Japanese Celebrations

This video shows you a little about Japanese beliefs and you can see the two celebrations we will be looking at: Girls’ Day and Children’s Day.

This video has a quiz and information about Children’s Day (or Boy’s Festival).  [This one is in Japanese so we will watch it without the sound to try and do the quiz from the subtitles.]

Here is another video by a Japanese person telling us about all the Japanese celebrations.

Introducing Japan is a website with interesting information about Japanese culture.

Meeting the Scitech Team

Sasha has worked hard to write a good post about your Scitech visit.  I’m very impressed with your ability to work on-line on the blog posts. 🙂

Guess what?

On Friday 26th of October, Scitech came to visit Margaret River Primary School. Room 6 was lucky enough to have three sessions with Scitech while they were at the school.The first session was the show.  The show was all about WHAT MAKES SOUND?  We soon learnt that vibration makes sound. We also listened to some sounds that were a bit weird and different from everyday sounds. One of them was made with a straw.  It sounded amazing!

Now that we knew that vibration makes sound we were given items to make our own instruments. In this hands-on activity we were put into groups. Each group had to make at least 2 different sounds with each instrument that they had made. Everybody enjoyed it and we made some sounds that you don’t hear every day.  You can hear a few of the sounds they made here.

Click here to listen  

Click here to listen  

Click here to listen  

Click here to listen  

Click here to listen  

Click here to listen  
Jack and Charlie also explained how they made their instruments before making their sound.

Click here to listen  

Click here to listen  

Our final session in the space dome was an exciting experience. In the space dome we learnt interesting facts about all the planets and stars. The presenter showed us how the stars form shapes which is how the Aboriginal people see the Emu. She showed us how stars form shapes and told us the Zodiac names of the shapes in the sky and how far away the Sun is from  the Earth.

I think everybody learnt a lot and had fun in the space dome.

Meeting the Scitech Team on PhotoPeach

I definitely enjoyed it!  Did you?                       🙂


Celebrating our Talented Classmates!

Wow!  We have a wonderful dancer and a songwriter in our class…. I wonder who they are?

This talented girl has competed in Eisteddfods and here she is holding the trophy she won in her latest dance examination.  Congratulations, ELLENI!  😆

 

Still in the Arts, this girl has written heaps of songs.  She finds her inspiration in nature and sitting quietly.  While the words are still in her head, she writes them down in her song book.  Here is a PDF of three recent songs she wrote and then we are lucky enough to be able to listen to her sing the first one, “I Sometimes Wish Upon a Star”.   CONGRATULATIONS, LUCY!  😆

Lucy – Song 1 

Click here to listen  

I Sometimes Wish Upon a Star by Lucy

Lucy – Songs 2 and 3

We have also read some of Tara’s fabulous stories on-line here and I think she’s working on another one for you. Are there any other talented kids out there? 🙂

Meeting Coach Cash

A few weeks ago we met Coach Cash. Coach Cash was talking about saving your money but also spending some on you.

We learnt a rhyme to help us save money.

This is the rhyme:

Spend some on you and save some too!

That rhyme is to do with your pocket money.

 We did some activities as well:

  1. We had to save up $100 in 10 weeks by doing chores for Coach Cash.

  2. We had to listen to the time travelling whistle which was going back into the Middle Ages and seeing what money was like then.

  3. We also learnt about the internet and how the bank and an ATM use the internet. Archie and Dane volunteered to help out in this one.

  4. We did Money Olympics by getting split into groups and using our money well.

I loved it and I think we all learnt a lot.

Did we learn a lot?

Diwali – Indian Festival of Lights (New Year)

Yesterday Ragnish came in to show us how henna drawings are used to celebrate happy festivals in India.  One of those festivals is Diwali and TODAY, Tuesday 13 November 2012 is the start of Diwali! This is India’s New Year festival and is known as The Festival of Lights. 

This is the video for Diwali – Festival of Lights

You will be finding out more about Diwali and what people do to celebrate it in Inquiry groups tomorrow.  🙂

 

INDIAN FESTIVALS and HENNA DESIGNS

For many Indian Celebrations, henna is used to paint detailed designs onto people’s hands and feet.  We are very lucky that today, Ragnish (Ramita’s Mum) will be coming in to talk to us about these henna designs and to show us how to make up our own.  These henna (or Mendhi) paintings are meant to be lucky and so all happy occasions in India, be it birth, weddings or religious ceremonies, include henna application as part of the celebration.

In this slideshow you can see a number of henna designs and pictures of an Indian bride and groom.  Notice how different their clothes are from an Australian wedding.

Here is a video showing a henna hand design being painted.  This might give you some ideas for your own design.