A Belated Christmas Greeting Arrives

During our summer holidays a Christmas card arrived for us from Mrs Kathy Rice and her Grade 1 class 

in Prince George, BC, Canada.

Look at all the snow!

Thank you Mrs Rice and Grade 1, for the lovely card, photos and letter.

What similarities and differences can you notice in the 

games that are played, 

favourite summer and winter activities,

and our communities and schools?

Our Edublog Awards nominations 2011

Our blog has been a fabulous part of the learning in B4 since the start of 2010 and we have made lots of good friends around the world.
So this year we'd like to make some nominations for 

the Edublog Awards.

The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of  learner and teacher blog sites. 

Here are our nominations:

Best Class Blog

Mrs Watson and Grade 2/3 in Canada 

Mrs Watson and her class 

were among our first blogging contacts and we have become good friends. 

Their blog inspires us to try new things.

We loved our collaboration earlier in the year 

when we wrote stories together using Storybird.

Best Group blog

Our World, Our Stories

This blog has led to wonderful learning for our class and for our blogging buddies.

The students have had the opportunity to share their stories and the blog had led to authentic writing experiences, and geographical and Social Studies learning.

Best Twitter hashtag

#d5chat

Twitter is a great source of educational information and many teachers relish the connection with other educators around the world. 

The daily 5 hashtag has been very useful in developing our changing reading programme this year.

Best Teacher blog

e-learning2011

New Zealander Kimberley Rivett's reflective blog about her e-learning classroom is always inspiring.

To make nominations:

If you have some favourite educational websites or web tools visit the Edublogs awards site and find out how to make your own nominations.

Nominations close for voting soon and there will be an awards ceremony in December.

What do you like about our nominated blogs?

We've got Mail! (and we talk about nicknames)

The postman brought lots of exciting mail to us today.

Earlier in the year we sent a parcel 

with a book and some book marks to 

Mrs Watson and the 2/3s in Canada.

Today we received a parcel back from them, with this cool counting book called 'Loonies and Toonies'.

Loonies and Toonies are nicknames for the Canadian $1 and $2 coins!

Thanks Mrs Watson and class, we love the book, and it will be fun to learn more about Canada.

We also got two new postcards. 

This one is from Grace in 2TM, Rosana, Melbourne.

The second one came from Patricia and her class in 

Toronto, Canada. 

They have a clean desk fairy in their class.

Wouldn't that be handy!

A nickname can be an abbreviation (short version) of your name, or a nickname can be a fun name given to you by family or friends.

Do you have a nickname? What is it?

Do you remember who gave you the nickname?

Skyping with Canada

Custom Glitter Text

Today we skyped with Mrs Watson and the 123s. Their school year is over on Wednesday, but when they come back to school in September we hope to skype with them again.

What did we find out?

They have a grizzly bear wandering around on their island at the moment. It must have swum across the sea to get there.

Their school day is 9am - 2.45 pm. Ours is 8.50 - 3pm.

It was 9am Tuesday in New Zealand but it was 2pm Monday in Canada. Our school day was just starting and theirs was nearly over.

Their principal is a female, but they only see her 3 times a month. AJ Elliott Elementary school is a satellite school.

Today there were 5 boys and 11 girls in their class. Some children were away. We had 8 boys and 12 girls because Luka is away.

We counted to 10 in Maori - tahi, rua, toru, wha, rima, ono, whitu, waru iwa, tekau.

They counted to 10 in French - une, deux, trois, quartre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix.

We shared some sports, hobbies and pastimes. Tessa showed her rugby medal and trophy. Nikaya and Adam showed their rugby boots. Rosealeigha showed her netball uniform.

Thor showed his skateboard. JiaJia showed her soft-toy Kereru (wood pigeon).

From Canada, Michael showed a special coin from his collection. Sophia showed the trophy she got for playing checkers. And we saw a soft-toy cat.

They have been learning times tables and division. So have we.

Once they get to Grade 8 they have to go on the ferry to school each day. We can stay at the same school until we have finished Year 13.

Their $1 and $2 coins are called Loonies and Toonies.

It was a lot of fun meeting our friends.

Some New Visitors and Old Friends

Hello Mrs Lynch

Thanks for visiting us. You didn't leave a back link but I think you are from LLPS Middle unit. Let me know if that's not right.

We can find you at this link:

http://llpsmiddle.globalstudent.org.au/

We are really enjoying meeting other classes. Thanks to all the children from Mrs Watson's 123 class in Canada for all their great comments this week.

Our School, Reefton Area School

We made this VoiceThread to tell our Canadian blog friends about our school.
Check out this wiki also: http://elementaryvoicethreads.wikispaces.com/
to see our VoiceThread and some made by other schools around the world..

New Friends in Canada! :)

Today we looked at the blog page of Mrs Watson's 123 class in Canada and left them a comment. This afternoon they have sent us back a comment. Read it under our Anzac video posting. We are very excited to think that we have new friends in Canada. We have a link on our page so we can read their blog.