An experiment for Santa

On Monday our class received a letter from Santa.
Santa told us that Rudolph is sick this year. He has caught a cold and won't be able to help pull the sleigh this year.
Santa asked us to find out which surface is the best surface for his sleigh to travel on.
Yesterday we did an experiment to find the solution to our problem.
We built a model sleigh and tried pulling it across different surfaces to see which would be easiest for the sleigh to go on.
We measured the size of the force with a Newton meter.

We used a Newton meter to see if it needed a big force or a small force.

We tried pulling the sleighs across surfaces like grass, sand, tiles, and soapy lino. We don't have any icy places in Australia because it is too hot, so we used soapy lino to make it slippery like ice.

We found out that some of the surfaces were better than others. It took a big force to pull along rough surfaces like sand, carpet and bitumen. It took only a small force to pull along smooth surfaces like lino, soapy lino and cement.

Today we are writing letters to Santa to tell him our recommendations.

We hope Rudolph gets better soon.

Soapy lino was easy to pull on. It only needed a little force. 

In the sand it was very hard to pull the sleigh because it kept getting bogged. 

The sleigh could slide along the grass but not as easily as on the soapy lino.

Our 2C Monsters

We have been writing descriptions about some monsters that we drew. Read our descriptions and see if you can imagine what they might look like from what we have written.
When you have read our descriptions you could leave a reply for us. We love getting comments!
If you draw our monsters please email them to us so we can compare them to our original drawings. We can't wait to see what you think!

Quadblogging Monsters

Mr Ingleby's Class from the UK have used their creativity to imagine some interesting monsters. They have written descriptions of their monsters and posted them on their blog. Read their descriptions and try to imagine what their monsters look like.

Can you draw their monsters? What other information do you need?

Our Triple Excursion!

Last week, 2C went on an exciting triple excursion. We went to the Lego Centre, the museum and the State Library.
First we went to the lego centre. We learnt about toys and how they move. We built three different toys with the lego. One was a spinning top with cogs to make it spin. One was a merry-go-round that had a pulley to make the people go around. The last one was a jack-in-the-box that had a lever to make Jack pop up. We had lots of fun learning about how things move at the Lego centre.
Next we went to the museum. We had morning tea in the Dinosaur Garden and then explored the museum to find out more about collections and displays. We are planning our own display for our museum for our grandparents.
After lunch, we went to the State Library. First Mrs Batham read us a story and then we had a surprise visit from Maya's grandma who works at the State Library. She showed us some "artist's books". We had never seen one of these before but we decided we should make one of our own when we got back to school.
It was a very busy day. Our parents who helped us slept very well that night.

New Quadblogging Friends

This term we are part of a new quadblogging group.
In this round our buddies are from Texas, USA and the UK.

Over the next few weeks we will visit these blogs and learn a little about our new friends.

The blogs are:

Tadlock Elementary, USA

Chickenley Community JIN School, UK

Visit the blogs and leave a comment if you like!

What games did Grandma and Grandad play?

Last week we wrote letters to our grandparents and posted them "the old-fashioned way". We asked them some questions to help us with our historical inquiry about how toys and games have changed since the past.
This week we have been very lucky to have received a number of replies already. We have been very excited to receive our letters and have been extremely interested in the answers to our questions.

 

We have discovered that our grandparents spent a lot of time playing outside. Some of them were children at about the time of World War II or just after this time so their families were quite poor and they didn't have many store-bought toys.

A common thing to play with seems to be the billycart. We think that building a billycart and racing it down a hill sound like a lot of fun but just a bit dangerous.

Travel back in time to 1938 and explore Colum's backyard on the My Place website to have a go at building and racing a billycart.

What games did your grandparents play? What toys did they have?

Science Fun!

This week we have looked at different ways that toys can be moved.
We can:

pull

rock

push

tug

twist

turn

drag

spin

lift

press

pump

glide

wiggle

squeeze

and more!

Play these BBC science games on-line:
Game 1 - Pushes and Pulls
Game 2 - Forces and Movement

What did you learn about the ways toys can move from these games?

Marvellous Mammandurs

The Mammandur is a spinning top that was played with by Aboriginal children of Awngthim, Weipa in Queensland.
Traditionally the mammandur was made from beeswax and a stick. It was spun by rubbing the stick between two palms or by using the thumb and middle finger to twist it.
We made our own mammandur out of wooden sticks and play dough. We made a circular disc from the playdough and pushed the skewer through the middle of the circle. We discovered that it worked best if we put a little bit of play dough under the disc so it didn't keep falling down. We tried using different methods of spinning the mammandur.

We think it would be interesting to see a real mammandur one day. We wonder if there are other toys that were played with by Aboriginal children and if there are other spinning toys used by children in other cultures.

Our Marvellous Toys

This week we listened to an old song about a marvellous toy and watched an animated version on YouTube. We also read a book about the same marvellous toy.

The artist who created the animation and the artist who illustrated the book had used their imaginations to think about what the toy might have looked like.
We decided to have a go too!

Here are our pictures of the marvellous toy:

Describe your marvellous toy.

What does it look like?

What can it do?

Why do you like your marvellous toy?

Toys, Toys, Toys!

This term we are learning about toys and games in both History and Science.
We are going to have a lot of fun through our inquiry units.

Find out some interesting information about how toys have changed.

Complete an activity about how toys have changed.

Happy Father's Day!

This Sunday is Father's Day in Australia.
We are very lucky to have such wonderful fathers!
Our dads do lots of things for us and we love them very much.
Why do you love your dad? Why is your dad a hero?
Send your Dad a special Father's Day message by commenting on our blog!

Kids Teaching Kids Week was a lot of fun!

This week our school celebrated Kids Teaching Kids Week.
There were lots of activities around our school.
We went to our Year 5 buddies and they taught us about how important it is to not throw rubbish in our drains because it ends up in our rivers and then into our oceans.
Sea creatures can die because of our litter. We must pick up our litter and try to recycle instead. Turtles eat plastic bags because they think they are jellyfish.

We visited the Preps and learnt about native bees. We found out that native bees don't sting but they do bite. Bees are very important in our world because they help plants to grow by spreading pollen. We all need bees to live.

We listened to another Year 2 class talk about rubbish. We were amazed by how much rubbish we throw out every lunch time at our school. We can use containers instead of wrappers to help cut down on our rubbish.

What did you learn during Kids Teaching Kids Week? 

How can we help our environment so we can have a better world to live in?

Kids Teach Kids!

This week is Kids Teaching Kids week at our school so we have been working with our buddies. They have taught us about persuasive texts and they helped us put our ideas together to summarise the work we have been doing about living sustainably with native wildlife.
We used our iPads to create videos we can share with other students in our school to teach them about living in harmony with native animals, especially possums.
First we used our favourite new app: Pic Collage to make a picture about our ideas and then we used Sonic Pics to record our voices explaining our ideas. There were lots of different jobs we had to do when working with our partners and our buddies. Some of us had great ideas, others could write the ideas down quickly. Some of us are very good at using the iPads to make picture collages, others are great at reading with clear voices. When we work together we can create great things!
You can watch our videos here!

Olivia and Joshua

Hannah and Fumi

Kyan and Ryan

Nathan and Nic

Ella and Maya

Ben and Edward

Sam and James

Amelia and Charlotte

Ella and Jacinta

Penelope and Sophia

Hunter and Zac

Harrison and Jacob

What else could people do to live more harmoniously with native animals? 

What reasons can you give for your ideas?

A Perfect Possum Party!

On Wednesday we went to a Perfect Possum Party and met some new friends: Madelaine, Karl, and Mrs Muddle-up.
It was not like a people party because we did not have party games and party food, but we did learn a lot about being possums!
We have learnt to see the world through possum eyes.

If you were a possum, what would be your perfect possum place? What might you see, hear, smell, taste and feel?

Mysterious Happenings

Yesterday some curious things happened at school.
Firstly, Mr Mitchell came in and delivered a mysterious parcel to us. It was from a strange lady who said her name was Mrs Muddle-up.
Inside the package was a story about Mrs Muddle-up, Mongo and Maddy.
After we read the story, the sun finally came out and we could get the chance to go into our playground and do some deep listening and active exploring. We discovered lots of evidence that showed that there are many of Earth's Treasures in our school grounds.
We found some possum scats and some leaves that looked like they had been nibbled by something and we noticed some scratches on the trees that showed that some creatures had been climbing there.
This morning we were surprised when we arrived at our classroom and we found feathers and sparkles on our desks and some gum leaves on the floor and even a little piece of fabric caught in the door!
Zac made an inference that Mrs Muddle-up had been visiting us while we were not there. The evidence supports Zac's inference.
Sophia noticed that Mrs Muddle-up had left a note! She has asked us to help her invent some magic potion recipes for "Bush Magic Potion".
We know that some of the ingredients will be gum leaves, feathers and glitter.
What else would you put into a Bush Magic Potion?
How would you mix the ingredients in the recipe?

Sophia & Wilbur

Last week Wilbur came to stay at my house.  Wilbur got lots of cuddles from me in the car on the way home from school.  When I arrived home I had  some afternoon tea straight away and Wilbur had a little nibble! 

Later it was time for Ballet and Wilbur went along and watched the class in a pink outfit.  Wilbur decided he does not want to go to any more Ballet classes for the 2C girls.

Wilbur sat at the table for dinner with my family and then he came and hopped onto my lap for a story in bed.    Wilbur had an excellent time at my house and I hope he will visit me again later in the year.

Wilbur's Big Night Out!

Wilbur came with me to after school care.  Then we had pizza for tea but
Wilbur didn't want ham and pineapple.  So Mummy took Wilbur to the 2C Mums
dinner.  Wilbur had a good time. 
by James

Charlotte and Wilbur

This afternoon, Wilbur came to visit.

After school, when I went to tennis lessons Wilbur wanted to join in.

Wilbur sneaked past Mum to the tennis court.

He found me!

Wilbur came onto the court and helped me to pick up the balls.

Wilbur was so helpful I let him hit some tennis balls with my racket.

When we got home we all had dinner together.

Wilbur had a bath while my sister and I had showers.

Mummy read us a story and then we went to bed.

Having Wilbur to visit is great fun.

The Junior Sports Carnival

Today it was our Junior Sports Athletics Carnival. We all went to the oval to run in races and to participate in the field events.
First we did some cheers in our teams. The teams were Lawson, Kendall, Paterson and Wright.
After the cheers we had our running races. We ran 100 metres. There were ribbons for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. We felt a bit nervous at the start of the race but we felt proud of our efforts.
After a quick break for morning tea, we did our field events. The field events were sack race, javelin, discuss, hammer throw, tunnel ball, shot put and the egg and spoon race (but they weren't real eggs - just ping pong balls).
We felt awesome but exhausted after our big day.

Go Wright!

Lawson is Awesome!

Hooray for Paterson!

Three cheers for Kendall!

Sack Races

Wilbur doing Shot Put

Mrs Standen and Mrs Parkinson showing us how to do a three-legged race

Ready, set, GO!

What a day! What a week!

Besides being a once in a lifetime chance to see the Venus transit, today was also Queensland Day and yesterday was World Environment Day.
It has been a very busy week!
We wrote ways that we can help our planet and we tidied up our school grounds.
We made Queensland Day sunnies with pineapples.
We looked pretty funny in our sunnies!

Once in a lifetime!

Today something very exciting happened that will only happen once in about 100 years and 2C got to witness it! Venus went in front of the Sun. It only happened from 8.45am this morning until 2.25pm this afternoon so we wondered if our quadblogging buddies in the UK might have missed it because they were asleep.
We couldn't look at it by ourselve because if you look straight at the sun it will hurt your eyes and it could even make you blind.
If you want to find out more about the Venus Transit, you can read about it on the web on this link.
We were lucky because Mrs Hunt had some special glasses that we could all take turns at using so we could see this exciting thing in the sky.
We looked a bit funny with the glasses on but our faces looked very excited.