Witches and Wizards

Our Daily Writing topic today was "Write a story about a witch or a wizard." Immediately, our ideas started brewing! Our vocabulary brainstorm came up with words like potion, castle, dragon, poison, wart, magic, cauldron and broom. Here are some of our stories.

Once upon a time, there were 3 girls. Their names were Too Nice, Horrid and Very Horrid. When Horrid and Very Horrid were playing, Too Nice said "Can I play?" "No," said Horrid. "Go away and see Babar Yargar and ask for a toad with a diamond jacket," said Horrid. "Ok," said Too Nice. So, she went to Babar Yargar and she did lots of jobs but did not finish so she knew she'd be roasted, but the doll her mother gave her before she died did the rest of the work so she got a frog with a diamond jacket. It ate Horrid and Very Horrid and from now on Too Nice was normal from then on.
By Indi

Once there was a big rain forest and a witch lived in a secret society in the rain forest. She was no ordinary witch. She was a special witch and no-one knew where she lived. She lived in a black castle and she got married to a wizard and the wizard and the witch lived happily ever after.
By Kate

Once upon a time, in a castle, there was a witch. She was catching lots of children and putting them in a cage with a snake.
By Kiara

There once was a witch. She was a nasty witch. Every Halloween, she would steal people's lollies.
By Jack

One day, there was a witch and a dragon and they saw a castle. She went to the castle and used her magic and they lived happily ever after.
By Kelsi

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful forest and there were unicorns and flowers. One day, a nasty witch and a dragon turned the beautiful forest into a dark forest and the unicorn turned into a dragon and the flowers died. The dragon blew fire at the trees and the witch got caught by a nice dragon and from that day there were no more spells.
By Allia

Once upon a time, a wizard tried to destroy the world. He used magic but he lost his magic, so he asked his sister the witch. She gave him some of her magic but he forgot to destroy the world.
By Isaac

We learned about adjectives today. They are words used to describe something. We needed to think of a big list of words that described our mums. We thought of heaps of really good ones!  We can't say what we did with these words though, because it has something to do with our presents for Mother's Day, which is coming up in just under two weeks (May 9th)!

We did some more work on our holiday digi-art today. After we wrote about something we did in the holidays, we had to position our bodies so it looked like we were doing one of our holiday activities. We took photos and then printed them and cut them out. After that, we drew a background for our photo. We had to think about position and size, so that our cut-out picture fitted in well. Here is Indi's. She finished hers today. Doesn't it look great? We'll show you everyone else's when they're finished.

 Indi at the Aquarium

When we came back from lunch, we noticed that there was a big concrete truck near our classroom. It was for the floor of the new kindergarten building. We stood and watched the workmen for a while. We saw how the concrete came down a long tube from the back of the truck after it was spun around and around inside it. When it came out, it was all lumpy, but the men had special long poles that they used to make it all smooth. They wore big gumboots to walk around in it. We thought it looked fun! We're lucky that we're going to be able to see how buildings are made.

The workmen laying down the concrete for our new building

We've started learning about Australia. Our activity today was about our states and territories. We learned that there are 6 states and 2 territories in Australia. We labeled the map on the IWB with each of their names and then copied them onto a blank map. We needed to be careful to remember to use capital letters at the start of the words because they are proper nouns. Here are some of our finished maps.

Allia, Jack, Caitlin and Joel with their maps.

Mrs N is going to look at video cameras tomorrow, so maybe we can post our first video on Thursday!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Earth Day

Today is World Earth Day and we did a lot of thinking about ways that we can help look after the Earth. This morning, we did a brainstorm using bubbl.us, and thought of many things we can do. You can click on the image below and scroll in and out, or drag it around, to read what we came up with.



We made an Earth Day pledge, promising to make sure it's Earth Day every day! Here is the pledge we wrote:

The Smarties' Earth Day Pledge

We promise to look after the Earth

by taking care of water and using it carefully,

by recycling whatever we can at home and at school,

and by caring for the environments of our plants and animals.

We did a mini clean-up of the oval, because when we went out to sport, we realised there was a lot of rubbish lying around. We hope it's none of the Smarties who leave their wrappers on the grass! We decided that if we ever notice someone leaving their rubbish behind,we should remind them how important it is to keep our school clean and tidy. If they don't pick it up, we'll pick it up for them.

Before the holidays, Mrs N asked us to find a postcard to send to our blogging friends in Israel. Many of us chose postcards from places we visited over the Easter break. They all have very beautiful pictures of plants, animals or scenery from Australia. Today, we wrote messages on them and we're posting them tomorrow. We hope they like them!

The Smarties with our Australian postcards ready to send to Israel.

We had fun today! Happy Earth Day!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Back to School!

Today is the start of Term 2 at school. We had exciting, fun-filled holidays. During Daily Writing, we wrote about our holidays and we'll be making digi-art this week to show you some of the things we did, so check back another time to see!

When we got to school, we were allowed to choose which desks we sat at today. Mrs N said that we can stay where we are for the rest of the term as long as she sees that we're getting all our work done as well as we can. We came up with a list of things we need to remember to make this happen, because we don't want her to have to move us!

• Remain quiet during quiet times.
• Keep our eyes on our own work.
• Keep all four feet of our chairs on the ground.
• Use inside voices.
• Keep our hands to ourselves.
• Be kind and polite always.
• Be sensible.
• Let other people work in peace.
• Our textas are for drawing, not for constructing rockets!
• Our rulers are for ruling up and measuring, not for sword fighting!

Our school looked different when we got here this morning. We have some new buildings going up. The very big tree in the Pre-Primary playground was cut down so that we could build a new kindy. We are also getting a new library. At the moment, there is a lot of sand and builder's equipment. It'll be interesting to see the buildings being built.

Our Thinking Hats activity had us thinking about "What if we were nocturnal?" We know that "nocturnal" means being active at night and resting during the day.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Welcome Back!

Happy Easter!

Today was the last day of school for Term 1. We are now lucky enough to be on holidays for two weeks! Lots of The Smarties are going camping, some will be going to the movies and some of us are going to be staying home and playing with our family and friends. We've been working very hard and deserve a break!

Mrs N was very pleased when she came to school today, because there was a note on her desk telling her that The Smarties won the "Miss Venice" prize for being the best behaved class, during Italian lessons, in the whole school! We got a special basket with a bear in it, to keep in our classroom for a while. We are very proud of ourselves!

Our Signorina Venezia Bear

This morning, the whole school did Stations of the Cross. This is where we remember the things that happened to Jesus on Good Friday. We walked around the school and stopped to listen to stories and say prayers at each station. Our class was asked to act out the second station, which is about Jesus starting to carry the cross.

For Daily Writing today, we had to think about our favourite parts of the term. We looked back on all our blog entries and were surprised to remember some of the things we've done. We didn't realise we'd been so busy! Here are our favourite things about this term:

Kyle - I liked it when Mrs N put pictures of us on the blog pretending we were in the snow. It is fun having a blog. We're famous.

Kate - This term, I liked going on the computers and when we played Tutpup. I liked tasting all of the food and they tasted so, so, so, so good and I liked it when the Eagles came.

Joshua - We had the computers for 3 days and we did Tutpup. We did the Stations of the Cross today.

Raquel - In Term One, the Eagles came and Rick the Rock the Eagle came too and he was funny. He tripped over the bench and we got a good photo.

Tia - On the first day of school, I said to Josh that I felt like I was new. We played computer and it was fun and we played Tutpup.

Ella - This term, I liked when we got a package from Kentucky. We got Goldfish and a jam sandwich book and a card from all of them.

Jake - In Term One, we made masks. We did Clean Up Australia Day. We made bug catchers. We made bug stories and used computers for a whole day.

Catherine - In Term One, we had Wacky Hair Day. My hair was in lots and lots of little plaits with hair spray. My plaits were blue and the middle was pink.

Matthew - I liked it when we did the tasting of the Hot Cross Buns. The Eagles came to school to tell us about healthy lunches.

Jack - My favourite part of Term One was when we made the blog. I like the blog because it has lots of fun things.

Charlee - This term, we made some monsters on the computers and we designed them. We printed all the Wordles off the printer. Some were sideways and it was fun. We did Tux Paint.

Kiara - My favourite part was when we got to do our masks on the computer and when we got to colour them in.

Minnesota - I liked when Mrs N tricked us by pretending the koala was talking to us about the Mobile Muster. I liked doing Stations of the Cross and playing Tutpup.

Taj - I liked when we got the computer for the whole day and made a mask and did Tux Paint.

Caitlin - We did a taste test of Hot Cross Buns and I liked all of them and I didn't know which one to pick.

Alex - My favourite things that we did in Term One were getting the Goldfish from Kentucky and Wacky Hair Day. I liked the computers and our Daily Writing books.

Noah - My best day was when Mrs N tricked us with the newspaper article about the kids being off the streets at last! It was funny when we wore hats for Hats for Haiti Day and I liked when we saw a sprint car.

Joel - We did Mobile Muster. I liked playing Tutpup on the computers. I do Reading Recovery.

Isaac - I want to go back to when Mrs N pretended and told us about the newspaper article. It was fun and funny. I liked the Hot Cross Buns and when we made masks.

We had a good look at our Easter Traditions Wiki today. Many of the other countries have put information about how they celebrate Easter. It was very interesting to read. Some countries like Canada and Poland have traditions a bit like ours, but some countries, like Thailand and Israel don't have Easter at all, but they have other celebrations at around the same time, which they have told us about. Check out our wiki to read it for yourself!

Mrs L, our teacher from last year, came to visit us today! She brought her little baby, called Charlie. He's so cute! He didn't cry at all. We asked her lots of questions about where she's been and about the baby. We loved having her visit.

Mrs L and Charlie

There was super excitement this afternoon during our traditional school Easter Egg raffle! Most people had tickets. There were a lot of prizes and a few of The Smarties won something!

Kate, Alex, Tia and Isaac with the prizes they won

We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday. We'll be back at school on Tuesday, April 20th, eager and enthusiastic to begin learning all about Australia and its animals.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

A Note from The Easter Bunny

Easter Note Generator