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.