Our First Video!

Yay! Our new video camera has arrived! We're so excited. We were absolutely brimming with ideas about how we will be able to use it in our classroom and couldn't wait to try it out. Here are some of the things we'd like to do with it.




We decided to start with some reviews of our current home reading books. We did all the camera operating ourselves! We think we did really well for our first try. We're still working on perfecting the sound, so you might need to turn the volume up high!

We came up with a list of things to remember when using the video camera, to keep it safe and to make our videos look good!

• Make sure you're wearing the wrist strap whenever you're holding it.
• Be quiet in the background when people are recording.
• Keep the object or person you're recording in the middle of the screen.
• Wait your turn and be patient.
• Be gentle and sensible.
• Keep watching the screen to make sure you're still pointing in the right direction.
• Hold the camera with two hands to help keep it steady.
• Make sure your fingers aren't over the lens.
• Don't laugh while recording or the camera will wobble!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Our New Learning Tool

We finally have the new piece of equipment we've been waiting for! Can you solve the puzzle to see what it is?



Love from Mrs N

Fantastic Flowers

It's lucky none of The Smarties have hayfever, because our classroom was transformed into a paper plate flower nursery this afternoon! The school fair is coming up in a few weeks and we decided to make some decorations for the Plant Stall, which is the one our parents are organising. We were busy cutting and gluing and making beautiful blooms all afternoon. Our stall is sure to be the most eye-catching!

Charlee, Meg and Caitlin with our sign for the Plant Stall

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Shalom!

"Hello" in Hebrew

This morning, we noticed that Mrs N had a yellow package on her desk. We guessed that it was our long-awaited letters from our friends in Israel and we were right! We opened it and were very excited to see mini flags of Israel and one big flag too! There were also letters from each of them! It was great reading them and learning a little about our friends. We learned that they like to play sports, like we do. We're going to make a display in our room with the things they sent us.
We looked up where Israel is on Google Maps. We learn about Italy in Italian class and we noticed that if we had a boat and we were in Italy, we could sail to Israel as they're both on the Mediterranean Sea (we'd have very sore arms though!).

View Larger Map

We were also curious about Israel's national anthem, so we watched a youtube video so that we could listen to it. We didn't understand any of the words, but we liked the tune.


Our mums loved the presents we made them for Mother's Day. We made them lavender hand cream and some vouchers for us to give them hand massages. We practised them in class last week and we were pretty good at them. Our mums agreed!

In Daily Writing, we wrote about what we did for Mother's Day.

On Sunday night, my sister Shanae and me and Mikayla did my mum's hair and gave her a hand massage.
By Kiara

My mum loved the present and she already had some. She was so happy and we had dinner.
By Caitlin

My mum liked her hand massage and it was good. My mum had some pancakes in bed and she loved it all.
By Kelsi

On Mother's Day, I gave her a hand massage and for dinner we had toast, scones and pizza and it was fun. We went for a horse ride and we had Scott's and Dad's birthday together and I love it.
By Kate

On Mother's Day, I went to the deli for breakfast and I had toast, bacon and baked beans. We gave my mum her presents when my dad was asleep.
By Alex

We were camping on Mother's Day. I gave Mum her presents then we had pancakes with honey, marshmallows, honey, jam, butter and golden syrup on top. Then, we packed up the camper trailer and went home. At home, I gave Mum a free hand massage in front of the television. We ate dinner snuggled with Mum then went to bed.
By Indi

After lunch, we went to the Year 7 classroom and while we were there, we showed them our blog and some of our wikis. They were very impressed and asked their teacher if they could make a class blog too!

In Oral Language we did a listening activity. Mrs N gave us each a picture and then read out some instructions. We needed to listen very carefully and do exactly what she said. It was things like colouring the monkey's hat green, or drawing a ball on the ground. We did really well!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

We Love our Mums

Just 3 more sleeps until we can spoil our mums on their special day! We hope they love our presents. Today, we made a Voice Thread about why we love our mums.



Our holiday digi-art pictures are finally all finished! We did a great job of fitting the photo into a background. It was tricky to plan it so that things were in proportion.

Raquel posing for her photo

Raquel after cutting herself out and adding a background

Mrs N made us some "reading phones" out of plumbing pipe. When we speak into one end, it makes our voice sound very loud at the other end. We can use them to listen to ourselves reading. They're a great help when we're proofreading our writing. We can read it aloud to ourselves, but very quietly, so we don't disturb those around us.

Isaac and Ella using our new "reading phones"

We used the laptops all day today. We typed our holiday sentences using Microsoft Word, we played Tutpup, we read the blogs of our blogging buddies and we had a chance to play some of games we like, like Jigzone and Wild Yourself. We're getting really good at logging into the school network and typing in URLs.

We are learning, through experience, that when we type in URLs we need to remember a few things:

• there are no spaces
• we use lower case letters unless the address we're copying has a capital in it
• we need to be careful that we're using a colon (:) instead of a semi-colon (;) when we type http://
• just one letter, number or symbol can make all the difference, so our typing needs to be accurate
• if we have visited the site before, the address may be saved in history, so we can click that, if it appears in the drop-down menu, to save some time

We hope our mums have a fantastic day on Sunday!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Top Secret Business

If you're one of The Smarties' mums, could you please stop reading this post! It contains some clues about your Mothers' Day presents.

We were very busy this morning, putting the finishing touches to our gifts. We even had to practise part of our present! It was a lot of fun, but we can't say too much, in case some of our mums didn't stop reading! We're excited about giving them our presents. Hopefully, they'll help them have a relaxing and enjoyable Mothers' Day on Sunday.

This afternoon, our class held a Paraliturgy. We invited our parents and anyone else in our family who wanted to come. We had mums, dads, grandmothers, aunties and even big sisters in our room! Thankyou to Kiara, Isaac, Jack and Ella who all had a part to read and did a fantastic job.

Afterwards, we had some time to read books with our visitors.

Jake showing his mum what he's learning about Australia

Taj, Jack's mum and Jack

On Thursday, we're using the laptops all day! Yippee! Mrs N has a big list of things she wants us to get done, including using Microsoft Word to type up our stories from the holidays so we can print them out and attach them to our digi-art pictures. We are also going to be having a good look at the results of our Monster Exchange project. After many technical difficulties, all the pictures are finally on our wiki. We had a look at a few of them already and are very proud of how well they have turned out. On Thursday, we'll be able to leave some voice messages for our partner school in Detroit, Michigan. We're also going to do some work on our new Aussie Slang Dictionary.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N

Canberra - the Capital City of Australia

We got an email from our friends in Israel. They are learning about capital cities around the world and asked us some questions about the capital of Australia. As we're learning about Australia this term, this worked out perfectly and we've learned some things too! Here are their questions and our answers.

1. What is your capital city?
The capital of Australia is Canberra (many people think it's Sydney, but it isn't!). The name is from an Aboriginal word, Kanbarra, meaning "meeting place".

2. When was the declaration of the city as a capital?
After Australian became a nation in 1901, we needed to choose a capital city. Melbourne and Sydney (the two largest cities) both wanted to be chosen, but it was decided instead to build a special city especially made to be the Australian capital. A section of land, part way between Sydney and Melbourne, was set aside and it was named the "Australian Capital Territory" and this is where Canberra was built. The site was chosen in 1908 and building begin in 1913.

3. What are the government institutions in the city?
Canberra is where all of the Members of the Australian Parliament meet to make decisions about our country.The building they meet in is called Parliament House. Here is a picture of it.

There is also the Australian War Memorial, the Australian Institute of Sport, the National Gallery, the National Museum and many other places of national interest.

4. Is there an embassy in the city?
There are many embassies in Canberra, including an Israeli one! This is what the entrance looks like.

5. What is the symbol of the city?
The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has a few symbols. The flag has the Southern Cross (which is a constellation seen mainly from the Southern Hemisphere) and the Canberra Coat of Arms on it. It looks like this:

The Coat of Arms for Canberra includes 2 swans (one black and one white, representing the Aboriginal and European people). King George V granted the Coat of Arms in 1928.

The ACT also has the Royal Bluebell as its floral symbol.

 

We hope this answered all of your questions, Hanita and class. Let us know if you'd like to know anything else!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N