First Grade Visits The California Science Center

First Grade Visits The California Science Center

To our blogging buddies from Australia.

We have been lucky enough to have some first grade Australian friends to blog with.  Mrs. Buckby has been writing to us and answering some of our questions about her wonderful continent.  Here is what Mrs. Buckby wrote and our answers to her great questions.  Thank you Mrs. Buckby, we hope you keep on writing on our blog.

Our answers are in red.

Mrs Levy and class,

Thank you for taking the time to look at our blog and I’m glad you liked the ‘Term 1 fun’ pictures! I’m going to try and answer the great questions you have asked – Our class in on holidays for Easter at the minute but I hope if some children from room 6 are checking out the blog over the holidays, they will reply to you also!

Mason, the temperature in our region of Australia is around 20 – 24 degrees Celsius at the minute which is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We are in Autumn now and are awaiting the cold weather ahead. Some parts of Australia are much hotter than this, with some outback areas still around 40 degrees Celsius or 100 degrees Fahrenheit! What is the weather like in California?

Our weather today is beautiful and sunny, about 75 degrees F.

Christian, I have many favorite books but in class at the minute we are enjoying reading ” The Magic Faraway Tree” By Enid Blyton. Have you heard of this author?  We have never read this book, but we did read Possum Magic this morning.  Have you read Possum Magic?  Have you ever had lamington, vegamite, or minties? 

Costa, my favorite Australian animal would be the koala. Their fur is so soft and they are very cuddly. We have many zoos in Australia that allow you to cuddle koalas but it is best not to interfere with them in their own habitat. Have you ever seen a real koala?  In our class 13 people have seen a koala and 8 people have not seen a koala.

I’m glad you liked our photos Colin, we were making biscuits. It was a great way to practice some of the skills we had learned in maths. Do you like maths?  We do math every day.  This week we started learning about coins.  What are you learning about in math?

Yes Sally, most schools wear uniforms in Australia. It is a great way to recognise a school when they are out in the community. Do you wear uniforms for any other activities like sport or another hobby?

Not very many schools wear uniforms but a lot of sports have uniforms.  Some of the sports we do that we wear uniforms for are:  soccer, basketball, capture the flag, dance, horseback riding,  karate, t-ball --baseball, gymnastics, and football.

Noah we have recently finished learning about how to keep ourselves and other people safe. We made a safety message about all the things we had learned about. Do you have safety rules in your school?

In school we have learned about safety ideas like, don't talk to strangers, no bullying, don't run by the classrooms, keep your hands to yourself.

Yes Jade we have what we call ‘play time’ which is a 30 minute break in the morning and then for ‘lunch time’ we spend 1 hour outside. We are lucky to have a lot of room outside to play and the children enjoy playing sports like soccer, down ball, a AFL (Aussie rules football). What do you enjoy doing at recess? Do you have some great play equipment?  At recess we like to play handball, we play on the monkeybars, we jump rope, we play football and basketball, and we hula-hoop.

I hope I have answered all of your questions – what great questions they were!
Stay in touch,

From your blogging buddy

Mrs Buckby

Our Kangaroo Facts

Open Air Market

Here is  a slideshow of the Open Air Market today.

Challenges

Whew, I made it!  Today was my last day of the February fitness challenge.  For the past 29 days  I challenged myself to swim as much as I could. I finished with a final total of swimming 73,000 yards for the month (a little over 40 miles.)   I'll admit some days I did not want to swim, I would have much rather stayed home and watched T.V. or read a book. But that is the thing with challenges - they are a test to see what you are able to do.

At school I see boys and girls challenge themselves all the time.  In Room 125 subtracting numbers is a big challenge for some people and for others it's "easy peasy lemon squeezy."  For some, writing one sentence in our journal is a challenge. But each week I see more and more students write longer and longer journal entries. Today at school we kicked off the March Health Challenge.  Calendars were sent home with a healthy idea for each day of March.  Tomorrow our challenge is to do 50 jumping jacks and eat a piece of fruit.  Can you do that? 

It's fun and exciting to see what you can do, when you challenge yourself.  

As Dr. Seuss wrote, "You're off the Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!"

Have you ever challenged yourself?  


What is your biggest challenge?

Greater than, less than and equal to...

Today in math we worked on number comparisons.  We made alligators to eat the larger numbers and then played a number munching game.

Rainforest Assembly

Rainforest Wildlife Assembly

Special thanks to Mrs. Testa, who took the wonderful pictures!

Sensational Sloths!

We have been studying about the sensational South American sloth.  Here are some of our favorite facts.

"They move super slowly,"  babbled Mason!

"Sloths have insects on their fur," roared Michelle!

"On their fur they have algae growing," explained Jade.

"Sloths hang upside down when it's raining," grinned Jadon.

"They hang in trees in the canopy in the rainforest," roared Christian.

"Sloths swim in the water really well," explained Sally.

"Sloths claws are as long and as sharp as knives,"  expressed Colin!

"They eat slow and they move slow," thought Heather.

"There are three toed sloths and two toed sloths,"  dictated Caroline.

"Sloths are so slow, that they can only go about a mile in a month,"  roared Jadon.

"Sloths hang upside down all of their lives.  They eat, give birth, carry their babies, and sleep upside down," grinned Mia.

"Their predators are harpy eagles, humans and jaguars," roared Costa.

Daily News

"I loved making the hats for the 100th day of school,"  babbled Leann!

Sally roared "Today at PE we did 101 different exercises.  It was a lot of fun!"  

"I liked doing the place value math, with Jadon and Evan B."  added Noah.

"I liked making the book about being 100 years old," grinned Heather!

"I liked being the busy bee on the 100th day of school," noted Colin.

Our super spellers!