New Spelling

Hello everyone! We've had so many performances lately to prepare for, we haven't had much time for blogging. Sorry about that.


First off, we had our assembly a few weeks ago. Then we had our liturgy and some school testing to do. We've really had our hands full.


BUT we want to make sure we tell you about our new spelling program! We thought that sometimes it's really hard to learn things when you're only writing, so we decided to spell out our weekly words in other ways. Check them out below.

That's it for now. Soon we'll be back with updates about our terrarium and our upcoming concert performance!

Sincerely,

Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Terrariums, popstick building and assembly practice

Swimming is over, and we're glad because it was so tiring. We had fun though, and we learned a lot. We looked like completely different swimmers by the end of week 2.

Sorry for the lack of new news! Swimming took up so much of our time and energy that we couldn't fit much else into the day, other than our regular stuff like spelling and terrarium observation and maths.

Did we tell you about terrarium observation? We call it our science journal, and it means that every single day we do three things for science: we write down what has changed in our terrariums from yesterday, what we think the change will be tomorrow, and we draw exactly what we see. Our journals are coming along quite well.

We've been practising for our assembly on Friday and we're coming along well. Here are our two songs, so that we can practise at home.

NOTE: these songs are really loud! Mr. F had problems changing the volume when he recorded it! Please be careful to turn the volume down, for people who are sleeping or have heart conditions.


Bit by bit by The Blogging Bilbies

Raindrops by The Blogging Bilbies

Here are some pictures of our terrariums.  The part of the water cycle we can't see is the water that gets heated and rises into the air - that's evaporation. See how the water gathers at the top? We call that condensation, or clouds, because the water gathers and creates clouds. When it gets heavy and falls back into the soil, we call that precipitation, or rain.

That's all for now. Start thinking about your costumes, Bilbies!


Sincerely,

Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Swimming and Terrariums

Hello everyone! We have been very busy this week! We have just started our swimming program and it takes up quite a bit of our day. We are very tired by the time we leave.

Also, we've begun work on our terrariums! We have been bringing in 2 litre soft drink bottles and we cut them in half. Then we filled them with gravel, peat moss and soil, then we put in our sunflower seed. That was on Monday, and they've ALREADY sprouted!!

We also practiced Word Chunking and rereading/reading on as reading strategies. Here are two examples of reading on!

When I went to the store, I saw a huge snicklepuff.  He had a lot of fur, four legs, two ears and he barked at me.

That's it for now, thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

We can't believe we've been back two weeks already. The time really flies!
We've been learning about, as said in the earlier post, the water cycle lately. We painted and crafted the parts of the water cycle, and Mr. F put it up on the back wall as a mural .We think it looks pretty good.

We've also been digging into our blue box literacy games, which you'll see a few of below.

Next week, we look forward to making soft drink bottle terrariums! It will be fun to see the water cycle in action, and also we'll be recycling! It will be good to see recycling done, after we've learned a bit about it. 

That's it for now. Have a good weekend! 

Sincerely,

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

Back from Holidays!

We are back in the swing of things, and we all had great, safe holidays. We haven't really had much to post over the last two days because we've been doing boring but important things like cleaning our desk, organising our room and doing another spelling inventory.  That's not very exciting to read about!

Today we had music and art. We also had buddies. In our buddy time, we created different parts of the water cycle. It's going up on our back wall soon, and all the different pieces look fantastic. Mr. F is very proud of us. Thanks to the year 6/7s for their help!

Yesterday, when we were learning about the water cycle, Ryley spelled out the three steps to it after she finished her spelling folder work. Mr. F was VERY impressed! WAY TO GO RYLEY!

Advance australia fair by The Blogging Bilbies


We practised the National Anthem today, and it went really well.

No more updates until Monday, because Mr. F will be teaching music tomorrow.

Goodbye for now!

Sincerely,
The Blogging Bilbies

Music today

We had music today instead of sport, because we had sport unexpectedly on Monday. Here's what we did!


Click Go The Shears by The Blogging Bilbies

Down by the bay by The Blogging Bilbies

Giro giro tondo by The Blogging Bilbies


We also started a new, silly song called Mama's Soup Surprise. It has some really funny and gross parts in it, like chicken lips and lizard hips, as part of Mama's Soup. Hopefully we'll get some music of that one up soon.

We did a lot of mental maths work today. We practiced all of our dice games.

Mr. F and Mrs. V wanted to make it a point to mention our fantastic behavior in class lately. We are getting along better, focusing harder on our work, and following rules and directions better than we ever have!  WAY TO GO BILBIES!!!

That's it for now.

Lots of love,
Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Last batch of Harold books

Note - some of the videos are having a bit of a glitch and they're turned sideways. They should be upright pretty soon - stick with us!
Ben




Brooke



Grace

Lily



Note - we're still missing a few recordings. Evan and Callum's work will be up soon, but I think we're still missing one after that.


Here's our new and improved version of Lime Juice Tub! We've been practicing. If you want to download this song, find the little down arrow near the play button.
Lime Juice Tub - 5 by The Blogging Bilbies

Here's our next song we have to learn: Overlander. It's about cattle drovers of old times, and how we should celebrate them! This is our first try at it.
Overlander by The Blogging Bilbies



And last - we wrote some persuasive letters to our mums and dads yesterday.  Some of us asked for sensible, reasonable things like rocket ships and pet dolphins and race cars. Let's see what some of our letters said!

More Harold books!

Cooper



Imogen



Dakotah



Josh



Tina

I Wanna Iguana and Cadbury Chocolate Company

We have had a funny day! We listened to our story from last week, I Wanna Iguana, and we talked about persuasive letters, and how they're meant to convince someone of something.  We wrote a persuasive letter together to the Cadbury Chocolate company, asking for some free Freddo's. Mr. F and Mrs. V thought it was a really good letter! Here is our letter, written entirely by the Blogging Bilbies and typed by Mr. F, and below, you can hear a recording of 4 of us reading parts of the letter.

Cadbury letter by The Blogging Bilbies

20/9/11

Dear Cadbury,

We know you don’t want to give us some chocolate for free, but here’s why you should.

We really love your chocolate; we think it’s the best chocolate in the world! If you send us some chocolate, we will tell everybody that we know that your chocolate is the BEST! Then, more people will buy your chocolate and then you will get more money.  

Would you please send us some Freddos?

Sincerely,

Your sensible, friendly, faithful customers, the year  1s


What do you think? Tell us in the comments!



New edit: the people at Cadbury responded to us!!! Here's what they said!

Dear Mr F, Thank you for contacting us regarding our Cadbury products. Trading laws prevent us from dealing directly with the public and we have found that in the past, when samples are sent through the mail, they will invariably arrive damaged.  This has a negative impact on the quality image of the company and as a result, our policy is not to send samples therefore we are unable to help on this occasion. We appreciate your feedback and trust you will continue to enjoy our fine range of products.

Kind regards

KRAFT FOODS LIMITED


We figured out that it means NO, but it's still exciting that they responded to us.

What a fun day! And it's not even over!


Sincerely,

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

Finally...Harold and the Purple Crayon readings!

So Mr. F has had some serious internet problems, but they're fixed now. In class, during reading time, we've been recording our own readings of our Harold and the Purple Crayon books. 

After much file converting and annoying tech work, Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies proudly present to you...

William




Ryder



Molly



Ryley



Geraldine



Devanah



Jack




If you don't see your work up here it's because Mr. F didn't want to make a post with 20 video clips on it. Each day this week, more will be posted. Check back soon!

Lots of love!

Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies


P.S. - Mr. F has had people come and say they have commented, but none of them are going through. If you get to the screen that says something like "Your comment is awaiting moderation," that's good and it means it was successful. If you don't see that screen when you're commenting, you have some more clicking to do.

Also - The numbers for students work are still uneven but Mr. F is working to fix that - he's just missing a few students now but they'll be up and even soon.

Giro, Giro Tondo and Buddies

Good news and bad news!

Bad news is, Mr. F's internet isn't working at home, and it's going to take a while to fix. That means that we won't be able to show you our music or our reading recordings for a little while.

Good news is, we've been working harder than ever. We are doing daily spelling, daily mental maths, we're studying old Australian bush songs like Click, Go the Shears and Lime Juice Tub.  We're also studying an Italian song, because a lot of our mums and dads and grandads and nans are from Italy, or their mums and dads were from Italy. It's important to study where we come from. We're learning a song, Giro Giro Tondo, all in Italian! Mrs. V is helping us with the meaning of the song. It's sung by kids in Italy and it's really fun to sing. Soon, somehow, we'll have recordings of our singing up for you to hear.  In case you Bilbies want to practice at home, here are the words we use.

Giro, Giro Tondo!
Casca il mondo
Casca la terra
Tutti giu per terra!

We've been recording students in our class, one by one, reading our Harold and the Purple Crayon books. It's going really well but we can only do up to 6 a day, so it might take a few more days to get everyone's done.

Also, yesterday we began our Buddies time! We spend about an hour working with students from year 6 and 7, and we work on projects and crafts. We love it!

Here we are working with our buddies. Some of us chose woodwork, some chose craft, some chose painting and some chose games.

That's all for today. Bye!


Sincerely,

Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Assembly and Lime Juice Tub!

We shared news at the assembly today! We did a very good job. We had a few students volunteer to read what we did in the past week, and we all showed everyone our Harold and the Purple Crayon books.

We also sang Lime Juice Tub! It's a song about how the Australian sheep shearing industry was becoming famous world wide. Lots of people came over to be a part of it, but no one could shear as good as the Australians! No one else could keep up, so Australian shearers made jokes about sending people home in lime juice tubs, which is a funny name for a boat. The lime juice part comes from preventing a sea disease called scurvy. You could prevent it by eating limes and lemons!

Anyway, we had a great time. Here we are singing it right before the end of the day.

Lime Juice Tub by The Blogging Bilbies

Lastly, Mr. F said that we're going to record videos of us reading the books that we made this week. We'll start on Monday, and it might take all week, but keep checking back!!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Love,
Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Harold Books, Father's Visit and Aussie Songs

We had a very mixed up day.
We started the day learning a new song in music. We can't tell you what it is yet because we're performing it tomorrow during the morning assembly, but we're going to record it on Monday and put it up here. Keep checking our blog! The new song we're learning is about how Australian sheep shearers, back in the late 1800's and 1900's, were the best shearers in the world, and how people traveled here to work as sheep shearers but couldn't keep up with the Australians. This song is about how tough our ancestors were, and how, through hard work and fierce competition, they made our lives, and this country better!

After we learnt our new song, Father came to visit! He heard us sing and watched us do a bit of spelling, and then we asked him lots of questions. It was so nice seeing him in our classroom. We hope he comes back soon.

Next, we started the last part of our Harold and the Purple Crayon book project. We finally finished them today! In some way they will be up here Monday or Tuesday.

That's all for now. Come back soon!


Sincerely,
Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Today we read a new story together - Harold and the Purple Crayon. It's about a boy who draws lots of things with his purple crayon. He creates a road, an apple tree, a dragon to guard the tree, a hot air balloon, and lots more. He uses his imagination to solve problems, and we practiced doing that too. We guessed what he would draw next, or what he could draw to save himself if he got in trouble. Then we started our own books! Check out our slideshow below. It's got some of our work. This is only the first part of the book - we have a bit more to go.




Also, we had music class today. We practiced Click go the Shears and all of our old songs as well. Also, we learned "Obwisana" which is an African rhythm game. We pass a bean bag every four beats, and if we mess up, it messes EVERYONE in the whole game up! It was really tough to play it perfectly. Maybe someday soon we can get a video up of us playing.

That's it for now. See ya!

From,
Mr. F, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

First mask day!

We hope you had a nice father's day, everyone! In our last entry, we wanted to talk about decorating stubby holders and making our cards, but we couldn't ruin the surprise. Happy father's day, Blogging Bilby fathers and all fathers!

We worked on our regular Monday stuff today: a little reading, mental maths, spelling and we also are finishing up our project on directions. Today we guessed and predicted directions to the office. It was harder than just trying out directions and fixing them when we find we're wrong! Also, we're finding that it's easy to know what you mean, but hard to say what you mean! Sometimes that's how arguments start, so learning clear directions is important for that reason too.

Here we are doing our mental maths. We learned a new dice game today - pyramid dice! It's a plus sums dice game that goes like this. (We only wore our masks for about 5 minutes while Mr. F was taking pictures.)

You roll 4 numbers and write them in a row. Then you add the first two together, and write the answer below the plus sign. Then you add the next two together and write the answer below that plus sign, then add your two answers together. For example:
4  +  3  +  6  +  1
    7      +      7
           14

We had to do three of those today, but some of us did five or six!! Mr. F and Mrs. V were proud of us.



Well, that's it for now. Goodbye everyone!



Sincerely,

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

Sports and blogging masks

Today we had sports carnival for our class because it's going to rain on Friday. We did the long jump and throwing competition. Mr. F got pictures of the long jump, check them out in the slideshow below! (Hold your mouse over the picture below, and a play button should appear in the lower left corner)



Apart from our daily mental maths, reading and spelling, we made blogging masks. Mr. F wants everyone to be involved in the blog but he also wants students and parents to feel safe with the student involvement.  So he decided we should all make blogging masks to cover up our faces! This way, our mums and dads and grandparents can see what we're doing and know which student is which, without exposing us to people we don't know. What an incredibly smart teacher Mr. F is.

Here we are!
















Thanks! That's all for now.

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

Maths and Health with Ms. R

In maths, we learnt about telling the time. We now all know what o'clock and half past means. We made our own clocks to help practice telling the time. We had a lot of fun! Here is some of our work, by Ben and Imogen.

In health, we talked about food and why it is good for us, and why we need it. "Go" foods help us to run, jump and play all day. These foods are from the bread and grains group. "Grow" foods help us to grow big and strong. These foods come from the meat and dairy groups. "Glow" foods help our hair to shine and help us feel good. These foods are fruit and vegetables. We also have a group of foods called
"GROSS" foods. These foods may taste nice but they are not very good for us. These foods include fats and oils. 

We also sorted pictures of foods into healthy and unhealthy. We decided that if we could survive without it then we probably didn't need to eat it, and it was unhealthy. 

The excellent work you see is done by Jenna and Grace.

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Mr. F, Ms. R, Mrs. V and the Blogging Bilbies

Singing is Fun!

We are really working hard on literacy lately. Today we started new books in two of our reading groups. We also continued our daily spelling. Then, we played our reading games and read our latest blog comments. Our day is so full of reading!

After that we had art and music.  In music, we reviewed a silly song and learned a new Australian song! The silly song was a lot of fun, but the Australian one was HARD! It is called "Click go the Shears" and it's tough in notes and words.  Our silly song was called John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith.

John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith by The Blogging Bilbies

We like to sing the "DA DA DA DA DA" part really loudly! Mr. F sings the loudest of all though so it's okay. Even Milo sang with us!

Here's our version of the new song, Click go the Shears. We just learned it today, so we still have to work hard on it, but Mr. F put it up here to show us the importance of practice. Singing is hard, and we want this song to sound better so we have to work harder next time we sing it. We have to practice anything we want to get better at! 

Click go the Shears by The Blogging Bilbies

That's it for now.  Bye!

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

Writing directions

Check out some of our work from yesterday. It's part of our directions project. Like an earlier entry said, we had to write very clear directions, but this time we had to write them from the oval to the toilets! It was so hard!  We would write out our directions and then try it out.  We had to go back and fix it many times. Here's some great work done by Brooke, Josh and Cooper.

And here's MILO!!!

Every day, Milo goes home with a different student and that student writes about the fun they had together. Milo likes to cause trouble in the class sometimes though, like hiding Mr. F's pens and climbing up on the smartboard.

That's it for today.


Heaps of love!

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

World Book Day!

We dressed up today for World Book Day!  We all look so good! We've got Voldemort, Calamity Jane, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Cinderella all in one class, and even more!

We read a comment today by Devanah, and we decided we miss her very much! We also miss Geraldine, and we hope they get better soon!

Today we really concentrated on our spelling and our mental maths. We've still got more to the day, so there's another entry coming!

P.S. - Mr. F and Mrs. V dressed up today too! They look great!

The Giving Tree

Hello, blogging family!
We had a busy day today! Even busier than normal.
First, Mr. F read a story to us.  It was a story that none of us had read before. It's called The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It helped us understand what it means to give everything we have, and also how important giving is! Also, the book helped us understand how many different things we can get from objects and areas near our homes such as trees, the water and the ground.

Then, later on, Mr. F told us we had to write directions to get to the art room. It sounds easy, right? IT WASN'T!! We had to write every single direction like "turn left, walk forward a little, turn right, walk forward until you reach the door," etc. We had to investigate and experiment on the right combination of directions until we made it to our destination, the art room.

We are almost finished with our current class story, Rikki Tikki Tavi.  It's a very exciting tale.

No pictures today, sorry. Milo stole Mr. F's camera. Maybe Milo will give it back tomorrow.

We can't wait until tomorrow, we have some more directions to write!

Until next time,


Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

Options and mental maths!

We started a new, harder mental maths book today! Mr. F didn't get any pictures because he had to visit the office, but he'll get pictures up tomorrow. We were excited to move onto harder maths because it means we're getting smarter!
We also began our new Wednesdays options program. We all chose classes to take on Wednesdays. Some of us chose games, some chose cooking, some chose sewing and some chose music. Here's a picture of a decorated notepad some of us made in crafts.

Mr. F led the music portion. He didn't get any pictures because he was too busy playing guitar! We had lots of fun in all of our options.

Earlier this week, we started working on an acrostic poem about ourselves, and exactly why we are special. An acrostic poem is when we write our name going down the paper, and we write things starting with the first letters. Check out Geraldine's work! Our next step is to write it on some nice card and hang it up in our classroom. 

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading!

Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies

P.S. - Milo wants to appear on our blog soon, so you can look forward to that!

Last week and today

Hello blogging audience! We've been really busy lately. Last post, we didn't get a chance to explain our behaviour system. Here it is!

In our class, we have a big map of Australia, and we've got an upside-down stoplight with blue on the bottom. The clothespins stuck on the circles have our names on them, and we start each day on green. Each time our behavior is disruptive or we are not following directions, we are asked to move our pin down to the next color. If our pin is on red, we lose 5 minutes of learning center time.  If our pin moves down to blue, we lose 5 minutes of play time. We are getting better at managing our pins, and we barely spend any time on red!
If we are on green and we do good work or behave consistently, we are asked to move our car to the next yellow dot on the big map. If we end the day with our pin on green, our car is moved forward on the map. When our car makes it all the way around the Australia map, we get to choose a prize from the prize box! Today was a very exciting day because Imogen got to choose the first prize! Way to go Imogen!

Last Thursday, we had a big problem. Australia fell apart! We had to cut out all the states of Australia and glue them back into place. It was very difficult! We had to look up at our big map and identify all of the states by their shapes, then we had to put them back together and glue them onto some card. Then we had to label them. It was very difficult, but we did a great job.

 Also, last Thursday, we watched a short cartoon. It was very funny but there were no words in it. We practiced writing recounts of what we saw. See if you can picture what happened in the movie by reading Ryley's excellent recount! Here is the video we watched.









Last Friday, Ms. R. helped us think about our daily routines. We drew pictures of each part of our day and labeled them in order. Check out William's work! He worked hard and did a great job.




That's it for now.

Love,
Mr. F and the Blogging Bilbies!