Year 4 Camp 2009

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we took students on the Year 4 Camp. The camp was located about 30 minutes drive from the city, and it was nice to get out and explore nature. Students had the opportunity to explore a range of activities they don't usually get the opportunity to try including archery, orienteering, frisbee golf and initiatives (team problem solving challenges).

We went for a bushwalk on the first day, and after a steep climb, we enjoyed the view from the top (photo by RE). We had a short skit night, with students creating their own skits and performing in front of their peers. I was impressed by the courage students showed when performing their songs acapella. Later that night we had a campfire where we sang songs and toasted marshmallows.

On the second day we learnt about the wool industry and visited a wool shed to see a sheep being shorn. Students then got to pat a lamb that is about 6 - 8 months old. They got a sheep ear tag and some wool as souvenirs.

The kids had lots of free time in between meals and activities and as always, there were dramas of 'trashed rooms' and imaginative tales of murders that took place during the night! A couple of boys worked out how to create face paint with rocks and painted their faces on the last day. (Parents weren't so impressed!)

I took along the flipcam and a camera, and a couple of students brought along their digital cameras with video capacity as well. We passed the flipcam around for students to interview one another throughout the camp and on the trip back on the bus. The trip was well-recorded on film and now students can play around with the images to create photostories or movies with the recordings.

I experimented with updates to parents using our My Classes page, but I found the video files had to be quite small and they took a long time to upload. On the positive side, we set up a collaborative journal for parents to leave a message for their child, and when a new message came in, I showed it to the student on my iPhone and they could respond by adding a comment to the message.

Friday Fun

This week has been a bit of a crazy week as we wind down toward Christmas, take down work, and finish things off. We've still managed to do some learning and have a bit of fun while we're at it.

Fun this week:
Sheep Shearing - The characters in "Are We There Yet?" learnt how to shear sheep, so we joined them with this learning. We watched a video of a sheep being shorn and then students wrote about how they would feel if they were the shearer. We then watched the video a second time and students thought and wrote about the perspective of the sheep.


We watched the Pixar video "Boundin'" and talked about the reasons for shearing sheep, and considered who benefits from this. Students also discussed what they do to cheer themselves up when they are feeling down.




Theme Parks - The children in "Are We There Yet?" went on a ride at Surfers Paradise, so we included the Gold Coast theme parks as part of our journey. We watched a couple of YouTube videos of a rollercoaster ride at Movie World. One video was filmed from the ground and the other from on the ride.






Students compared the two videos and discussed the visual impact of each. We looked at online interactive maps of Movie World, Sea World, Dream World and Wet 'n' Wild. We discussed the features of the maps including the key and then students worked in small groups to design and decorate their own theme park maps. Students also wrote a journal entry about their imaginary day at Sea World.

Assembly - This week it was our turn to host the school assembly. We learnt the song "It's Raining on the Rock" and did some clapping sticks, swaying and coloured scarves with it. We only had time to learn the chorus, but it tied in so well with our unit of work "Are We There Yet?" that I couldn't let it slip by. We also shared our Daintree Rainforest posters. Some of the other Year 1 students showed their artwork of Uluru.