Mr. Michael and the Didgeridoo

Mr. Michael, Marley's dad, came to show us a didgeridoo today. It is an instrument from Australia. He had many interesting facts to share from his fascinating life and experiences around the world. He even played the didgeridoo a little bit. See the photos and video clips below. I also included a clip of a professional didgeridoo player. Ask your child to share some of the things we learned from Mr. Michael today. Thanks, Mr. Michael!

 

Venn Diagrams

As we are learning more and more about life in China and Australia, we have been trying to capture some of our learning in Venn diagrams. We began with a Venn diagram on the similarities and differences between the United States and China and then JP suggested we start one on the similarities and differences between our class in the United States and Mrs. Price's class in Australia. So now we have two Venn diagram to hold our thinking and ideas.

Homework ~ Read a good book or two. Check out a Bedtime Math story.

Skyping with Australia

Two years I "met" Joan Price, a teacher from Australia, on Twitter. We became friends (we can talk for hours when just the two of us are on Skype) and connected our classrooms. I have been anxiously awaiting the time when I could introduce my crew this year to her class. We had to wait until we switched to daylight saving time in order to have any school time in common. Today we Skyped with them for the first time at 3 pm our time which was 9 am Tuesday morning for them.  Her class is a Prep class. Prep is comparable to our Kindergarten. It was exciting to get to see and hear them today. Sadly, they could see us but couldn't hear us so we improvised and wrote messages to them on a whiteboard. Ask your child to tell you all about the things we have learned about them.

Note ~ The Book Fair will be held in the library all this week. We were all very excited to visit the fair this morning. A special evening of family activities has been planned for November 17th from 4:30 to 7:30 pm. Please be sure to stop by the book fair one day this week.

Homework ~ Read a good book or two. Check out a Bedtime Math story.

Important Dates
11/16-11/20 Fall Climbing Week ~ Belayers needed, sign up here: Fall Climbing Belay Sign Up
11/16-11/20 Book Fair Week ~ Family Night 11/17 from 4:30 to 7:30 pm
11/20 Thanksgiving Lunch at 12:25 Thanksgiving Lunch Sign Up
11/25-11/27 No School ~ Thanksgiving Break
12/4 Fieldwork to Joyous Chinese Cultural School - more information coming soon
12/18 Fieldwork to Pacific Ocean Market and Kings Land Restaurant - more information coming soon
12/21-1/4 No School ~ Winter Break

Tweeting Advice to Mrs. Price's Class

This afternoon we spent a little time tweeting our advice to Mrs. Price's class. This year she has all Preps (kindergarten students). We thought that since they are just beginning their school career they might like to hear our thoughts and advice to help them have a great year. This was a small service learning project for us - the service part was giving advice to younger students and the learning part was learning how to tweet and also reflecting on what kind of advice might be helpful to younger students. Click here to see all of the tweets on our class Twitter page. Below are screenshots of the tweets. We used the hashtag #prepadvice.

It was exciting when we began to get some responses, too.

In case you are wondering Mrs. Price's avatar is a picture of Wonder Woman, it is because primary grade students are so full of wonders that their teacher must be a wonder woman.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is PE.

Skype Call to Australia

Yesterday we Skyped with Mrs. Price and her class and other students from her school. We got to meet her new class of Preps (Kindergarteners). What shocked us most of all was that there are only 9 students in her class. Wow, just wow! Our crew quickly pointed out that we have many more students since we have 25 students. We told them about our recent snow storm, our upcoming Voyage and how we made polygons in Math. They told us about an Arts and Crafts Festival that they had and some new caterpillars that they have in their classroom. We enjoyed chatting with them. It was also very nice to see Regina again.

The view from here

The view from there

One of their caterpillars

The second part of today's post is about last Friday. We had so many students absent that I had a hard time trying to pull my reading groups because so many students were missing from each group. I finally decided that this was a good day for me to just spend a little time with the crew during station time. It is nice to just get to hang out with the kids for a little bit, too. We had a lovely time.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 7.5 Practicing with Fact Triangles

News from Australia

Regina is home now and the new school year has started in Australia. Regina did a presentation for her whole school about her trip to the United States. It was so nice to meet her and learn more about her trip around the United States and her home country of Australia. I still can't believe that a little chat on Twitter between Mrs. Price and myself started all of this!

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ 6.12 Analyzing a Set of Data

Photos from Australia

Mrs. Price and her class are on summer vacation. (This is why Regina was able to make her trip to visit the United States and our school.) Mrs. Price has been sharing some pictures and videos of things she has seen while she travels. If you get this blog post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to view the videos.

A koala napping in the sun.

A kangaroo joined her picnic.

An echidna out for a stroll.

A lovely view

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.13 More "What's My Rule?"

Important Dates
2/13 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/16 No School - President's Day
2/26 Winter Voyage ~ Day 1 - not an overnight trip (Day 2 will be in April - also not an overnight trip)
3/23 - 4/3 Spring Break

Global Awareness

One of the 21st Century Skills that we want all students to have is global awareness. We have had many experiences that have helped us increase our global awareness. Below is a list of some of those experiences:

• Skyping and tweeting with Mrs. Price's Prep/1 class from Jindivick, Victoria, Australia
• Each of us having a friend in Australia that we feel personally connected to
• Visiting Joyous Chinese Cultural Center to meet people who were born in China and to learn more about Chinese culture
• Doing an in-depth study of families in China including topics like foods, celebrations, schools, hobbies, shopping, daily life in cities and villages, languages and more
• Learning a little bit about the differences in time zones between various places in the world. The crew was fascinated to learn that people in Australia and China are still sleeping when we get to school in the morning. It was also interesting to learn that when we Skype Mrs. Price's class on a Monday afternoon just before the end of our school day that they are just arriving at school for the start of school on Tuesday morning there.
• We are learning to be accepting of differences in accents, skin color, language usage, personal beliefs and more.
• Locating various places (China, Australia, Mexico, Florida, Idaho, etc.) on a map or globe and noticing where those places are in relation to us.
• Grappling with the idea that there are many ways to live in our world - farms, apartments, houses, house boats, huts, etc.
• We spent a while discussing whether everyone in the world speaks English or not.
• We learned that money looks different all around the world
• We have learned a few words of Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Sign Language

These are just a few of the ways that we are trying to become more globally aware. This age is wonderful to explore these topics because they are so willing to be open to new cultures and ideas.

They are also very willing to share our culture with others. Mrs. Price's class has learned so much from our crew, too.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Practice basic addition or subtraction facts.

Important Dates
12/19 Fieldwork to Pacific Ocean Market and King's Land Restaurant
12/22 - 1/5 Winter Break
1/6 First day back after Winter Break
1/16 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
1/19 No School - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
2/13 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/16 No School - President's Day
2/26 Winter Voyage ~ Day 1 - not an overnight trip (Day 2 will be in April - also not an overnight trip)
3/23 - 4/3 Spring Break

Tweeting with Our Friends in Australia

Last week we learned how to use Twitter to tweet questions and comments to our friends in Australia. We are just getting started and hope to continue to do more in the future but we will see if this idea catches on with the crew. All of our tweets must be approved by a teacher before we can hit the "tweet" button (we want to be sure our audience can read our tweets - they don't have to be perfect just readable). Below is a sample of some of our tweets. Click here to see our crew Twitter page. Click on the pictures below to see a larger view.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 4.8 Telling Time

Library
No library this week because the Book Fair is in the library.

Getting to Know Our Friends from Australia

Today was a great day! We really feel more connected to our friends in Australia now. We received a package of gifts from them as I am sure that you all know by now since the crew was so excited about them. The package contained: clip-on koalas (enough for one for each of our crew), a flag, stickers, a book, a calendar, kangaroo counters, vegemite, a kangaroo pen, coins, and notes and brochures about their school. It also contained two gifts for me from Mrs. Price: an echindna ornament and two stuffed koalas. The package arrived while we were practicing measuring and we opened it right away. It was very exciting.

Then as if that wasn't exciting enough, later in the day some of us got to Skype individually with our buddy from Australia. We talked mostly about pets but were able to ask any other questions we had.  About half of us (or a bit more than half) got to chat with our buddy. Next Monday, we will have another chance for the rest of the crew to chat with their buddy.

Here we are wearing our new clip-on koalas on our fingers right before we left to go home. We were excited but very quiet in this picture because Madison was still Skyping with her buddy at the time. I love this! I get just as excited as the crew about connecting with our friends in Australia. In January, a girl from their class will be visiting our school while she is traveling around the United States during her summer vacation. We can't wait to meet her in person.

After  school I got the picture below from Mrs. Price. It shows some parrots sitting outside their window while we were all Skyping. I will have to show the crew tomorrow.