Does your tongue twist?

Here is a cool link we found on Gillian's blog. It is a whole bunch of tongue twisters. We had a ball listening and trying to say each one. Click over here and try it out yourself. FUN!

Our friends in Japan

Recently, Ellen told us about her friend Gillian who teaches in Japan. The cool thing about her teaching in Japan is that she teaches at a Canadian school there. Most of the classes are taught in English but most of the students are Japanese. That means the kids are really bi-lingual!
We are going to kind of share our blogs and learning experiences. We want to find out how school is similar and different for both of us. I hope you enjoy our adventure...
Click here to find Gillian's blog.

Our class in 2010

Our school year starts in February so we are actually in term two now and just remembered we should be blogging.

We are a class of kids in grades 2, 3 and 4. That means we range from ages 7 through to 10 years old. We call this multi-ages. Our classrooms are VERY big and most of them have two teachers. Because we have two teachers, it is like a double class. We have about 47 kids in the room. In fact, our room is connected to the room next door by a middle-sized room. When we have all the doors open, it is VERY, VERY big and there are about 100 kids. Our two teachers are Ellen and Fiona. Fiona is from Scotland. We often split up to do our work into Fiona's group and Ellen's group. We also do lots of work together. Last year, all classrooms got interacive whiteboards (SMARTboards). We love ours.

Our school starts at 9.00 am and finishes at 3.30 pm.

People at our school have lots of different back grounds. Lots of people were born in Australia but lots were born in different countries like; New Zealand, China, Sri Lanka, France, Singapore, Britain, America, Greece, Scotland, Somalia and Cyprus. That makes us a very multi-cultural school.

Bye for now...

Hatch on the run

Hello.
This week, in units 4 and 5 we recieved some eggs. Unit 4 received 8 duck eggs and we received 10 chicken eggs. 9 out of our 10 eggs have hatched into beautiful, fluffy, yellow chicks. We were lucky to see some of the chicks break out of their eggs. It was eggs-citing to watch. The teeny tiny chicks start out very wet. They are so tired when they hatch. Maybe you have some good suggestions for names.

Here come the holidays...

Woohoo, it is holiday time. Two weeks of no school. We think that is great. We'll have time for naps, shopping, sleep-ins, friends over, visiting and movies.
In a year, we have four terms. That means we also get four big holidays. Our holidays happen like the seasons - summer, winter, spring and autumn. Our longest holiday is in summer. We usually call this holiday 'The Christmas Holidays'. Christmas Holidays last about 6 weeks long.
Now it is time for the winter holidays. These holidays are two weeks long. Next term is third term. We are half way through the year.
Tell us about your holidays. How often do you take holidays? How long are they? What kinds of things do you like to do?

Hello from Melbourne

Well let's just start by saying it so cold and hailing here. We finally feel like it is winter - and it is. We have winter from June to the end of August. There is quite a lot of snow in the mountains now so you can go skiing. We never get snow in Melbourne though!

Our school is multi-age. That means we mix up the grades and ages. Our classes are; prep, 1, 5, 6 and 2, 3, 4. Do you understand what we mean? In our prep, 1, 5, 6 classes, the kids are 5, 6, 11 and 12 years old. Our class is a 2, 3, 4. We are 7, 8, 9 and 10 years old. We like having lots of ages together. We can learn different thing from different people. We see bigger kids looking after the littler kids too. It is great.

Most of our classes are double. That means lots of kids and two teachers. In our class, we have 48 kids and three teachers. Ellen is there every day. Lucy and Loretta share the rest of the time.

We hope we can make lots of friends here on this blog. We want to know what life is like in different parts of the world. See you here again soon. Bye...