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.

Space - on a wiki near you!

This week we are really getting into space. We are going to visit a real observatory and get to look closely at the moon and Jupiter. We are going to record our learning on a wiki and view some videos about our solar system on Clickview. Clickview lets us take advantage of The Loop- our fibre-optic mega-fast broadband connection. Using The Loop we can download a DVD in about a minute.

Click on the globe to see the wiki. A wiki is a place in 'the cloud' where we can just click and edit to change it- no passwords or log in needed. You can edit it yourself.

The wiki also has a link to Allanah's Delicious Bookmarks. Delicious is a social media place where Allanah keeps her bookmarks for everyone to share. There are lots of great places to learn about Space there!

Gymnastics

We are practising gym and Lisa and Sylvia are helping us
We do handistands and this is Carl doing an excellent job. We have also learnt to do cartwheels, the vault, backwards and forwards rolls and balancing on the beam. It is lots of fun. We just love gym.

Nelson Mail Article

Tonight our blog is being featured in the Nelson Mail.



Welcome to our blog.

Here is what our blog means to us.

I like all the maths games on our blog. There's lots of cool links, pictures and videos on our blog. Our blog is awesome. By Tullamore

Our blog has lots of cool and fun games you can learn a lot about maths and lots more. By Brittany

Our blog is cool and it has cool games on it. Liam

I like to go on the blog because I can go on at any time of the day. Bella

This is the best ever blog because we have great games and awesome class photos. Kevin

This is the best blog because we have interesting posts and great games and neat class photos. Jordan.

This is a really cool blog and I like it lots because it has cool games and interesting stuff to read. George

I really like the games on the blog and all the posts and we get to write posts too.
Caleb

I think our blog is the best in the whole solar system. Fletcher

I think the blog is awesome because we have the best games and the best teacher.
Jessica

What I think of the blog is extremely cool because Miss K puts on really cool games for us. Carl

I think our blog is very good because of all the activities and posts. I love our blog. It's cool. Rachel.

The games on the blog are cool and the posts are always interesting to read. Emily

I play lots of games on the blog and I like our blog heaps. Taine A.

I like our blog because you get to look what people have added and it's a good way to play fun and interactive games. Our blog is a good way to practise what we have been learning. Jacob

Our blog must be the meanest blog ever because we are in the top 5 blogs in New Zealand. Torbea

Learning About Fractions

Here are a couple of fraction games to help us with learning about fractions.

The first one is called Cross The River.


The second one is Fraction Monkeys.


The last one is Fraction Concentration.

Nana's Sunrise

Today we read the poem 'Nana's Sunrise' from the School Journal - Part 2 Number 1 2006.
Then we wrote melting moments about our own best people that we love. Here is some of what we wrote....

My Nanny is so beautiful that I would name a star after her.
Maisie

Seeing my grandmother brings a tear to my eye because I love her so much.
Amy

I would give a whole world to see her because I love her so much.
Jessica

My Nanny is like the sun shining into me.
Maisie

Sylvia's First Post

I am very fortunate to be spending my first teaching placement at Appleby School. Moturoa have made me feel very welcome. Allanah has been patiently sharing her wealth of knowledge and teaching experience, which is just as well as I have a lot to learn!

The children and other staff here at Appleby, are very supportive and if the following three weeks are as interesting and varied as this last week, then I can tell that I will come away with some great experiences and probably a few good stories as well.

Sylvia posted this on our playground blog over the weekend.

This is her first attempt at writing on the internet. Didn't she do well.

Machinarium

When this game came out recently I thought of Carl who likes Questionaut so much. Machinarium is a similar kind of game but without the questions- you have to think carefully about the way things go together to work it out.

In the first chapter you have to find the little guy's arm and leg and then get him across the pond.

Past, Present and Future Tense

We played a really fun game today called Treasure Hunt that was so much fun that Mr A had to come in see what we were up to- we were making such loud, happy noises. We were playing the game to support our grammar learning about past, present and future tenses. You have to answer tense questions in sentences and then find where the treasure is on the map.

The Makos Come For a Visit

Yesterday we all went to The Shed. We went there to meet the Tasman Makos. As you can see they gave us eight balls. After they gave us the balls some people from the ENZED company came to talk to us. They talked about what they did when they played rugby and what positions they played. Afterwards they chose some people to come up and have a quick passing game. Then they signed autographs.

Wii in Class

Yesterday Bella brought her Wii to school. A Wii is a remote controlled thing that you plug into a TV. You hold onto the remote and move it around. There are lots of varieties of games like Wii music, Wii fit and of course Wii sports. We took turns playing Bella's Wii. Here is a movie of Caleb playing the Wii. He was good at it because he had done it before.

Allanah talked with us about how the Wii could be educational but in the end she said that the noise would drive her spare so Bella had to take it home

Bella's Dachshund Puppies

My dog Lilly had 6 dachshund puppies and all of them are black and tan. All of Lilly's puppies' eyes are closed. That is because they were born on the 5 of October and they are still very little.
This is me holding two of them. We love to have them but I miss Lilly in the lounge. We keep them in the laundry because it is warm and Lilly chose the cupboard to have her puppies..

Roger- The Ukulele Guy

Do you remember how Fletcher won $200 in the Aim High Awards? Today we saw the instruments that Fletcher's prize money helped to pay for. The Juniors are learning to play the ukuleles and we are learning to play the recorder. Roger, the ukulele guy, is going to put something very cool together so we can join the two instruments and gave some of us a little lesson to get us started. It is going to be so cool but we will have to learn to play the recorder first.

First Day Back

What a fabulous start we had to our new term. We welcomed Taine C to our class and shared some of the highlights of our school holidays.The guessing is over. While Allanah was at the ULearn09 conference in Christchurch in the holidays she won a basic Lego Robotics Kit for our class. We are not quite sure what it will be like but it sounds exciting. A man from Modern Teaching Aids is going to help us get started with it when it gets delivered.

A Clue!

So do I have you guessing about what the surprise is going to be that I will tell you about on Monday?????

You know already that we are going to be learning about space. To see me dancing my happy dance about the surprise click on the graphic or click here!

Sorry Bella- tell Dad that I didn't win Lotto and he is not getting a boat!!!!!

The dance is sort of a clue to the surprise as well. Write in the comments what you think the surprise might be.

Guess What!

Here is a slideshow of Mini-Dylan and Allanah's South Island Holiday, ULearn Conference and exciting snow filled trip back from Christchurch. You can view it in full screen by clicking here or clicking on the graphic. Keep an eye out for the two movies in the slideshow. Click on the little magnifying glass to see the photo bigger. You can turn the music off and on as well.



I have a fabulous surprise to tell you all about when school starts on Monday! What do you think it could be?

ULearn Conference Day One

Allanah and Mini-Dylan are enjoying getting together with other teachers from NZ, Australia and USA for the first day of the ULearn09 Conference. People are keen to see Mini-Dylan for real and get to know him a bit more.

We are encouraging people to vote for our blog and people are promising that they will!

There are about 2,000 people at ULearn09- all teachers or people who help teachers learn more about how to be better teachers.

There is going to be a lot of learning going on over the next few days.

One of NZ's Best Class Blogs

Today I got some great news that our blog has been nominated as one of the five finalists in the 2009 Interface Blog Awards. Interface is a very cool ICT magazine that comes out every month. Now people get to vote for which one is the best. I do hope that you think our blog is brilliant. You have to vote quickly as the voting finishes on Monday 19 October.

Click here or click on the logo to have your say.

Last Picture in our Holiday Quiz

Well done Shaun and Bella for your answer to our last question- yes it was indeed Larnarch Castle.On the road north again from Dunedin Mini-Dylan wanted one last photo of our road trip. This big fish was really quite a catch.

Your questions for the chocolate fish are......

What kind of fish is it and what town are we in?

The conference starts on Tuesday. Yipee!

A Cold Start

Mini-Dylan and Allanah woke up to a very cold start. It had snowed during the night. Imagine that! It is October and still snowing in the deep south. Today we head north again to join the ULearn09 ICT conference in Christchurch.

Sight Seeing

Today Mini-Dylan and I went sight-seeing. We visited a real New Zealand castle. It was interesting to look around inside and imagine how the people lived when the place was new. If we lived closer it would have been a great place for a school trip to learn more about how people lived in the old days.

Today's question is, 'What is the name of the castle?'

Allanah liked these white geese at the castle. They quacked all around the place and played in the fountain.

Mini Dylan heads further south

Today Mini Dylan and headed further south and stopped to explore these fossilised dinosaur eggs. Allanah explained to Mini Dylan that they weren't really dinosaur eggs. Today's chocolate fish and bonus point if you can tell us where the 'dinosaur eggs' are?

Taking a punt on the River

Well done Bella and Georgia. You will receive our first chocolate fish when school goes back. Your answer was very well researched.

Now for your question for today. And now another chocolate fish is up for grabs. Where are we now? Mini Dylan had a lovely day helping Allanah do some shopping. We stopped for a break near this place. What is the name of this river and what city does it run through?