School's Out for Summer!

The Smarties in our "reduce, reuse, recycle" concert costumes.

Well, our time in Year 2 is officially over. Summer holidays have started and before long we'll be in Year 3.

It's been an exciting week, with our school concert, a trip to the movies and getting all our things packed up and taken home.

We were FANTASTIC at the concert and sang our song really well. For our costumes, we wore reusable shopping bags and made recycling symbol crowns. We were a little nervous once we got up on stage and saw the hundreds of people there, but we managed to sing loudly and do all the actions perfectly. As part of the concert, some of us were presented with awards for our hard work this year. Mrs N is so proud of all of us and wished she had 24 awards to give out, but she and Mrs M had to choose just 3 people.

Academic Award - Indi

Achievement Award - Minnesota

Religious Education Award - Noah

Our new teacher, Miss S, has a blog which can be found here, and Mrs N will be continuing this one with her new class. Check back in February to see what we're up to!

Merry Christmas! See you next year!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Merry Christmas Smarties!

Dear Smarties,

I made you some Christmas videos. I've embedded one of them, but to see the others, click on the links underneath. I hope they make you giggle!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Sleigh Ride

Disco Christmas

Elf ChristmasTree

Elf Snowball Fight

Love from Mrs N

7 Days to Go!

Wow, what a busy time we've been having! There is so much going on at school at the moment, we're being very busy bees. Mrs N and Mrs M have also been concentrating on writing our end-of-year reports (we're being extra good so they think of lots of nice things to say about us!).

We've been practising for our end-of-year concert, which is next Wednesday. The theme is "respect", so we chose a song about respecting the environment. It's Jack Johnson's The 3Rs. It's a really great song and we love singing it!

Jack, Joshua and Jake re-using our have-a-go pads

As The Smarties are so interested in reducing, reusing and recycling, our art activity today involved reusing something we would have thrown away! We use have-a-go pads when we want to try to see if we can spell a word before we put it in our writing. We have-a-go at writing it down twice and then we take it to one of our teachers for them to check and show us how to spell the word correctly. We were going to throw those books away because it's the end of the year, but we decided to use them for a painting project instead.

First, we took the staples out of the pads, so we had loose pieces of paper. We painted them on one side with poster paints and let them dry. We also painted a larger sheet of art paper blue. Later, we cut up the smaller, coloured pieces to make a collage. If you look closely, you might be able to see some of our tries at spelling underneath the paint!

With Christmas coming up, our school is collecting non-perishable food to give to a charity for Christmas. Non-perishables are foods such as potato chips, biscuits, canned fruit and vegetables, rice and pasta that will last a while, without being in the fridge. We have an empty box in our classroom, which we're hoping to fill by the end of the week!

Our empty box, ready to be filled with goodies!

We can't believe that it's almost time for the holidays and the end of Grade 2!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

What Gorgeous Babies!

Yesterday, we had a "guess-the-baby" competition! We each brought in a photo of us when we were a baby (even Mrs N and Mrs M brought one in) and we needed to guess who was who. Some of them were easy, because our faces hadn't changed very much, but some of them were very tricky because we don't look like we used to at all!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Oobleck

We made oobleck today. You make it by mixing cornflour and water until you get a paste. It's very weird because it does some things you don't usually expect a paste to do. This is what we observed:

• When you push on it fast, it's hard.
• When you push on it slowly, it's soft.
• It can drip off a spoon just like honey.
• You can form it into shapes like cubes and spheres.
• It goes crumbly if you keep rolling it between your hands.

We discovered that when you apply pressure to oobleck, it acts like a solid and when there is no pressure, it acts more like a liquid. We found it very interesting!

We finally finished our art activity from last week. We had painted two pieces of paper with brightly coloured circles. Then, we ruled lines on the back, cut them into strips and threaded them together. Don't they look amazing!?

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Let's be Sun Smart!

We have been discussing the idea of being "sun smart". This means that we are smart when we're in the sun! It gets very hot where we live and the sun can be very strong. It's almost Summer so we need to start thinking about how we can keep our bodies safe, but still enjoy being in the sunshine.

We wrote persuasive texts about the question "Should we be Sun Smart?" Mrs N is trying out a new way to publish stories, called Simple Booklet.

We did some painting this afternoon. There were lots of beautiful colours to choose from and we had to cover two sheets of paper, using circle patterns. We'll be making them into something special on Thursday!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

I Wanna Iguana!

We're learning about persuasive writing, or expositions. This is when we try to persuade someone to do, or agree to something. We watched a video of a book called I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff, which is about a boy called Alex, who really, really wants a pet iguana. He writes notes to his mum, trying to persuade her to agree.

Here are the arguments Alex used in the story to try to convince his mum to let him have the iguana his friend was giving away:

• It might get eaten by Stinky's dog if we don't take him.
• It's quiet and cute.
• Its cage would stay in my room so you wouldn't even notice it's there.
• By the time it gets too big, I would have moved out anyway.
• I need a new friend.
• I could teach it tricks.
• I'd feed it every day.
• I'd make sure it had enough water.
• I'd clean its cage.
• I'll pay for its food.

He did such a great job persuading his mum that she finally agreed to let him have it! We decided to write to our parents to see if they'd let us have a new pet.

Dear Mum,

I would really like a horse.

I would pay for its food.

I would clean its water every day.

I would clean its stable when it's done a poop.

It would give me exercise.

I hope you get me a horse, please.

Love Charlee

 

Dear Mum and Dad,

I really want a puppy as a pet.

I would buy it dog food with my pocket money.

I would train it two times a day.

I would take it for walks every day in the afternoons.

I would play with it and buy it some toys.

I think it would be a great pet.
Love Allia

Dear Mum,

I really want a shark.

I would buy it toys with my pocket money.

I would keep it in my room and you would not see it.

I would keep it healthy by giving it the right food.

I would keep the door shut.

I really want a shark.

Love Matthew

Earlier in the week, we started making paper mosaics in the shape of Christmas stockings. Most of us finished them today. We needed a lot of patience, especially as our little squares of paper were blowing around in the air-conditioning (it was way too hot to turn it off!).

Alex, Indi and Lachlan with their mosaic Christmas stockings

This term in Sport, we've been going to the local recreation centre to have gymnastics lessons. We do lots of running, jumping, hopping and skipping and it's great!

On Tuesday for news, Kiara brought in some photos of her as a baby. She was really cute! We decided it would be fun and interesting to see what all of The Smarties looked like when we were little, so we're having a Guess-the-Baby competition! We each need to bring in a photo of us when we were babies and give it to Mrs N. It's important that we don't show anyone else, or tell anybody about our photos, otherwise they'll know which is ours when it comes time to guess. Next week, Mrs N will put all the photos up and we're going to fill out a form to guess who-is-who. It's going to be so much fun!


Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

25,000 Hits!

    

The Smarties have reached another milestone. Our blog has had 25,000 hits since February this year! We're amazed and excited! Thankyou to everyone who reads our blog. We've learned a lot from the friends we've made around the world and we find it very useful to check back to see activities we've done, or things we've learned in the past as revision. Hopefully, we'll continue to blog with our Year 3 teacher next year!

We did some more practice with similes today. On strips of paper, we wrote some similes then cut them up so one part was the "as (something) as" part and the other piece was the answer. We put the first parts out on the desks, then we were given some of the second parts. We walked around the room, reading each of the similes to see if the part we had matched. We needed to make sure they made sense. Things like "as green as a clown", or "as brown as the sky" were silly, so we had to keep looking until we found the right one.

In Art this afternoon, we started making paper mosaics. We were given the outline of a Christmas stocking and some strips of coloured card. We needed to cut the strips into little squares and glue them onto the shape, leaving just a little gap in between each piece. It's a bit like the tiles in bathrooms and kitchens. We didn't have time to finish them, so we'll do them again on Thursday and they're going to look great!

Also, thankyou to Alex's mum who came to help us in our classroom this morning!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Our end-of-year concert is coming up, so we've been practising the song we'll be singing. It's called The 3 Rs, by Jack Johnson and it's all about reducing, reusing and recycling. Some of it's tricky to sing, but we're learning fast!

Today, we learned about similes. A simile is a figure of speech that explains how one thing is like another. We can use them to make our writing more interesting and to paint a mind-picture for the reader. They can help to explain things that are difficult to describe. We thought of lots of examples:

• A tall as a giraffe
• As soft as a pillow
• As hard as concrete
• As strong as my dad
• As green as grass
• As pretty as my mum
• As cold as snow
• As light as a butterfly

We chose our four favourite similes and made posters.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Remembrance Day

Yesterday was Remembrance Day. At 11 o'clock, the whole school participated in a prayer service. Many of the children and teachers were wearing poppies, which have a special meaning. We made some in class and learned about some of the things we do on Remembrance Day and why we have it.

Remembrance Day - At 11am on the 11th day of the the 11th month, in 1918, the First World War ended. We now call this Remembrance Day as a way to remind us about how awful war is and how we should try to live peacefully so that people don't have to live through war again.

Poppies - We wear poppies as a sign of respect. The significance of poppies comes from a poem written by an army doctor called John McCrae, in 1915, called In Flanders' Field. His hospital was close to a field where they had been burying the soldiers who had died. Many poppies were growing between the graves, so he wrote a poem that starts like this:

In Flanders’ Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row

One Minute Silence - During the service, we have one minute silence. During this time, everyone thinks about the meaning of the day and about the people who have been killed or injured in wars.

Last Post -This is a tune played on a bugle at the start of the one minute silence. It was traditionally played at the end of the work day for soldiers, but now it's played at war memorial services to symbolise the end of the soldiers' duties.

The Flag - At the beginning of our prayer service, the Australian flag was at half-mast. This means that it was only half way up, which is a sign of respect or mourning. At the end of the service, it was raised to the top.

The Ode - The Ode is a special poem we say on Remembrance Day, as well as other days when we remember wars. It's from a longer poem, called For the Fallen, by Laurence Binyon. It is about how the soldiers who have died will never get older, like we will.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

In the afternoon, we chose some of the things we'd been learning about during the day and made them into Remembrance Day posters.

Indi with her Remembrance Day poster

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Rhombus

We've been learning about a new shape. It's called a rhombus, but sometimes it's also known as a diamond. It looks like a square that's been pushed over a bit.

A square

A rhombus

A rhombus has:

• 4 sides of equal length
• 4 corners
• no right angles

For art this afternoon, we needed to make a rhombus with strips of paper and then make it into a picture. We made kites, fish, a dog, Christmas trees and even the Leaning Tower of Pisa! We think they look awesome!

Last week, Mrs N was contacted by a teacher in Canada. Her class wanted to ask us some questions about school in Australia. Today, we emailed them and told them everything they wanted to know. We also asked them some questions, so we can learn a little about Canadian schools. They live in the province of Saskatchewan in Canada. 

View Larger Map

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Books and Vouchers

As we mentioned in our last post, our class won a commendation in a competition for our drawings of teachers from our school. We won some books for our school library. Our principal suggested that we choose two of the books to keep in our classroom reading boxes. Today, we had a good look at them and chose the books we wanted.

All the books we won for our school!

Mrs N narrowed our choices down by choosing the books most suitable for our age, so we had four to choose from. They were:

The Enormous Crocodile, by Roald Dahl

The Very Itchy Bear, by Nick Bland

Harry and Hopper, by Margaret Wild

Slithering Snakes, from the Ready-to-Read series

We noticed that they were all about animals! To vote, we each wrote down the two books (just the animal names) that we'd most like to keep. We created a graph to show our results. It's a new one for us, called a pie graph. It looks like a pie that's been sliced up. Some of the pieces are bigger than others, depending on the data we use. As you can see, the books we most wanted to keep were Slithering Snakes and Harry and Hooper.

We've finished counting all the vouchers for the Coles Sports for Schools programme. We have a grand total of 35 354 vouchers! What an amazing effort from our little school! We'll be able to choose lots of great equipment!

It's been a lot of work counting all those vouchers but it was a fantastic way to learn about tens, hundred and thousands. We learned that:

10 x 10 = 100

10 x 100 = 1 000

10 x 1 000 = 10 000

Our random daily writing topic was "apples". It needed to be a story that involved an apple in some way. We were very creative and wrote some great stories.
 

The Werewolf

Once upon a time, a princess named Elizabeth wanted to go on a walk to find flowers. "I am going on a walk to Mum's house," she said to her servants. She set off to go to her mum's house.
On the way, she got hungry and she needed a drink. She found an apple. She took a bite and she turned evil! It was getting late and the soldiers were getting worried, so they set off to find her. 

"Elizabeth," they called and out of the bushes came a big, hairy, scary werewolf. "Elizabeth, is that you?" asked one of the soldiers. "Yes, it's me, but I am more powerful," she yelled. She chased after the soldiers. "I'm going to eat you for my dinner." 

She howled and howled while she was chasing the soldiers. "Run," cried a soldier, "Come to me." The werewolf howled. The soldiers ran to the castle and shut the gate but the werewolf could jump over the electric fence. The soldiers pulled the drawbridge from the moat, but the soldiers forgot that the werewolf could jump, so they didn't lock it. 

The werewolf jumped over the moat and pushed the drawbridge down with the chain. "I'm going to get you," howled the werewolf. The werewolf smashed all the windows and found all the soldiers and ate them for dinner.
By Raquel

Apples

Once upon a time, there was an apple tree. It was about to grow an apple. Everyone fought over the apple. 

One day, it fell off. A little girl got it then went to show her mum and dad. They said, "Do you want to eat it now?" She said, "Yes, but first I want to keep the seeds so I can grow an apple tree for everyone."

So, she planted the seeds and everyone was happy.
By Ella

The Princess

Once upon a time, there was a princess who felt like eating an apple, but there were no apples in the kingdom. The princess asked the King if he could send out all his men to find an apple. The King said, "Yes."

The King went to tell his men that the princess felt like eating an apple. All the King's men got on their horses and started looking for an apple. They went to another kingdom and asked if they had any apples. Their king said, "No," so, all the knights kept searching for an apple.

The knights thought they saw an apple tree, but it was a pomegranate tree. The knights kept looking for an apple. 

They saw another kingdom, so they went to it and asked the King if they had any apples. The King said, "Yes," and the knights said, "Can you show up where they are?" The King showed the knights the apples and then one of the knights got an apple and they went back to the castle. 

When the knights got back to the castle, they gave the princess the apple.
By Alex

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Melbourne Cup

Today was Melbourne Cup day. It's a big horse race held in Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November every year. The race is very famous all over Australia and has been held for 150 years! It was shown live on television and the whole school watched it. Our class had a "sweep". This means that everyone picked out the name of one of the horses in the race (without looking) and if their horse came 1st, 2nd or 3rd, they won some Freddo Frogs. Indi, Charlee and Ella were the winners!

The Melbourne Cup is also a day for grown-ups to get dressed-up in fancy clothes. Ladies like to wear pretty, fancy hats. This morning, the girls made hats and the boys made neckties. There was a lot of card and paper for us to choose from, as well as feathers and sequins and other things we could glue on. Don't they look great? We were allowed to wear them all day.

Yesterday, we thought about the things we have been learning during our life. Today, we thought about the gifts we have that help us learn. They are memory, thinking and curiosity.

Memory - Our memory helps us remember how to do things, how things work and what things mean. To test our memory, we studied 15 objects for two minutes, then they were covered up and we went to our desks and wrote down as many as we could remember. Alex and Kiara remembered 10 objects each! It was actually a really tricky thing to do.

Thinking -Thinking means we use our brains to work things out. Our task was to make a horse puppet using a paper bag and some card. Mrs N gave us some instructions, then it was up to us to make them. We had to think about size and shape and what horses look like. We think they're pretty cool.

Curiosity - Being curious means to wonder about things. Wondering about things encourages us to look for answers and learn. We used bubble.us to brainstorm some of the things we wonder about.

We have exciting news! Mrs Mt, our principal, came to our room this morning with a big package. At the end of last term, we entered a competition for World Teacher's Day. We had to draw a picture of a teacher from our school and send it in. The judges loved our drawings and we won a commendation and a big pile of books for our school library! We were very excited and Mrs N and Mrs Mt were very proud of us. If you'd like to see our entries, they're in our Art Week post.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Growing and Learning

Did you know that as we grow, we need to learn new things? We had a think about that today and came up with a list of things we learn at different stages of our lives.

As a baby, we learn:

• how to suck on a dummy 
• not to wake up in the middle of the night
• how to go to sleep
• how to drink from a bottle or from our mum
• how to crawl

As a toddler, we learn:

• how to crawl and then how to walk
• that we shouldn't draw on walls
• how to balance on one foot
• how to ride a bike

When we're in pre-school, we learn:

• to use scissors
• how to glue things
• how to sit still 
• how to write our name
• how to play nicely with other children

Now that we're in Grade 2, we're learning to:

• write in paragraphs
• use big and interesting words in our writing
• be kind and gentle
• rule up margins
• do mental maths

We've learned so much!

Australia is a really, really big country and has many different environments. Aboriginal people lived (and some still live) in desert and coastal regions. We learned that "coastal" means near the ocean. Coastal areas are usually cool, moist and green. There is water available and fruit and fish to eat. Aborigines who lived in the desert live in a much hotter, drier place. There is little water and they need to rely on food such as plants, seeds and animals they can catch, such as kangaroos, goannas and emus.

We watched a video about some bush foods called Honey Ants and Witchetty Grubs. We're not sure we want to eat any of them, but they are very important and popular foods among aboriginal people.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Castle Art

As part of our archaeology theme this term, we've been looking at castles. We found images online and studied the shapes of the buildings and the sorts of roofs, windows and doors they have. We then used rectangle shaped cards as templates to draw the towers, then added all the extra features like moats and flags. It was a really fun activity!

Check out our awesome castle paintings!

Today is our last day of swimming lessons, so next week should be back to normal again!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Swimming Lessons

The Smarties are busy with swimming lessons this week. We have two lessons daily, so we're at the pool for most of the day. We're doing a terrific job of listening to our instructors and doing our best. It's very important that we all learn how to swim well, because Summer is almost here and many of us will be spending a lot of time in swimming pools and at the beach.

 

 

 

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Bat Boxes

What a fantastic day we had! Mr Tonga, from Natsync Environmental, visited our classroom to help us make some bat boxes. He had cut out the pieces we needed and it was our job to glue and screw them together (we even got to use electric drills!). Mrs N was very impressed with how well we worked together. Mr Tonga took the boxes and installed them in trees close to the school. Some of them will have cameras installed, so the number of bats using the boxes can be monitored. It's very exciting to think that our handywork will benefit scientific study!

Here's our artwork from yesterday. We made it by drawing on sheets of foam, covering it with paint and pressing it onto paper. We think they look terrific!

Also, a very big CONGRATULATIONS to Taj and his family on the safe arrival of a new little sister, called Tanaia. She was born on Tuesday night and Taj is a very, very proud big brother.

Big Brother Taj

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Going Batty!

We have a very special activity planned for tomorrow. We'll be building nesting boxes for microbats and we can't wait! Today, we learned all about bats and even did some bat art.

We watched a video to see what they look like close up. They're very cute, but we weren't sure if we liked the look of the sharp little claws on their wings!

Mr Tonga is the man visiting our classroom tomorrow to help us make the boxes. Here he is in a video explaining all about them.

The Smarties are BIG fans of The Magic School Bus and luckily, there's an episode all about bats. We learned lots of interesting things, such as:

• Bats are mammals, which mean they're warm-blooded, have fur and their babies drink milk from their mothers.
• Baby bats are called "pups".
• Bats use echo-location to see, which means they make sounds (that humans can't hear) which echo off objects around them so they can work out where they are.
• They like to hang upside down from rough surfaces.
• Bats are nocturnal, which means they come out to feed at night.
• Bat poo is called guano.
• Mother bats know the sound of their own baby.
• Some bats like to eat insects and some like to eat fruit.

This afternoon in Art, we did print-making. First, we drew a picture on paper about bats. Next, we were given a piece of thin foam and we re-drew our picture onto the foam. Our pencils made an indent in the soft material. We used a roller and black paint to cover the drawing and then we turned it over onto a clean sheet of paper and pressed down hard. When we pulled off the foam sheet, our drawing was there! The lines we made with our pencils were white and the rest was black. It looks just like night-time!


We can't wait until tomorrow!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Found!

Our writing activity today was about finding something. We could choose to write about finding an object, an animal or anything we wanted. Here are three of our stories.

The Magical Potion

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to find a magical potion that would turn her into a mermaid. The little girl had a friend that was a mermaid. The girl's friend said, "The potion is under a tree. Choose a tree and look under it." The little girl found the potion. 

One day the mermaid came and said, "Help, help! The queen has been kidnapped." The girl said, "I'll find her" and she jumped into the water and she saw a glow. She found the glow and there was a queen being held upside down over a basket of boiling lava. She called the police. The girl got the queen down and the evil octopus got put in jail.
By Meg

Connor and the Monster

Once there was a kid called Connor. He was going to bed. He was so tired that he fell asleep straight away. The next day, he was in a monster's ship. The monster was driving the ship. He found a button to get out of the ship. He jumped out of the ship and he had to find his way home. It was a long way from there. 

Connor was near a cave. He thought that was bad. He thought there were big animals in the cave, but there were no animals in the cave. Connor did not know where he was at all. He really had to find his way home. It was almost night time so Connor was getting scared. Connor was in the bush so he could not find his way home at all. 

Connor started to find his way home and he was almost out of the bush. He was getting closer and closer to some houses. He started to remember where he was. Connor was getting closer and closer to home. Connor had only five houses to go, then he would be home. Then, he was three houses away. He was getting very close to home. Then, Connor was only one house away. He got home and ran straight to his mum and gave her a hug.
By Alex

The Lost Shell

Once upon a time, I woke up and went outside. There was a shell on the road. There was no beach around. I was thinking about how the shell got there. Just at that moment, I thought that I should turn the shell over, so I did. There was a name on it. A name I couldn't understand. I asked my mum. My mum didn't know what it said either, so we went from house to house. At last, we found the right house.
By Catherine

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Mystery Object

We tried to solve a mystery today! Mrs N was gardening on the weekend and found something interesting. It was a rock with a bird and some branches painted on it. It looks very old and we were excited to think about where it came from. We worked in groups to think of answers to some of the questions we had about the discovery.

Who made it?

• A man or a lady in the olden days
• An artist
• Aborigines
• The person who lived in the house before Mrs N

What is it for?

• It could be some sort of decorative ornament for display.
• Maybe it was for scaring bugs away (because they're scared of birds).
• It might be a message to someone to tell them there are birds in the area.
• It could have been used to tell a story.
• Maybe it was for attracting other birds.

Why was it in Mrs N's garden?

• The people who lived in her house before her might have left it there.
• A dog might have found it somewhere else and dug a hole and put it in.
• Aborigines might have lost it before the houses were built.
• Aborigines might have buried it to keep it safe and so nobody would find it.
• It might have been left as a message or a warning about birds.
• Burglars might have dropped it and it got covered up by dirt.
• It might have been left behind by someone who had no room to carry it.

Even though we probably won't find out for sure who made the object, it was still interesting to think about.

Mrs N's discovery on the weekend was well-timed, because we're learning about archaeology this term. We watched The Magic School Bus Shows and Tells and learned some very important words that will help us.

Archaeology - Finding out about people from the past based on the things they left behind.

Artifact - Items, or parts of items, made by people.

Fossil - The remains of things that used to be alive.

Hypothesis - A guess about how or why something happened, based on clues.

We have also been busy, busy, busy counting our Coles Sports for Schools vouchers. So far, we've counted over 8,000 of them and we still have quite a few to go!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

We're Back!

We're back from our holidays and happy to be at school for our last term of Grade 2!

Mrs N had a very exciting holiday. She went to South Korea and she brought us back some Korean lollies to try. They were unusual flavours like pumpkin, cream jelly and sesame. We liked them! She also showed us what Korean money looks like. Their currency isn't called "dollars" like it is here in Australia. They use "won" (rhymes with "on"). 1000 won is about 1 Australian dollar.

The Smarties love to dance, so Mrs N showed us some Korean pop music (k-pop). We think they're really good dancers and we loved the catchy tunes.

Our school is participating in the Coles Sports for Schools programme. Each time we spend money at the supermarket, we get a voucher which we bring to school. The school can then use these vouchers to get sporting equipment for us. It's our class's job to count all the vouchers the school collects. This afternoon, we started sorting them into piles so that we can count them easily. It took us all afternoon, because we have SO many vouchers!

Tia, Kelsi and Allia busy sorting vouchers

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N