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!

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.

Hazelnut and Lunar leave New Zealand

Hazelnut and Lunar had a great time with us, but it was time for them to move on to the next school. Before they left, they got to meet some of the other staff at Rowandale:

With Mr Vasau

With Mrs Tofilau

They also got to see a powhiri for our new teachers. Do you know what a powhiri is?

They are now on there way to Denmark. Here is a map of everywhere they've been and the next school they're going to. Can you name all of the places they've been to so far? They have travelled quite a long way.

We wish them luck on their journey. Thanks for visiting us!

Hazelnut and Lunar Meet Ngeru and Learn Some Maori Words

Hazelnut and Luna were in for a wonderful treat when they came to Rowandale during Maori Language Week. The Meerkat's mascot, Ngeru (Nay-roo) taught them how to say some Maori words. They got so good at them, they decided to make a video of their conversation. Have a look at what they learned!

Descriptive Writing about Hazelnut and Lunar

Today the Marvellous Meerkats (Room 8) of Rowandale wrote descriptions of Hazelnut and Luna. Have a read of what some of us wrote:

By Natalia

 By Dizaliyah

By Mu

 By  Paris

Hazelnut and Lunar Arrive in New Zealand

A few days ago, Hazelnut and Luna arrived in New Zealand and decided to visit us here at Rowandale School. They looked exhausted when they came to my door. It must have taken them ages to get all the way from Faraday School in England. They brought a book with them to tell us all about London.

All of the children were very excited to meet our new friends. We made sure that we sat and listened very carefully when they read their story to us.

Later, it was our day to take care of some of the animals that live at our school so we decided to bring the two of them to help us with our work. Our pigs are named Hettie and Percy (but our chickens don't have any names).

We're looking forward to having our two new friends visit us this week. It's Maori Language Week, so hopefully they will go to their next school knowing some new words!

Bye Luna and Hazelnut. Welcome Koko and Kev.

Today was Luna and Hazelnut's last day at Faraday School. We have had such a great time with them and reception will miss them a lot but we are very happy to be sending them to Rowandale School in Auckland NZ. We hope they continue to have lots of fun adventures at lots of different schools around the world.

Today Koko the Koala arrived and she had a surprise visitor with her…Kev the Kiwi stowaway who wanted to keep Koko company on her journey. Thank you to the children from Clyde School for sharing Koko with us. We have lots more exciting learning to share with them both this week.

Reception, Luna and Hazelnut visit Pizza Express

Today the reception class took Luna and Hazelnut to Pizza Express in Wapping. We were so lucky as we got to learn about where different pizza ingredients come from and how they grow as well as making some delicious pizza!

First we talked about how to make pizza dough. We thought that you might need to add baking soda to make the dough rise but it is actually another ingredient called yeast. We got to roll and stretch the dough to see what it felt like.

Then we looked at some different ingredients that are used as pizza toppings. We didn’t know what some of the ingredients were like oregano or mozzarella so Maria taught us lots new information. 

We got to taste the different ingredients and reception were amazing risk takers, trying new things.

Xavier and YoYo didn’t think they would like the sun-dried tomato, but when they tried it they did! Amone also took a risk and tried some artichoke, which she really enjoyed and even wanted more. Kian wasn’t so keen on the artichoke but was proud of himself for trying it anyway.

We thought that pizza was invented in Italy but do you know where it was actually invented?

In Egypt.

Then we got to be pizza chefs. We pressed the dough in the dishes to make our bases. Next we swirled the tomato sauce around our bases until they were all covered. We spread out the cheese evenly over our pizza and finished them off with a sprinkle of oil and oregano.

Lastly we put them in the oven. The ovens are so hot at Pizza Express that they only need to cook the pizza for 5 minutes.

 We took our pizza back to school and had a big pizza feast. 

Thank you very much to Maria who taught us lots about making pizza today and to our wonderful helpers Dee and Vivienne. We had a great time!