Lunar and Hazelnut Visit Kansas

My 1st Graders were so excited when our visitors from Australia arrived here at Frank Layden Elementary in Frontenac, Kansas. They arrived in March - just in time to take part in our annual Young Authors Conference, where each student (Kindergarten through 5th Grade) gets the opportunity to share his or her writing samples. Most students write short stories but Lunar and Hazelnut got to see some extremely talented poets as well. Each year, we invite a published author to our conference to observe our talent and to give tips and advice to our students - and this year we were fortunate to have award-winning author Candace Fleming visit our school.

As you can see, Lunar and Hazelnut had no problem making friends - whether it be with the students (above), our beloved principal Mr. Allai (above), or with author Candace Fleming (below).

Our guests were also able to see how our school encourages physical fitness with our Activity Day and with our Walk/Jog-a-thon.

Our students earned a trip to the local bowling alley as a reward for being responsible. We had fun singing songs on the bus and then even more fun showing off our bowling skills.

We had a unit discussing life cycles and we were actually able to incubate chicken eggs in our classroom. We had so much fun learning and experiencing this miracle. Once the eggs hatched, the chicks obviously became close friends with Lunar and Hazelnut.

We feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to host Lunar and Hazelnut here in the center of the United States. We are confident that they enjoyed their time with us as well. We would like to extend our gratitude to the AMAZING students at PLC Sydney for allowing us to be a part of this project.

Hazelnut & Lunar in Ohio

Hazelnut and Lunar have had a wonderful time here in Ohio. They arrived just before our Christmas Break so had a chance to rest before spending time with the students in grades K-8. The K & 1 taught them about internet safety and how to keep their information private. Grade 2 gave them some lessons on the continents while Hazelnut and Lunar taught them all about Australia. Grade 3 kept them busy with with learning how to read the internet. Grade 4 gave them lessons on using Google Drive. Grade 5 had them learning about space. Grade 6 taught them Scratch and grades 7 & 8 worked with them on making their own Google Cardboards.

They have also had time to play in the little snow we had and also helped us when we received some devastating news that our school closing and merging to become a new school. They celebrated many events with us Catholic Schools Week, 100th Day of School and Dr. Seuss's Birthday!

We enjoyed having them stay with us and hope that they take there lessons with them and make some new friends along the way!

Wumbat the Wombat has loved her stay in Sunny Hawkes Bay

Our Intermediate class at Kowhai Special School got a lovely surprise when Wumbat arrived for her stay. She was very popular with the students.

She was lucky enough to be there when we had a  BIG celebration of one of the teachers and 5 of the students all having their birthdays within a week of each other.

Sitting nicely waiting

Look at that YUMMY cake!!!

Presents - Wumbat is on the table

Later on we took Wumbat to the movies

She loved it as she saw lots of other Australian animals in the movie.

We had the whole theatre to ourselves!!

We saw 'Blinky Bill the Movie'

We have loved having Wumbat stay with us.
Room 4 and Room 3
Kowhai Special School
Hastings

Another year begins...

I started this project at PLC Sydney last year not really knowing how big it would get or even if it would work. But it seems to have worked ok so far, and if you check the Participating Schools list and the Where Are We Now? pages on this blog you'll see that our three furry friends have indeed seen quite a bit of the world so far.

I'm no longer working at PLC Sydney but I'd love to keep this project going anyway. I'm sure the Year 2 classes for 2016 (and the Year 3 classes from last year who started the whole thing) will be interested to see how it unfolds.

So if you're on the list of schools to participate I'll be in touch to see if you still want to play. And if you're not, and you'd like to be, just add your name. All the info is on the How to Participate page.

Looking forward to see where these critters end up this year!

Chris

Farewell Koko and Kev

Six Team in Hastings, New Zealand were a bit sad today. They had to say goodbye to their buddies, Koko and Kev. Koko and Kev have been hanging out in our classroom for about a month now.

They are our favourite Read to Someone buddies, and have loved learning about us, our class and our school. We have written reports so that we can share this information with the other children that are reading this blog. Some of these will be published here soon!

Today, Koko and Kev have been helping us with our Reader's Theatre. They are able to read with great expression.

I wonder where Koko and Kev will turn up next.

Haere Ra
Six Team

Farewell, Lunar and Hazelnut!

We planned a perfect day to say farewell to Lunar and Hazelnut. We had a whole school assembly in the morning and we were very excited to be the class running the assembly and performing in front of everyone. We sang the song ‘The Circle of Life’ from the movie ‘Lion King’ and performed the AUSLAN signs to go along with the words. We had Lunar and Hazelnut join us on stage in front of everyone. 2S did an amazing job at the assembly and the day only got better from there!

For Technology and Enterprise over the last few weeks we designed and built cars made out of recycled boxes, with the only rule being that the cars had to be big enough for us to sit comfortably in for over an hour. After our assembly we lined all of our finished box cars up on the floor and had an old fashioned drive-in. We watched the movie ‘The Lion King’ and had a fantastic time. It was a lovely way to spend our last day with our very special visitors.

2S would like to say thank you to PLC for this wonderful project, we had the best time with our travel buddies. Good luck on you next adventure Lunar and Hazelnut!

Lunar and Hazelnut Arrive in Narrogin!

Wow, what an exciting day it was in 2S! We got a big parcel and it took a lot of guesses and questioning before we figured out what could be inside our parcel. The senders address (Denmark) had us confused for a little while until one student remembered a discussion we had a long time ago about the possibility of visitors coming to our class. We opened up the parcel and were thrilled to discover Lunar and Hazelnut inside.

We decided to brainstorm some exciting things that we wanted to do with Lunar and Hazelnut and our list very quickly grew from 2 ideas to many! We thought the first thing we could do was show Lunar and Hazelnut around the classroom and school.

These are photos of 2S students playing with Lunar and Hazelnut at lunch time.

2S were very enthusiastic about playing a game of ‘Kangaroo Skippy Roo’ with our visitors and we enjoyed the game so much that we played it many more times – even at recess and lunch!

We are learning about narratives this term and thought we could use Lunar and Hazelnut as inspiration for our own stories! Most of us used Lunar and Hazelnut as the main characters and wrote amazing tales about all the adventures they could have been on.

Here we are working on our stories.

We used our computer lab time to research kangaroos and brainstorm some facts that we learnt or already knew. We wrote these facts on the back of our paper kangaroos. When we had written enough facts, we were able to decorate the front of our kangaroos. We think our kangaroos turned out to be pretty awesome!

Lunar and Hazelnut helped us in our Geography lesson while they were here, we used their journey across the world to help us with our knowledge of continents and countries. We drew their journey so far on a map, and figured out where to send them next. We also showed Lunar and Hazelnut how dry ice reacts when it is put in water – it was a very exciting experiment!

We were very lucky to receive a gift from Fuglsanggaardsskolen in Denmark. They sent us a book with information all about Vikings. Reading this book made us all very interested in learning about Vikings and we have been doing a lot of reading, fact finding and sharing to spread new information we have learnt about Vikings. We really enjoyed looking at the Viking language and writing sentences using Viking letters.

At Narrogin Primary School we learn Australian Sign Language (AUSLAN) as an additional language. We are all very interested in it and love our lessons. Here are some photos of Lunar and Hazelnut joining in on one of our Auslan lessons.

Koko and Kev Kick Back in Hastings

Hi Everyone

Kia Ora Koko and Kev! 

Gosh. The arrival of this package in Six Team's class got us wondering. We asked lots of questions. We used some clues to figure out what it might be. Our guessing continued. 

We knew the package had come from South Australia, because we read the sender's address on the back. 

 We wondered...

Is it a pineapple?

There were cheers and excitement when Koko and Kev poked their heads out of the posting bag. They had made it to Mahora School in Hastings, New Zealand. We hope they weren't too hungry on the plane. 

They have been having an outstanding time with our class, Six Team and our teacher,  Miss Revell. 

Koko and Kev had a wonderful time at the Hastings Royal A&P Show with us. 

Koko and Kev are looking forward to their Skype call with the Juniors at Clyde School and Mrs Kitto this morning to share what they have been up to.

Koko and Kev's Last Day

Koko and Kev's last day with us was quite a fun one. It was our school's Sports Day. Our school has 4 teams Faulkner (Red), Montague (Green), Kelly (Yellow) and Wright (Blue). Koko and Kev's day started off with the whole school Health Hustle - everyone in the school danced in their teams to a modified version of Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off". After that they listened to the team chants and then it was off to the tabloid events.

Koko and Kev spent the whole time moving from event to event in Mrs Knipe's trolley. They had a go at some of the events too. Our Sports Day has lots of fun events like High Jump, Long Run, Target Throw, Obstacle Course, Corner Spry and Hurdles. As you will see in the photos, Koko and Kev liked the sack race but we think their favourite was jumping up and down when they had a try on the parachute.

We have included some photos of Koko and Kev from the day and want to wish them well on their trip to their next school. We have decided to send them on to a school in New Zealand because we have a class member who originally came from New Zealand and thought it would be fun to send Koko and Kev to visit on the the North Island.

Here are our photos from Sports Day

We also wanted to share our video of Koko and Kev having fun playing on the parachute when we were competing in that event.

Welcome to Adelaide Koko and Kev

Koko and Kev have arrived safely at our school in Adelaide, South Australia. Thanks to the Stage 1 students at Inaburra for sending them along to us and for all the interesting information you sent with them - we really enjoyed reading it. Koko and Kev were greeted by some very excited year 3 and 4 students. We have already made a list of all the interesting places in our school we would like to show them and we are looking forward to sharing this all with you very soon.

For now, here is a photo to show you all that Koko and Kev are happy and safe in our classroom and about to begin some new adventures.