Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Mini-Dylan's Tour of the South Island

Today Mini-Dylan and I started a road trip down to Dunedin. I will let you follow our journey as we go and show you some New Zealand countryside along the way. We got as far as Hanmer Springs.

First stop was this place. Bonus point and a chocolate fish if you are the first person to comment and tell me the name of the place and how it got to be there.

The whole trip was very pretty and Mini-Dylan wanted his photo taken along the way.
We were tired when we got to Hanmer so had a lovely soak in the hot pools.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Solar System

Next term we are going to be looking at our solar system and learning about astronomy. Here is an activity to get you started. Do you know the order of the planets?
What do you know about astronomy. What would you like to know more about?



Movie credit IYA2009 Did you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Into the Book

Happy holidays! I wish school was still on to share Into The Book with you all. It is a great site with movies, lessons and games to support learning to read and making connections when you do. We will have a more in depth look at it when school goes back.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Life Education Trust

This is Helen and Harold. They came to our school to teach us about body parts. For example we learned about kidneys, bladder, lungs, heart, brain, muscles, intestines and blood vessels.
Fletcher was chosen at the end to have a little one-to-one chat with Harold.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Yesterday Tomorrow DVD Trailer



We now have one copy of the production DVD. Here is the movie trailer for it. It is a great video and a great production. If you would like a copy you can buy one from Appleby School.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Life Education Trust

Today Helen and Harold came to visit from the Life Education Trust. Our particular learning focus is to learn more about our body and the way parts of our body work.

Today we learnt a little about our digestive system. This animation shows you how different foods are dealt to as they pass through our digestive systems. Click on the various foods and follow their path until the end!!!!!

It even deals with baked beans which will keep Liam interested!!!

Sylvia in Moturoa


This is Sylvia who is a student teacher and she is going to be in our class for four weeks. Before Mr L came to Appleby school he was working at the same school as Sylvia so they know each other.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Aim High Awards

This is the Aim High Awards from the news paper, The Nelson Mail. Price's Pharmacy got together to make an Aim High Award. It is to encourage people to aim high and be the best that they can be at doing something. Some of the people got awards for ambulance driving, music and other things. I was one of the winners of the award. I got $200 for me to get more music lessons and Appleby School got $200 as well. We are going to use that money to buy more musical instruments.
This is me playing Wonderwall on the guitar at the ceremony. I even got recorded on YouTube. You can watch it by clicking here. Everyone is very proud of me and I am so glad it is over but I sort of want to do it again.

Monday, September 21, 2009

The Shed!

Angus and Monty are officially opening the Appleby School Shed. So now we can use it all the time.
This is Holly standing by the mural. She has just pulled down the fabric and wow!
This is Sheryl doing her speech that she doesn't like doing but I liked it.
We are all sitting down waiting not so patiently for the interesting assembly to start.

Week Ten Terrific Typists

Here is a new typing game for the newbies. Keyboard Climber helps you identify the individual keys quickly.

This week's terrific typists are Emily, Maisie and Rachel.

Grace's Party!!

This is a picture of us in Grace's party uniform. Her mother made them. She actually bought the white jerseys and embroidered our names on the back of them. They look wicked. We went rollerblading at Tahunanui- next to the go-karts. Then we went to the park. We had some delicious cake at the beach. Some people had two pieces. YUM! Athough some of us had trouble at first at rollerblading we all had fun. That was a fun day. Thank you, Grace.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Kevin's Yesterday

Here some manuscript music that you use to play the piano.

Shaun's Rarotongan Holiday

This is me. I am standing on an anti-aircraft gun. It is really cool.
This is Mini-Dylan at the island night at the Rarotongan. I saw George there.
This a plant called the taro. It tastes like dry bread.
This outside my island home when it was windy.
This is me climbing a coconut tree.

When I got to Rarotonga I screamed in my head because I had never been overseas before and when we got to the holiday home the first thing we did was we went for a swim at our home. I ran into the water and dived to see the fish. They were so cool.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Castle Quest

The music on Castle Quest might eventually drive you outside into the sunshine but at least you will be good at your times tables when you go. Give it a whirl.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Handwriting / Typing

As a reward for those making a good effort with their handwriting and those achieving well with their handwriting, three children (we only have three laptops) will be chosen each week to do typing practice instead of handwriting practice. Here are a couple of places they can go to get the practice.

Dance Mat Typing is very cool because you can choose the level you want to start on to see how good you are.
There are two options with Bleat Box- an easy one where you just learn where the keys are and a harder one where you have to use your memory.
Typing Master is an old style Pacman game where you type the letters to move your man!
Tux Type is a downloaded game that Allanah has put on the laptops for you to use. Only click on the link and you have asked your parents if it is OK to download a game from the internet. It comes in a Windows, Apple or Linux version.

This week's Terrific Typists are Hayley, George and Georgia. The great example of fantastic handwriting belongs to Georgia.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Tennis



We took it easy on Friday after our big night out at the production and rested ready for another big night on Friday. The highlight was probably Greg, the tennis guy, and getting to practice our tennis skills in the rain in The Shed. The Shed hasn't been properly opened yet and it is already in use!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Yesterday-Tomorrow

I have just got home from opening night of our school production, Yesterday-Tomorrow, based around the history of our school 1859-2009.

What an incredible team we have here at school. I am so proud of you all. The teachers all worked in so hard together and supported each other with each using their strengths to create such a fabulous production.

The children too learnt valuable real life lessons about leadership, managing themselves, communicating and presenting. Older ones mentored their housemates and covered for each other, being where they should be, in the costumes they should be in, with the props they needed and on time, ready to move on stage. And then giving such rich performances for their appreciative audience.

At one stage one of the younger students drew my attention, looked fiercely into my eyes and told me that she needed me to take a much needed prop to another child on the other side of the stage as it was needed there immediately and she needed to be on stage and couldn't get it there herself. Such self confidence and assurance were lessons not easily constructed and put into practice in a classroom context.

Here are some photos to whet your appetite for Friday's performance.


Remember to click on the photos if you would like to see a more close-up better quality photo.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Nelson Evening Mail

Our Appleby Fair was a raging success. It even made it to our local newspaper, The Nelson Mail. They have cut together a brilliant video of the day. There are lots of us in it so do have a look but you will have to be quick as I am not sure how long the link will work from the paper.

You will find the video down on the left hand side of the page. It's quite small but it does get bigger when you push play!

Dino throws himself in front of the camera! Look among the photos too.

Find a Book's Reading Fit



Next time we go to the library trying putting the book's title into this search Book Wizard and find out whether it is a good fit for you.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Appleby School Fair

It was a stunning day yesterday at the Appleby School Fair. I didn't get much in the way of photos because I was busy with the bouncy castle but I did manage to get some video of Jacob showing his skills at wood chopping. I was scared he would chop his toes off while I was watching but he knew what he was doing. Awesome stuff, Jacob.

I bet we was raised lots of money to help with learning for children at school.

Allanah K

Friday, September 04, 2009

Learning with Haley in Bangkok

Haley, a student at ISB in Bangkok, where Allanah visited last Christmas, is just learning about blogs. She blogged about a science experiment she did and we thought we would do the same experiment here to see if the results were the same.

Today we did an experiment about coins. What we did was we cut some paper cups. We did a small one, a medium one and a large one.
We got a tote tray and put water in it then we got the cut paper cups and we got a bag of $2 coins and put them in the paper cups one at a time.
We put money into the cups that we had in the water. We had four different sized cups. The baby sized cup only took two coins to make it sink. The mummy sized cup only took two coins and the daddy sized cup took five coins. It was hard to put the coins in the middle so it was even.

We decided that the the taller cup held more air and that's why it was able to hold more coins. The pressure of the air underneath it helped to hold it up as well.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Feebur and Spinky

This Fleebur and Splinky multiplication game is a bit different but will help you get your tables more quickly.