Best wishes to everyone from all of us.
What did you get from Santa this Christmas?

Last Day

I have been naughty and not sharing our last day of school where it has become an Appleby tradition for the whole school to walk to the nearest boysenberry farm and pick fruit and have a real fruit ice-cream. Marshall was good enough to smear it around a bit and to pose for the camera!

Happy Holidays everyone.

Appleby School Beach Trip

Today we had a fabulous morning down at Rabbit Island. We swam in the sea, built sand sculptures, wandered down the beach, did relays and played beach cricket! All great fun.



One more sleep and we will be done for the year!

Mrs Murphy

Yesterday we frightened Mrs Murphy by giving her a gift to show her how much we appreciate her. Mrs Murphy is our front desk person who helps everyone all the time- who fixes us up when we are broken, who answers the phone, who makes her computer fly, who answers all our questions and who is an all round great person.

Everyone who knows her knows that.

Puzzling Time

Today at Problem Solving time Steven Wills came to share his problem solving games with us. He showed us Rush Hour. It is quite challenging. You may have to restart it a few times to get it right but we got there in the end. We had to show perseverence.

Allanah has got the app on her iPod Touch as well.


It was a very tricky puzzle game.
We built towers. It was fun.
Grace puzzled hard and long.
Jack enjoyed playing Rush Hour on Allanah's iPod Touch.
Georgia used the instruction manual to help solve the puzzles.
I thought that game was really hard but cool.
I thought the game was so cool. I wanted to buy it.
The original Rush Hour was really easy.
The Dinosaur Game got harder and harder.
Rush Hour Safari was hard.
I am building castles and making new ones.
Santana and I played this together. You could only move the goats when they were in line.
Looking over the crates was fun.
This game is super fun but hard too.

Lunar Lockout

Today Steven showed us Lunar Lockout. We had to use the our brains to work it out. It really got us thinking.

Helicopter Trails

Last week when we were discussing the Pike River Mine Collapse we followed the live track of one of the Westpac Rescue Helicopters. Each helicopter has a GPS on board. Today children wanted another look to see where it was so I thought I would put a link to it here so you can see where it is now and where it has been during the day. It is a live map so it refreshes itself every few minutes.

If it is not moving then it is on the ground.

Swimming is Fun

This is a video we put together at the swimming pool on Allanah's iPhone. The video was on the computer before we got back to the classroom.

Swimming is fun. In today's swimming lesson we learnt more about how to do breastroke. You put your hands to pray, then push them out, put them back to back and pull. With your legs we were practising how to glide.

Geocache

Last week we talked a little about Geocaching and I went down to the Appleby Domain and found one to share with the class. This weekend I went geocaching again and found this in one of the caches.

The cache was first placed in Ulster, Northern Ireland.

Its goal is to travel the six nations, the tri-nations and any other nations where rugby is played. It hopes to get to Eden Park, Auckland, for the 2011 World Cup!

Who do we know who can help it on its way?

Allanah

Appleby School Playtime

At playtime Allanah took photos of us on the iPhone while we were playing. We made the video on the iPhone using Sonic Pics and shared it with the computer and now we share it with you.

So this video was done without using a computer at all.

Guess and Check

Last week we made chess sets for problem solving and we couldn't put the blue squares diagonal, downwards or across. It was a mission. I struggled but I got it in the end. Allanah took a photo of my finished chess set.

Keegan's Fiji Holiday

Last school holidays our family went to Fiji for a holiday.
"Mum, is this the island we are going to?"

"No," said Mum. "We are on the next island."
Just before we left my cousins and I went on the banana boat. It really hurt.
Everybody had fun, even the adults. My brother was on the back and that person flies off and smashes into everybody.
It was really hot and we liked sitting in the shade under the palm trees.
We went to a private island to snorkel.

Inch Worm

The children at Makuri School showed us Inch Worm on their blog and they say they love playing this game and I can see why!

I am on Level Ten now and still going. How far can you get to help the inch worm find food and find his way home? Let me know in the comments.

Mask Parade

Here are photos and video from the Nelson Arts Festival Mask Parade. It was so much fun. Click on the graphic to see the whole slideshow. There are two pages of photos.

I am using Dropbox to store the photos. It is a good way to share things on line.

Fireworks Go Boom

We wrote some rules for using fireworks and then we looked at a website that gave the rules- we got them all ourselves.
Luc and Sharon made this Kid Pix fireworks drawing.

Here is a link to our fireworks rules in a Google Doc.

Daniel and Caitlin made this one.
Marshall and Summer made this one.

Moturoa Class Camp

Allanah didn't get to go on camp this year tell her all about it.

I hope this link works cos the last one didn't.

Watch the doc grow.

K12 Online 2010 Keynote- A Week In The Classroom

I was honoured to be asked some time ago to present the keynote presentation for the K12 Online Conference. The conference is a global sharing of teachers talking about their practice. K12 tells you the conference is aimed at teachers of children from kindergarten children up to Year 12.

Allanah



The children in Moturoa got a chance to watch the video some weeks ago after I made it in the school holidays and now it is ready to be published here. I am speaking slowly because people always tell me I talk fast and I want to make sure that people for whom English is not a first language have a opportunity to understand our kiwi accent!

It's a Book

I thought you would enjoy this...

It's a Book.

Super Scoopers in Dunedin made their own version here.

QR Codes

Over the weekend I learnt how to make QR codes. QR codes are sort of like bar codes but they can hold more information. I have seen them in art galleries and museums and on packing boxes and always wondered what they were about.

The idea is that if you have a QR code reader on your phone you take a photo of the code and it will lead you to a website with more information about our class. If you want to find out more about QR codes read here.

Here is our QR code on the classroom window so if you are walking by with your web enabled phone and a QR reader you could give it a try. It is way cool. A chocolate fish is on the way if you tell me what the code leads to in the comments.

Allanah

Holidays

Last week we started to share what we had done in the holidays but we didn't get time to finish. Here is as far as we got. We have good times on our holidays.

New Zealand Youth Brass Band

Today we had a special guest, it was the secondary school brass band of New Zealand. They played seven songs for us. We liked them all 'cause they were awesome. They had a base-drum, trumpet, trombone, tuba and others. We had lots of fun listening to their music.

Ulearn Learning

I am at a big computer conference in shaky Christchurch. We felt a big earthquake last night that made me shake a bit.

Today we learnt about Learning Paths, which is a way to link to a whole lot of great learning materials on line.

To get to them click on the graphics. I found one on Platypus just for you Grace.

Ten Guitars

I have been learning to play the ukulele and today we are going public with our first ukulele song- some of you may know it!

Marae Podcast

Here is our recording sharing our marae trip with you. It was a great day and we all helped to record what we did. Thank you Te Awhina Marae for your hospitality and generosity.

Typing

Today, when most of us do handwriting some people will be able to do keyboarding practice.

They are going to use Dance Mat Typing.

Today's lucky keyboarders are: Sean, Sharon, Sam, Summer, Santana and Shona. They are going to practice their typing and leave a comment on this post about how they got on.

Dotty-Dots

I came across this little gem and thought I would post it here just for fun. Click on the text to take you to the web site and hover your mouse over the letters. Then add your new word and do the same. You could use it as an aid to remember your spelling words!