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Sugar was once so valuable it was called "white gold". In class, we tasted some sugar cane. Do you remember what it was like? To get white table sugar from sugar cane takes a lot of processing. Ask a parent to show you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBOou6cahtw We now know that too much sugar is not healthy for our bodies. Which foods have a lot of sugar in them? By the way, go to the new Maths page to find the link to the money activity we tried in class.
Meet Funi, the giant panda at the Adelaide Zoo. Here she is munching on bamboo, her staple food. The zoo keepers look after her and Wang Wang, her partner, very well: they are both healthy and safe.
This term, we will learn about what we can do to keep ourselves healthy and safe. There are important choices for us to make about the foods we eat, the kind of physical exercise we do as well as about personal hygiene and safety. Last week, we took a "bendy bus" to Chatswood to experience Chinese culture. In the morning, we listened to musicians play the pipa, guzheng and erhu, three traditional Chinese instruments. The performance was arranged by Mr Eric Hong (see http://emilymax.com.au). Afterwards, it was time to try out our chopstick skills! We walked to Shanghai Stories 1938 at Chatswood Concourse for lunch. Plates brought to our tables tempted us with pork dumplings,spring rolls, fried rice, sweet and sour pork, salt and pepper calamari and sauteed green beans with minced pork.. Back at the Culture Centre, there was an engaging lesson about Taiwan and a masterly display of puppets. Vincent, the amazing puppeteer, will be in Darling Harbour on Sunday the 8th September. For more info, you can visit: http://www.facebook.com/taiwanfestival My thanks to Ms Eva Angel, OCAC Taiwan, Mr Eric Hong as well as to the parents and teachers for a memorable day. MP. Click here for more about our Unit on China. Doesn't this Chinese Warrior look grand? We have tethered the horse outside our classroom. The rider says he is coming on our excursion because he enjoys Chinese music, food and puppets. Thank you Jonathan and everyone who has brought in the permission slips early. Visit our China page here.
We launch the term looking at different types of transport, both old and new: horse and tractor, hot air balloon and space shuttle, canoe and ocean liner. We'll be asking how transport meets our needs as well as how it can create problems of its own. A city like Sydney depends on a system of transport -- what a system is and what happens when it doesn't function properly are some of the things we'll be considering.
Parents are cordially invited to give a short talk to the class on one form of transport. If you would like to share a trip or voyage made interesting by how you travelled (camel? hovercraft? bullet train?), or would like to show off a toy, model or video related to our topic, please drop me a line. The children always welcome and appreciate such visits! MP. Many thanks to the visitors who came to share childhood memories with us. Their stories took us back in time and sometimes transported us to distant places.
Some students have not completed all their homework tasks at Maths Online. I would like to encourage everyone to finish them off before the new term starts. Click on http://www.mathsonline.com.au/students. MP Today, we travelled back in time, back to 1913, in fact. The children dressed in “old-fashioned costume”, played games which required no electricity and listened to an imposing schoolmaster, Mr Keith Baverstock (in those days, teachers did most of the talking). Mr Baverstock arrived with chalk and slates, ink and ink pens, to give the children a taste of what a classroom 100 years ago might have been like. Much value was then placed on neat handwriting. Mr Baverstock told us that a single teacher would sometimes have to manage more than 100 students. Discipline was therefore severe: desks were all arranged facing the front to discourage children from talking, or even glancing at each other. In primary grades, they would be given the strap if their work or behaviour fell short of the mark. Click here for more. We were all happy to return to our 2013 classroom but impressed by what we had experienced and heard. Next month, we have planned a visit from Classrooms Past (http://classroomspast.com).
Children will be able to learn first hand about what many schools were like in 1913. It was a time when there were no computers but slates and slate pencils, pens and ink. Your child will be assigned to either a morning or afternoon session. We will explain to the children that they will be in a “role play”. Desks will be in rows and they will face the board. Boys and girls will be seated separately. To add realism, we ask that you send your child to school on the day with a simple costume. Dressed, your students get so much more out of their “Colonial School”.
A note will be sent home shortly with all the details of our incursion. I would like to extend a warm welcome to the parents and children starting Year 2 in 2013. For our Inquiry Unit in Term 1, we will be exploring the past and considering what history might teach us. In particular, we want to find out how the world might have been different for those who had their childhood in the 1900s. To help us, I would like to invite parents and grandparents of the children in 2P to visit the class for about 30 minutes and share with us:
If you think you would like to take part, please drop me a line with your name, phone number and the place and decade of your childhood. MP. Did you work out the three missing words in our Advent Quiz?
Here they are: Let us travel to Christmas By the light of a star Let us go to the hillside Right where the shepherds are. Let us see shining angels Singing from heaven above. Let us see Mary cradling God's holy child with love. "Let Us Travel to Christmas" (from 1000 Prayers for Children, Lion Children's Books, 2003) This new, little web site is born. It promises to help foster a learning community. We hope to see it grow and meet the needs of parents, children and teachers.
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October 2019
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