Month: June 2011

SONGWRITER VISITS OUR CLASS!

We are so lucky to have Mitchell as our classroom journalist.  He takes fantastic notes which he uses to write his reports for us here.  Great job, Mitchell!  🙂

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On Wednesday 22 June the Year 3’s were lucky enough to be visited by John Budeselik.  Mrs Veary found a Spinning In Space song website and the class listened to one called Planets.  Then John helped them make their own space song by giving an example line of a song and asking for suggestions to change and improve it.  He gave some tips about rhyming and rhythm in writing songs, and how a song can tell a story.  It didn’t take long before they had written a song about space and with some music from John’s guitar it sounded great!

John also sang them two songs that he had already written.  One was called Willy the Wasp and it was about Willy flying back and forth to gather mud for a mud brick home in John’s shed.  The other was called The Slide and it was about the new slide in the park that was so fast that kids had to wear two pairs of jeans and three pairs of underwear so that their bottoms didn’t get burnt!  Both songs were extremely funny and also some of the best songs that the class had heard.

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Finally John talked about how to get inspiration for songs in case the class wanted to write any songs at home.  His ideas included places, events and even how to draw and record ideas to be used for writing songs later.  John was very funny and entertaining during the visit, which everyone enjoyed.  They were also all very happy with the class song.

by Mitchell

LIFE IN MARGARET RIVER

Tracey and John visit 001 (Small)On Tuesday 14th June the year 3’s were visited by Tracey Muir from the Cape to Cape Catchment Group. Tracey presented a review of what they had learned so far, and showed a power point presentation called “What would it have been like to live in Margaret River in …..?

The students made a PMI called Life In Margaret River and had to choose the time period they would have liked to live in the most.  The choices were –

Before 1826 – Aboriginal

• Hunt, gather and trade for all food
• Make and trade for all clothes and food
• Make own simple shelters
• Move with the seasons
• Live in balance with nature

Early Settlers

• Hard lives, had to survive off the land
• Little knowledge of the land and lacked tools
• Had to cut down lots of trees

1940’s and 1950’s

• Most people were farmers and lived very simply
• Lots of dairy farms
• Small schools
• Played outside and swam in the river
• Not many luxuries, most people were poor

Present Day

• People have more things – cars, computers and X-boxes
• Buy things from the shops easily
• Travel to Perth or overseas more frequently

The power point helped most kids decide which time period they would like to live in.  It was a fun activity that got your brains working, thinking about how different things used to be.

by Mitchell 😎

Changes to Margaret River

Smiler Gale Visits 008 (Small)On Tuesday 7th June, Year 3s were visited by Mr Gale (Smiler Gale) from the Margaret River Rotary Club.  He talked about what life was like many years ago in Margaret River, including his story about how his parents came from London and what his life was like growing up.

Mr Gale played a slideshow that had a few pictures of Margaret River’s history.  Some interesting facts were that the Margaret River is about 60 kilometres long, and that in 1839 a man named the river Margaret because he couldn’t marry his girlfriend who was also named Margaret.  The slideshow also included a photo of the farm that Zac Webb’s family lived on.Smiler Gale Visits 001 (Small)

Then it had a picture of children going to school on horses and Mr Gale explained the other two ways to get to school which were walking and pushbikes.  There was only one teacher and fifteen children in the whole school. 

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When Mr Gale was a child his favourite things to do were playing marbles, climbing trees, swimming, playing hide and seek, red rover, cricket, footy and catch-me-if-you-can.  He did his last two years of school by correspondence.

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All of the year 3s enjoyed Mr Gale’s visit and thought it was very educational.

By Mitchell

Zac Webb’s Visit

Mitchell did such a good job with his last report.  Here is his second report as journalist!!  🙂

On Tuesday 30th May Year 3s were visited by Tracey Muir and Zac Webb from the Cape to Cape Catchment Group.  They brought lots of interesting props with them including a didgeridoo which Zac played animal sounds on extremely well, a boomerang, oga/wilgy (painting rock), doark stick (hunting tool), coolamon (carrying tool) and churt (knife). 

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Zac told the Year 3s a lot of cultural information about his tribe the Wardandi people.  He spoke about their traditions and explained how the adults wore kangaroo skins (booka) and the children wore brushtail possum skins for protection from the weather.

One of the really exciting stories Zac told was about the Jiliara (Aussie bees) that didn’t use to sting.  Wardandi people were able to take as much honey as they liked without getting stung.  There was also a dance to show how this used to happen.  Zac said that the bees that were introduced by the Europeans were the only ones to sting.

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They watched a movie called “We Are Wardandi” that Zac had made and learned about how they live.  Finally Zac told them some words relating to their inquiry topic – moon is meeka, sun is ngarlung and earth is nulla boodja.

Caitie says, “I think Zac knows a lot about Wardandi and he’s really good at didgeridoo”.  The whole class really enjoyed Zac and Tracey’s visit and everyone learned a lot.

By Mitchell