Poetry in motion!

Term Four sees Year Two undertake a poetry study.  We have been looking at some of the features of poetry and learning to recite some great poems.

During the first two weeks we looked at poems that have alliteration and onomatopoeia.  Firstly we discovered that alliteration meant that the poem had a lot of words which had the same beginning sound.  Another way these poems are known is Tongue Twisters!  Here are some examples of alliteration that we made up ourselves.

Then we looked at poems which have onomatopoeia in them  Onomatopoeia means that there are words which describe sound.  Here is a cool You tube clip that tells us more.

We have also learnt to recite poems.  When we are learning to recite these poems we are looking at the rhyming patterns and how the rhyming patterns give the poems their rhythm.  Once we get the rhythm, it's very easy to learn the poem and recite it.  Here we are reciting some poems...

All mixed up!

Our topic this term in Science is "All Mixed Up!"  This involves the chemical sciences and we are looking at simple mixtures around the house and how we can describe their textures and the reactions that happen when certain everyday substances are mixed together.

This week we had fun making slime.  We really enjoyed running it through our fingers and playing with the substance that we made from mixing water and cornflour together!

Mixing mixing....

Slime!

Oooey, gooey, slime.

Magic.  Touch the slime and it is hard,
then it goes runny again! Fun!

IBL

Back in Term One & Term Two, Mrs Hornstra spent some time in Townsville at the TCEO learning all about Inquiry Based Learning.  See previous posts here.

This term sees the IBL course conclude and Mrs Hornstra will present this vodcast to her colleagues at TCEO.  Hit the You tube clip below to see how it turned out.

God's Covenant.

During term four, Year 2 will be looking at the Covenant made between God and man.  We are exploring the stories of Abraham and Moses in the Old Testament and the covenant that they first made with God and how this covenant still exists today.

Our first story that we explored was the story of Abraham and Sarah.  God made a promise to Abraham when he was very old that his decendants would become a great nation.  Abraham and his wife Sarah believed in God's promise and in return they believed he was the one true God and followed God's instrutions.  God chose Abraham because he was a very good man and at this time there were many bad people in the world.  Abraham and Sarah had a baby when Abraham was 100 years old.  Abraham lived to be 175 years old! Watch this Youtube clip to find out more about their story.

This week we will look at the story of Moses who continued God's covenant many years later.  Here is the story of Moses and the 10 comandments.

Here is Isabelle with our own class Holy Bible that we made.  It has all the books of the Old and New Testament.  As we have learnt, The Bible was written over thousands of years by many people.  There are books of stories, poetry, letters and songs.  It is the biggest selling book in the world.

Our Holy Bible.

All the books inside!

The seven continents.

We are enjoying looking at the map of the world this term.  We have worked out where the equator lies and the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

Now its time to learn the names and locations of the seven continents and the 5 oceans.

Here's some information to help:

Our excursion to the Proserpine Museum

Today we all walked the short distance to the Proserpine Museum.  We had no idea that such a great place was so close to us and had so many interesting things to look at.

We went to the museum as part of our history unit "From Black and White to Technicolour."  We have been looking at changes in technology in peoples lives and how these changes have affected how we live today.
We have looked at changes in the kitchen and how we used to cook and store food.  At the Museum we saw...

An old dresser to store food and wood for the fire where
 they cooked before they had electricity.

An old fridge from the 1960s.

An Old Mixer.

We have learnt about the changes in how we washed ourselves, clothes and our houses.  There were some great examples of old types of washing machines.

This is an old washing machine made by Breville.
It has a wringer on the top to squeeze the water out of the clothes.

Here are some very old fashioned irons.

Before we had mobiles we used rotary phones and...

There was a switchboard that an operator connected your calls through to others.

We had a wonderful day and we would like to thank Mrs Greenwood for organising the excursion and to all the parents who came along with us.

Watch it Grow!

'We have really been enjoying our science topic this term.  We have watched as our meal worms have turned from larvae to pupas and we now have some darkling beetles!

Look closely and you can see pupas and a beetle.

Can you see the beetle?

We made a very interesting timeline showing the development of the meal worms. The top line showed their development in the warm classroom and the bottom line showed their development in the fridge.  Thank you to Mrs Jones who helped us put this together!

The mealworms in the classroom developed quicker than those in the fridge.

We created life cycle posters of other living things that go through metamorphosis.

We also compared how our bodies change as we grow older, compared to those living things that go through metamorphosis.  Unlike frogs and meal worms, we keep the same form throughout our lives.  We had a fun time guessing who the baby photos were!

Information reports

Hello Everyone,
We have been learning how to write information reports in 2H over the past two weeks.  We have been very lucky to acquire some small touch screen lap tops in our classroom and we are putting them to good use.  We have been using the children's search engine, Kid Rex to research our topics as well as a range of books from the library.  We are also learning that it is very important to recognise where we get our information from and reference these sources at the end of our report.  Together we have written 2 reports as a class.  Our first one is about Koalas and our second one is about Italy.  You can read these below and there are also some pictures of us researching our topics.

Koalas

By Year 2H

Did you know that Koalas are endangered animals?  There are only one hundred thousand living which may sound like a lot, but really it is not that many at all.  What makes the Koala an interesting animal? 

What type of animal is a Koala?

Well it isn’t a bear like some people think it is.  A koala is a marsupial.  Other marsupials are kangaroos, wombats and possums.  Koalas are born blind with no fur.  They live in their mother’s pouch and after six months they climb out and cling to their mother’s backs until they are old enough to climb trees themselves.

A Koala’s habitat.

Koalas are found in Eastern Australia.  They live in gum trees so they can protect themselves from predators on the ground.

What does a Koala eat?

A koala’s main source of food comes from their habitat.  They survive by eating the leaves from the gum tree.  These leaves also contain water that the Koala can drink.

What does a Koala spend it’s time doing?Koalas are known to sleep nineteen hours a day.  This is because the gum leaves take a long time to digest and the koalas needs to keep its energy to digest it’s food.  They also spend time climbing trees which they are really fast and good at.  They actually have sticky claws to help them.

Next time if you are lucky enough to see a koala, you will now know all about how they exist.

References:

Koalas. By Steve Parish

Say Hello Koalas. By Steve Parish

Koalah the koala. By Jon Rednick & Jan Davis.

Websites:

Animalfactguide.com.au

Italy

By Year 2H

Have you ever been to Italy?  Do you know how fabulous it is?  Here are some interesting facts about this great country.

Where is Italy?

Italy is located in the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea.  Italy is shaped like a boot.  It is the fifth most visited country in the world.  In the South of Italy you will find 3 active volcanoes.

Famous Landmarks.

There are many famous landmarks in Italy.  The Colosseum was were gladiators once fought.  It is in the capital city, Rome.  The leaning tower of Pisa is famous because it leans and it continues to lean a little more each year.  The Pope lives in Italy in Vatican City.

Fabulous Food.

Italians are famous for creating food that is popular all over the world.  Food like pasta and pizza were first made by Italians.  They make the best in the world.

As you can see, there are many wonderful and interesting aspects to Italy.  It would be a wonderful place to visit.

References:

Welcome to Italy. By Meredith Costain

A Visit to Italy. By Rachael Bell

Websites:

www.kids.nationalgeographic.co

Using the laptops for research.

Using library books for research.

Cane Train Safety.

Sam The Cane Train.

It is Cane Harvesting Season in Proserpine and we have noticed the cane trains as they make their way to and from the mill.  In our Health unit we are learning about safety around Cane Trains.  Click on this link to watch some information about safety around Cane Trains and talk to your family about why safety around Cane Trains in important.

Art Week

This week we are celebrating Art Week.  Click on this link for some creative Art activity ideas that you an do at home.

http://www.kidspot.com.au/kids-activities-and-games/craft-activities+1.htm

Don't forget that the school art exhibition is on this Wednesday night, 20th August, at the Mercy Campus in the undercover area from 5pm to 7pm.  Your art work is on display so come along and show it off!

National Science Week 2014

During week 5 we will be celebrating Science Week at St Catherine's with lots of science based activities.

Check out this amazing site for some fun science experiments that you can do at home.

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments.html

Catholic Education Week.

This week is Catholic Education Week and we will be celebrating with a whole school mass at The Loyola Campus on Friday.

The theme for this year is "Live Life in all its Fullness." This is a theme that we live up to very well at St Catherine's.

Last week we were visited by Michael Mangan who wrote and sings a lot of the hymns we practise from week to week at hymn practise.  We really enjoyed singing along to many of our favourites as well as his new song that he was commisiioned to write for this years Catholic Education Week.

The song is called "Come, Live Life!"  It's definately our new favourite.  Click on the link below to see the you tube clip and sing along!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxqtqlHZ_fo

Mealworms!

This term in science we are exploring a unit called "Watch it Grow."  We are looking at life cycles of different animals and how they diifer to the changes in humans over time.

As part of the unit, we are keeping mealworms in our classroom.  We will closely observe them and see how they will change through their life cycles.

Here is a cool you tube clip that explains how the mealworms will change and how to look after them:

Here are some pictures of our meal worms:

Here they are at the larvae stage.

Here is our meal worm habitat.

Asleep in the fridge.

At the moment we are keeping them in the fridge which slows their life cycles right down.  In a couple of weeks we place 2 of the habitats on the science table were we hope their lifecycles will speed up and we can observe them change into beetles!

Stay tuned.....

Our bird feeders.

We have placed some bird seed in our feeders and we are waiting patiently to spy some bird action!

Geography and Inquiry Based Leaning!

During Term 2, our class participated in a Geography unit titled "Our Town Proserpine!"  This unit was written by Mrs Hornstra as part of the TCEO Inquiry Based Learning Program, 2014 (otherwise known as IBL).  You can find out more about IBL in this blog post.

Our unit began with a Big Question that arose when we got an email from Mrs Hornstra's sister who wanted to visit Proserpine with her family, but was unsure of what she could do on a holiday here.  The Big Question was:

"Why should people visit Proserpine?"

To answer our question, we then made a list of sub questions and used a mind map to organise these questions and how we were going to answer them.

Mind Map made at bubbl.us.   

We then made a colourful grafitti wall with all the places that we knew to visit in Proserpine:

All the great places we know of in Proserpine!

Then we interviewed other people to find out their favourite places in Proserpine.  We also asked why these places were so special to them.  With the answers from our interview questions, we chose 6 of the most popular places to visit and we made a web site with the details of each place.

https://sites.google.com/a/prspne.catholic.edu.au/whyvisitproserpine/

One of our questions was how will people find all of these fantastic places to visit?  So we learnt some new mapping skills and then put our new skills into practise to make a very colourful map for visitors to use.

Learning new mapping skills with compasses.

Our map with our favourite places
 to visit in Proserpine!

We were finally happy that we had the answer to our Big Question so we decided we had to email Mrs Hornstra's sister to let her know why she and her family should visit Proserpine.  We decided to also use our new persuasive writing skills to convince her that it was the best place to visit!  Each student wrote an email to the family.  I would love to put all these on the blog because each one was so fantastically convincing, but there is just not enough space!  All I can say is that if you have friends or relatives thinking of coming to stay with you, get in touch with us here in 2H.  We can point you in the right direction with our web site, map and very convincing emails that we would be happy for you to browse through!