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?