I have adopted a new friend for Sandy who is a native of the USA!

Can you guess what it is?

Here’s a clue – it is not the same species as Sandy.

It is a carnivore. 

Here is a glimpse of part of our new friend……..

Why not have a guess about the type of creature I have, and maybe suggest a name for it!

(I can’t tell if it’s a girl or boy – doesn’t matter I suppose!!!!!
 

Everything seems big here!

There are monuments everywhere, huge buildings with columns, wide footpaths, and even wider roads!

This is the railway station!!!!

And this is a statue outside the station:

Do you know the name of this iconic landmark?

What is it called and what happens inside it?

As we come to the end of our unit we are starting to think about and reflect on some of the things we have found out during our investigations.

We have put together this slide show of our thoughts so far …..

What do you think?

We’ve been reading a book called “Three Cups of Tea” which is a true story about a mountain climber, Greg Mortenson, who works hard to build schools for remote villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

We are enjoying hearing about Greg’s trials and adventures as he learns

tolerance,

acceptance and

respect

for the

values, views and beliefs

of the people he is working hard to help.

The story teaches us that by listening to , talking with and sharing our lives with others we will enhance and expand our own lives and experiences.

We haven’t fifnished the book yet – we will let you know how Greg gets on!

We have been working on two blogs this term – our usual and friendly AllStars site and a secret blog being developed by our Department of Education and Training here in NSW, Australia.

This second blog has been a trial blog and we have been posting the work we have been doing in class about “Big Beliefs”. We would love to hear what you think of our work on the other blog, so if you have time click on over to have a look! Please leave a comment for us to share 

USB – Unidentified Secret Bloggers - Click here to be transported to our other blog!

Over the past few weeks we have been working on our own “Big Beliefs Project”. We have been finding out about the different beliefs and religions people in our class and our community have.

We have found out many interesting things about religions, and the different ways that diffent people worship in their religion.

To try and keep track of the information we are finding, we have constructed  tables to put our info in. Each group had to come up with their own table/grid and the topics/ headings that they would be finding out about.

In this slide show you can see us working together to come up with our tables/grids. We are having lots of fun sharing our ideas, listening to each other and encouraging everyone’s ideas and thoughts.

You can see what else we’ve been up to on our DET trial blog right here!

Have you heard of the Dalai Lama? He became the leader of his people when he was just 15 years old.

Read this article “Meet the Dalai Lama” to find out more about this famous person.

The Dalai Lama recommends four important values to practice for a more peaceful planet -

compassion,

forgiveness,

tolerance and

contentment.

Which of these values do believe is more important?

Please nominate one and tell us why you think it is important, and how you could practise this each day. 

Image: ‘6_ 11.jpg‘ 
www.flickr.com/photos/61201580@N00/744830834

No – the Star Wars cast did not visit us last week – but we DID have a visit from someone who could use the force just as well as Luke Skywalker!

Sam from the CSIRO showed us many fantastic tricks and experiments all about forces and motion. Learning about forces and motion means we are studying physics -and it was great fun and very interesting.

We rode skateboards, lifted heavy objects (and teachers) with no hands, twirled discs, made bridges and even got to sit on a chair of nails.

Did you know that:

• if you go fast on a bike, it’s less likely that the bike will fall over?
• if you squash a balloon across 500 nails it will not burst ….. but if you push just one nail into a balloon it WILL burst? 
• you can’t pull someone on a skateboard with your feet off the ground!
• when you are pulling you are actually pushing! (You push your feet into the ground whilst you are actually pulling  something )
• a small kid can lift a large adult easy as you like if the kid uses a lever (like a see-saw)?
• friction keeps cars on the road as do studs on footy boots?

We have been offline for a while as we have been really busy preparing for our national tests.

These were held last week – on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We had tests in English – Reading, Writing, Language Conventions; and Maths.

 Even though everyone tried their hardest, It was a great feeling when they were over

         How exciting!

We won Class of the Week last week and so we got to use the Nintendo DsLites in Golden Time.

Most of us knew how to use them, but for some people it was their first time.

Lots of people joined up together to play games against each other, but by the end nearly everyone was chatting to each other using picto chat.

It was great fun to use these handheld consoles with friends and a wonderful reward for trying hard!