The Easter Bilby

In Australia, we have many symbols of new life that we recall at Easter time.
Yesterday in our class liturgy we used eggs, seeds, mealworms, butterflies and the crucifix as symbols to remind us of the Easter story.
A special Australian Easter symbol is the Easter Bilby. The bilby is an endandered Australian animal that looks a bit like a rabbit. We want to give our endangered animals hope for a new and better life at Easter too.
We made Easter Bilby baskets from recycled milk cartons with our buddies today and we wrote a report about bilbies too.

Bilbies
Bilbies are marsupials. This means they have a pouch.
Bilbies have fluffy grey fur and big, rabbit-like ears.
They have a black tail with a white tip.
They have a long snout and sharp claws.
Bilbies use their sharp claws for digging their burrows or to protect themselves.
They are nocturnal. During the day they sleep in their burrow because it is too hot.
Bilbies live in the desert in Australia.
Bilbies eat insects and their larvae, spiders, fruit, bulbs, seeds and very small animals.
Bilbies are endangered because other animals like feral rabbits eat the same foods as the bilbies and take over their habitats. Some feral animals like cats and dogs eat the bilbies.
We have the Easter Bilby as a symbol for Easter to remind us that we need to give the bilby a chance at a new life.

Welcome to our Quadblogging Buddies!

This week it is our turn to host our Quadblogging Buddies.
Our buddies are from 3 other schools around the world:
Room 19 Pinehill School are from New Zealand
Year 4V are from UK
and
2W@TKS are from Saudi Arabia
This is our last week of Term One so this week we are remembering all of the fun things we have enjoyed so far this year.
In Science we enjoyed growing plants and watching our mealworms grow and change.
In Maths we learnt about seasons and calendars. We practised strategies for addition, learnt about shapes and measurement and built marble ramps to showcase our skills in 3D shapes and measuring with metres and centimetres.
In English, we read and enjoyed lots of Eric Carle books. We talked about the strategies we use for reading and got better at reading by practising "read to self" and "read to someone". We have learnt about nouns, verbs and adjectives.

We have enjoyed learning, reflecting and blogging.

What have you learnt so far this year?
We have two weeks holidays over Easter. Do you have holidays soon?

Marvellous Marble Machines

This week we have been busy making marble ramps in Maths.
We had to apply what we knew about 2D and 3D shapes as well as measurement and data in order to complete the challenge.
We used boxes, cardboard tubes and masking tape to create our constructions. We tried to make our designs interesting by including twists and turns.
Learning is always fun in 2C!

Mr Mitchell tells us about the Smiddy Challenge

On Wednesday we had a special visit from our assistant principal, Mr Mitchell.
He came to tell us about a very special bike ride he is going to do in September.
It is called the ‘Smiddy Challenge’. Each year about 50 pushbike riders journey from Brisbane to Townsville to honour a man, Adam Smiddy, who died from cancer at the age of only 26. The riders also raise money for Cancer Research and raise awareness about cancer.
We all wore yellow and donated a 'yellow' coin to the Mater Foundation.

We had lots of questions to ask Mr Mitchell about his adventure.
How long will it take you to get to Townsville?
It will take me eight days of riding a pushbike. I will get up when the sun comes up and right through until the sun goes down.
Where will you get your food from?
I’m very lucky because I’m doing this ride with about 30 or 40 other people and a man named Kevvy will be driving a big truck with all of my stuff and lots of food for us. But there are also some very kind people along the way who are going to cook us dinner or make us lunch us when we stop, so we don’t have to take all of our own food.
What if you don’t like the food they give you?
I like all kinds of foods from vegetables to pasta. I love sausages and chops. But I couldn’t carry all my food on my bike by myself so I am very lucky that these people are going to help me.

Which towns will you travel through?
Some of you will have never seen these towns before. On the first day I will leave from Brisbane and travel to Nanango. Nanango is not a very big town but that is our first stop. It will take about 10 or 11 hours to get there. And then the next one is Eidsvold, and then we go to a place called Biloela – it is small but it has shops like Mc Donalds and KFC. Then we go to a place called Belyando Crossing. Belyando Crossing is so tiny there are only about 20 people who live in this town! The second last town is Charters Towers. And on the last day we will ride to Townsville.

What type of weather are you going to go through?
We do this ride in September because generally the weather in September is no rain, not too hot but not too cold. September is a really good time of year. The only problem is that sometimes it gets very windy and the wind will blow from the north so we will be riding into the wind. It is very hard to ride your bike into the wind. Last year the weather was fantastic for the riders but the year before it rained and rained and then when it finally stopped raining it was really hot! I hope we have good weather this year.
Why are we wearing yellow?
Remember we learnt that yellow is the colour of hope and happiness. I am doing this ride to raise money for people with cancer. This will give them hope and make them happier. I hope we can find a cure for cancer.
How far can you ride your bike now?
The longest I have ever ridden my bike in one day so far is 165 kilometres. On the first day I have to ride over 200 kilometres! The shortest day is 164 kilometres. This is not something you can go out and do tomorrow.I have to train a lot more!
Where are you going to sleep?
Sometimes in houses, sometimes in tents, or sometimes we will be billeted with nice people.
Will you drink water when you are riding?
I will drink a special energy drink called Spizz. It has water and lots of energy in it.
Where will you go to the toilet?
If I am in a town, I will use their toilets. But if I am in the bush… sometimes you just have to find a big tree!
How long will it take?
It will take 8 days but about 10 hours of riding each day!

Wow, Mr Mitchell! It sounds like a really big trip!
Thank you for sharing your story with us and for giving hope to people with cancer.
You can find out more about the Smiddy Challenge or donate money to support the riders by visiting the Smiddy Challenge Website.

How much is a metre?

This week in Maths we are learning to measure with metres.
On Tuesday we measured things to find out which things are about one metre. We used a piece of string that was one metre long and worked with a partner to find things in our room and playground that are about one metre.

The mat is 1 metre wide.

The shelf is about 1 metre tall.

The fence is about 1 metre tall.

On Wednesday we measured things that were about two metres. We measured across, along and around objects with our metre strings. We found that we had to use keep our finger in place when measuring so that we knew where to start measuring the second metre.

The drinking trough is 2 metres long.

The door is 2 metres wide.

We learnt that the kangaroo and emu can both grow to about 2 metres tall. We used our strings to measure and draw kangaroos and emus that were 2 metres tall.

Who knew measuring could be so much fun?
What else can you find that is about one metre or about two metres?
What did you use to measure?

Clean Up Australia Day

Fumi says: Sunday March 4th was Clean Up Australia Day but because this was not a school day we had a special Clean Up Our School Day on the Friday.
Each class was assigned a special area to take care of. We had to clean up the area near our classrooms and our eating area.
Nic says: Clean Up Day is a good day for our school. We had to pick up paper.
We sorted the rubbish into different types of materials. This helps with recycling and composting and is a good way to care for the Earth.

Our new Quadblogging Buddies!

We have new buddies from around the world now that we are quadbloggers.

We know that "quad" means 4 because we learnt that a quadrilateral has four sides. Quadblogging is four blogs who share the blogging fun together. Each class takes turns at reading and commenting on the other blogs.

We found out about Quadblogging from reading other class blogs and now we are very excited to get the chance to get to know our very own Quadblog buddies.

The four blogs in our quad are:
Room 19 Pinehill School
Year 4V
2W@TKS
And of course 2C from A Year in Year 2 (that's us!)

We can't wait to learn more about our new buddies and to share our stories with them too!

Mealworm Results

Today is the last day of our Mealworm Growing and Changing Experiment so we will announce the winner of the competition!

Today we have 3 mealworms, 2 pupae and 12 beetles in the classroom. This means Ella J's mum is our lucky winner. Thank you to all of our readers who participated. We had lots of good guesses.

We discovered that the mealworms in the fridge are not changing into pupae and beetles. Only the mealworms in the classroom are changing.

After we wrote our conclusions into our science journal we drew a diagram to show the life cycle of the mealworm (which we now know is the larva of a darkling beetle.

We really enjoyed learning about mealworms but Mrs Batham says we haven't finished learning about science yet. We wonder what other exciting things we will learn this term...