together really well and now are ready to share our first piece. Come to our next assembly to hear our whole concert. Mr A came into the class today and said that we were good.

Click here or on the graphic to hear us.

Room Eight at Melville Intermediate

Room Eight at Melville Intermediate in Hamilton are going to help us learn our mihi. We spent some time at the beginning of the year doing that but Melville students going to help us with our pronunciation and new vocabulary. They are going to help us by Skyping with us. They are experts.
Melville Intermediate students have a class pet as well. Mini-Dylan was introduced to him at the ULearn Conference in the holidays.

Here is my mihi...

Tēnā Koe

Ko King tōku ingoa whānau.

Ko Jack tōku matua.

Ko Margaret tōku whāea.

Ko Myles tōku hoa.

Ko Allanah tōku ingoa.

Nō Wakatu ahau.

Kei te ako au i Te Reo Māori.

He mihi nui ki a koe.

Have I got it right?

Blog Award- Not

Sorry folks but after all our efforts we did not win the New Zealand Class Blog Awards. I feel gutted as we love our blog as it is a central part of our on-line learning and great way to link class to family and to communicate with others. Through it I feel that I am not teaching alone and that others do care for what we do in our classroom.

Well done Clem from Outram School and Stephen from Hokowhitu.

To cheer ourselves up I will shout the class to a 37,000+ views party on Friday week. That is also the day that Sylvia leaves us to continue her journey to become a teacher, so it will be well timed.

Allanah K

Tuatara

For reading we are learning to use the index to find out information. My book was about Tuatara. One of the questions was to show how the tuatara moves. Allanah had a great idea to to take a series of photos of two pictures from the book and make them play together really fast so it would look like the tuatara was actually moving. I think it turned out fabulous.