Ms. Jocelyn's Last Day

Ms. Jocelyn's Last Day at Mataranka School

We had a great day today!  First we did our usual Morning Message.  Cameran Dehne was Special Helper so he did the attendance and helped us review our Blue Words.

Then it was Investigations: it was I-Pad Thursday, but we painted, made a big card and some great gifts for Ms. J, played dress-up and created things with the blocks too.  We had storytime, enjoyed Starfall, listened to a story on the Smart Board and danced to our video from last year. It was a great morning.

Then we climbed on the bus and headed to Bitter Springs for a picnic.
We ate the healthy food our parents had packed for us.

Then we explored the area with Ms. Beki.  

After lunch we played games.  We played Hide-and-Seek, using five different trees.  

Next it was capture the flag,  

We ended the day with a story and a group hug at the Banyan Tree in the park.  It was a great day and a wonderful send-off.  Miss is really going to miss the  Transition/year1/2 class.  What a great bunch!  

Tea at the Manor

From the Mataranka Cool School News!

We went to the Manor yesterday.  We did a lot of things.  We ate lunch.  We had so much fun eating desert.  Kash did not like his milkshake.  It was too sweet. 

We played Tip.

We played parachute games. I liked the parachute.   

We were feeding the barramudi. It was fun. 

We climbed the tree.  When we got up on the tree, there were ants and we didn't like the ants. 

It was fun. 

Pete the Cat!

What a great book!  We LOVED Pete the Cat! 

Pete is so Awesome!  He doesn't let anything bother him!  He just keeps 'Walkin along.. singing his song!'  That is what we do too!  Now we are always singing.. "I love my blue shoes!  I love my pink shoes!  I love my rainbow shoes!..."   We love our shoes now! 

Thank you so much for sharing your favorite story with us.  Issy says "I like Pete the Cat!"  Cameran says cat and hat are rhyming words. Emily says "I like that book."  Kash likes Pete the Cat's shoes.  Cameron likes the rainbow shoes best. 

Have you read the Wonky Donkey?  Check it out on-line.  It's one of our favorites!
Eva says "I love the Wonky Donkey story"

February 28, 2013

We celebrated 100 Day on Friday, February 22, 2013

Larkin says we had 100 balloons.  

This is our class with out hats and necklaces.

James says we had pancakes.

We are showing our collections of 100 things.

Making necklaces.

Building castles with 100 cups.

Playing Race to 100.

Making our hats.

Larkin says we were making everything!  It was a fun day.  Composed by Larkin and Mrs. Robertson with some help from James.

Back to School

In Mataranka it is the middle of summer.  We are just getting back from summer holidays. We have some new faces as our grade two's from last year have graduated into grade three, which is in a different classroom.  We have some new kids in our class who are just starting kindergarten: we call it Transition.

Left to right we have Laura, then Cooper and Cammy.  In front of Shaunelle are good buddies Bailey and Cameran D, then Emily, Eva, Cameran and Mako.  This isn't all of us, Ozzie was out of the room.. Amelia had gone to Tasmania.. but it is most of us.

Thank you for sending your pictures of you in the snow.  It is so hot here, we love to see the snow!  

Tobogganing in January

January means snow for us in Canada especially in the mountains.  On one warm Friday afternoon we invited students families to join us at the school to go tobogganing and build snowmen.  Here are some pictures from that day.

Ruby & Brooke

Tesa & Keagan

Larkin & Conner

Ruby, James, Jasper, & Brooke

Tesa & Ruby

We ended the day with hot chocolate, cookies and cupcakes in the classroom to warm us up.  A fun day for all!

Junior Class goes to the Zoo!

Miss Kristy

Hello from Melbourne! 

Happy last day of school for 2012.

What a fantastic year it has been, I can see that you have been doing lots of great things at school from reading to swimming, dressing up and even carving watermelons and pumpkins!

 It is finally hot here in Melbourne - but it only lasts for a few months of the year, so when I can I like to go outside and enjoy the sunshine.

I hope the Mataranka kids enjoyed the book I sent. It is a great feeling to see the hard work you all put in making masks, writing the story, taking pictures and illustrating.

I had lots of fun in your classroom in August and would like to share this digital version with you.

 Merry Christmas, and all the best for 2013.

-Miss Kristy

Meeting the students at Jilkmingan

It was sure hot today!  We took the bus from Mataranka to Jilkmingan (about half an hour's drive) to meet the kids in Ms. Lauren's class.  We looked around town and then went back to the classroom to watch a movie and eat lunch.  It was a great day!  

Gone Swimming!

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It is getting close to Christmas and so is getting really hot.  The only way to cool down is to go swimming!

We are taking swimming lessons from Ms. Jocelyn at the Mataranka Homestead.  This is a warm spring in Elsey Park.  There are lots of fruit bats around in the trees and crocodiles in the nearby river, but the springs are great and we have a good time.

Ms. Jocelyn is teaching us different ways to get in the water.

Mr. Shaun comes with us.  He likes to come play in the springs too.












Besides swimming lessons, we are learning how to rescue someone in trouble.  We throw a kickboard or a noodle out to them and tell them to kick their feet.  We are good swimmers and don't need to learn how to do a rescue at the springs, but we might need to help someone in the Roper River or Elsie Falls.

We are hoping to go swimming again on Friday.  We hope Ms. Jocelyn will buy us ice-cream afterwards.

Halloween in the Wild

 These are our pumpkins on a fence that we made.

We had 4 centers for our Halloween Party.  Here we made ourselves into mummies!

We also made spider hats.

At this center we put things like ghosts and witches and spiders in windows and doors of the Haunted House.

Mrs. Robertson made "Boo Mix" that we had to sort.  Then we took it home and ate it.  There were Goblin's Teeth (candy corn), Monster Scabs ( graham cereal), Ghost Poop (mini marshmallows), and Witches Warts (chocolate chips).

In the afternoon the whole school went to the gym and carved pumpkins.  Afterwards, we went to see them all.

Hallowe'en

Mako has a broken arm.  He is an alien.  "My mom made it and me has made it. It has an alien gun.  And I am going to have an army guy.  It gots some red glasses and it has a part for you push it down and it shoots.. pretend"

Jesse and Yerrin .   We are witches standing next to a hallow'en watermelon.We made it with some of our class.

And here we are carving out the watermelon.  In this part of Australia, the watermelons are ripe at this time of the year.  Our class decided to carve them  out and share the inside with the rest of the school.  It isn't traditional to carve any sort of melon here though.  Hallowe'en isn't a big event.  In the past, the Australians didn't celebrate it at all,  but now, a few people like to dress up.  Ms. Jocelyn likes Hallowe'en and so we celebrated in our classroom. 

In the classroom

 Do you have a Smartboard?  We read our blog on ours.  We also do Starfall almost everyday.  The Special Helper is in charge. 

The Watermelon Farm

Jesse:  I have a big watermelon.  I just picked it. This is my family's watermelon farm.  We also grow pumpkins and mangos.  Is it almost Hallowe'en there?  Are you going to dress up?  Are you going to trick and treat?

They have bees to pollinate the flowers.  They also get honey when the bee man comes.

We were looking at the little pumpkin plants.   

There are heaps of watermelons in this field.

We are eating watermelon and it was very yummy!

Look at the pumpkin flower.

There is watermelon in the truck. A big truck here is called a Road Train!


Emily:  We grow passion fruit and we also grow mangos at our house.