Friday Fun - 30/4/10

Term 2 started this week and it was nice to get back into things with a short week. Here are some of the highlights.

Fun This Week

Anzac Day Assembly

On Tuesday afternoon the Year 5/6 students hosted a special assembly in recognition of Anzac Day. The proceedings were very respectful and students maintained a very solemn attitude throughout.

Antonyms

We taught students about antonyms (more commonly thought of as opposites) and encouraged students to think of words that pair up. We had a cardboard jigsaw for students to use to extend this learning, and also found a couple of online games to practice pairing antonyms. One is at Do2Learn and another more complex one can be found here.

What's in the Box?

This term Year 2 students will be exploring different materials and considering their properties and how they may be changed. We began by presenting them with eight different items in shoe boxes. They reached into the box and felt the object and then wrote down words to describe the properties they identified. We used the following worksheet to record the investigation. Items we used included: glass, wood, concrete, rubber, aluminium, plastic, plasticine, and styrofoam.

What's in the box

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Art

For 2P and 1/2Rs art lesson we played with tones, textures and fractions to create an abstract piece of artwork. Students were given three coloured squares - black, grey, and white. They cut one of these in half creating two triangles; one in half creating rectangles; and one in quarters (squares or triangles). They used scrunched newspaper to splotch a large sheet of purple paper with yellow paint (for the background). I also gave them some strips of crepe paper streamers to twist or fold into lines. Students then added all their bits to the purple paper - creating a picture or pattern if desired or placing in an abstract design.

The Blogger Behind This Blog #8

I feel I owe my readers an explanation for my slackness with blogging this year. It's not that I have come to devalue blogging, or that I've given up my interest in teaching and technology - these are all still a part of who I am. However, something else has come to the fore. It has jiggled up the way I see the world and the way I use my time.

I'm sharing my body with a baby. I'm going to get to be a mummy.

For me this is huge. This has been my biggest dream for the longest time. In my perspective, this is bigger than anything I've done so far - bigger than teaching, bigger than running, bigger than living in New York City.

I'd always hoped that one day I might get my chance, but never really believed it would happen. I was busy filling my life with these other things, hoping that they might satisfy me instead. And while these have become an important part of who I am, I am very excited by what lies ahead. I feel that it is at the core of who I am.

So, my life has taken a bit of a turn. I'm no longer trying to forward my career in order to make up for being childless. I'm no longer looking for a running challenge to push me to my limits. I'm no longer balancing on the cutting edge of technology, waiting to try the latest and greatest. Instead, I'm trying to look after my family: my husband, my baby and myself. I'm taking time to rest and relax. I'm taking time to talk to my husband and plan for the future. I'm taking time to eat right and take the dog for a walk.

I plan to keep blogging, at least for now, but over the next couple of months I will be moving Friday Fun across to the School Website on our My Classes page. This will make it only accessible to parents, but will make it easier for other teachers to contribute to and continue once I go on maternity leave.

I want to thank those of you who have supported me with my blogging journey so far, and apologise for my inconsistency of late.

Cheers,

Penny