1999

Here we are back in 1999 in  Year 1, Room 2 (left). We had a great year working and learning together. Some of our classmates have moved on to other schools but 17 of us and our teacher are still together, just in a different room! Luckily, five other great children have joined our class. The Year 2000 is shaping up to be an exciting learning journey. Visit us from time to time on our journey.

2000

Our Room

	We have a big room with an outside door and a sliding door inside to go to the blocks and the Drama Room. We have lots of fun in our room.
There were pictures of Vincent van Gogh's paintings all around the room.  Most of them are now displayed in the administration block, the wet area outside our classroom and some are even on loan to an aged-care home. At the end of the year we get to take them home.
	Our fish tank had 4 goldfish in it.  Just before the Easter holidays the baby white one died. The big white fish died after the holidays. We all felt a bit sad. Now we only have two goldfish.
There are charts on the walls to help us learn about other countries, fish, healthy bodies, numbers, the alphabet, Thrass (Teaching, Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills), shapes and teddy bears.  We have a hamburger chart to help us put in lots of details in our work.

Our Teddies

"Rose Cottage"                                                                                                      Quindalup                                                                                                       25th January, 2000 Dear Boys and Girls, My name is Wendy.  I am 84 years old and a collector  of Teddy Bears.  For many years my grandchildren  would come and visit and play with my Teddy Bears.  Now they are grown up and I rarely have small children  visit. During the summer I met Mrs van der Linden, your  teacher. We talked a lot about things young children  like to do and I told her about how I thought it was sad  that no-one ever played or organised things for my  wonderful bears. Then I had an idea.  I thought if I give the bears to your  teacher, every year she could play with the Teddy Bears  and perhaps even organise something very special for  them - maybe a show or a tea party, even a picnic. What do you think?  Could you do that for an old lady  who loves Teddy Bears?  I hope so.  Please take care  of my bears - I love them all. Yours sincerely, Mrs Wendy B.

The four groups in our class each had 4 Teddies to look after.  We had to give them hugs and take them on picnics.  We sat them where we could see them while we were working.
 

Teddy Bear day was a huge success!		We organised a picnic with lots of fun games and food.  We made great invitations on the computer.We invited our friends and families.
Our group (right) did a puppet show performance of Sleeping Beauty. The group leader made a list of the things we needed and organised who was going to do what. We made the puppets for the show using our rulers and paper. Our parents enjoyed the show and so did the teddies.		Some of Group 4 (below) played chess at our teddy bears' picnic. We also played lots of running games. The parents joined in, too. It was great fun.
	The teddies that Group 1 (left) looked after enjoyed a 'dolphin show' that we planned for them. We did the show under the tree near Room 5. During the show our guests sat on the chairs. When it was finished they clapped a lot!

Maths

Working with Blocks You can see the Platypus we made in our zoo.  We made a kangaroo, koala and Tasmanian Devil.

Numero Graph and grid work Number operations Jiggle - a dice game Blocks and map drawing Probability lines Barrier Games

Numero

Art

In Room Three we learnt about famous artists. 

The first artist we learnt about was Vincent van Gogh.  He was born in Holland. Vincent shot himself.  He thought no-one liked him because he had no friends. He thought people didn't like his paintings. After he died people loved his paintings.  He did lots of paintings about flowers, boats, night, buildings and bedrooms.
	We think his bedroom was beautiful and he must have liked it a lot because he did paintings of it.

Starry Night

Starry Night over the Rhone

We like his paintings of Starry Night over the Rhone and Starry Night.
We listened to the song Vincent by Don McLean. The song told us about his paintings and sketches. It is a sad song and tells us about how he died and how much people care about him now.
He would be very happy if he knew that people liked his paintings.
The photographs of Vincent van Gogh's paintings are from Mark Harden's Artchive
Another site to see Vincent's work is: Vincent
Yet another site is: All About Vincent Van Gogh

• First we made outlines of the water in crayon on our paper.
• Next we made stars with yellow crayon.
• The black buildings were next.
• We made reflections of the stars with yellow crayon next.
• The ground in front of the picture was the last thing we made in crayons.
• We brushed black dye over our pictures.

 

Most of our art looked fantastic and you will see some in Our Art Gallery, Art 2000 page.

The teacher read us a great book called, "Camille and the Sunflowers" by Laurence Anholt. It tells about the time Vincent went to Arles in France to paint. He painted pictures of Camille and his family (the Roulins) and many pictures of sunflowers.

* Teacher's Reflection
We have since looked at many other works of Art (we even saw a Monet at the WA Art Gallery) but Vincent van Gogh seems to always remain the favourite. I have used prints, the web, books and a visit to the Art Gallery to develop interest.The children often tell me that they saw one of Vincent's paintings at the shops. Many of the them have a van Gogh print hanging in their bedroom and several have pestered their parents to buy books about Vincent. Jacob has a beautiful book about all the different kinds of flowers Vincent painted. We also have a special Art section in our class library.We have learnt together. My own knowlegde and appreciation of van Gogh's work has grown enormously.

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Flat Stanley

Flat Stanley starts his journey around our school.	Our school emblem has a heron in the centre.It says,  "Share, Care, Learn."	Flat Stanley loved our playground equipment and the our multi-cultural mural around our library.
		Visiting our wetlands Stanley saw lots of birdlife like, black swans (below centre), all kinds of ducks (below) and lots of coots, grebes and moorhens.We think we are lucky to have the wetlands and so does Flat Stanley.

This was our first Flat Stanley and he came to visit us in May this year.  Since this Flat Stanley has arrived we have had seven more Stanleys sent to us in BIG envelopes.  They have come from different parts of America and even from Canada.  They came to visit because we started learning about the Flat Stanley Project.  They all come with their own questions and we have to answer them and email back to their schools.  We put the answers on paper and put them in envelopes together with Flat Stanley journals telling about what Flat Stanley has done with us.
Some of the things that all the Flat Stanleys have liked are:

playing sports and games with us

going to our wetlands behind the oval to see all the different kinds of birds

going home with some of us

riding bikes with us

horse riding with Imogen

Teeball with Mark

listening and watching Mathiyos play his African drums

listening to the Kelmscott High School Bands

visiting all the stalls at Ripper Recess

going to the movies with Mathiyos

We have sent 16 Flat Stanleys to other places - mainly to Canada and America.  We have sent a Flat Stanley to the Dominican Republic which is a tropical island in the Carribean Sea and one to El Salvador in Central America!

Flat Stanley One looking at  the Sunflowers.	Flat Stanley Two at Ripper Recess getting his fingernails polished	Flat Stanley Two with the Double Bass player from the Kelmscott Senior High School Jazz Band.
Flat Stanley Three playing the drums with the Jazz Band and Mathiyos.	Flat Stanley Three buying popcorn at Ripper Recess.	Flat Stanley Four looking for Coot nests at the Wetlands.
Flat Stanley Five sketching the beautiful sunflowers.	Flat Stanley Six waving to  Mrs van der Linden.	Flat Stanley Seven helping Ms Hilsz and Adrian at Assembly.

Our Flat Stanley Poems
 

Flat Stanley Flat, kind, Flying, disguising, rescuing, Flattened by bulletin board Flat Stanley Kaila	Flat Stanley Little flat, Hiding, flying, sliding Sliding under the door  Flat Stanley.   By Rory	Flat Stanley Small, flat Flying, posted, sliding Slipping down the drain Flat boy.   By Adrian	Flat Stanley Skinny, small, Sliding, solving, flying In a post letter  Flat Stanley.   By Jesse H
Flat Stanley Small, brown- haired, Flying, solving, hiding Flying in the air  Flat Stanley. By Imogen	Flat Stanley Small, flat Hiding, disguising, solving He stopped the robbers  Flat Stanley. By Mathiyos	Flat Stanley Small, flat Rescuing, flying, hiding in an envelope  Flat Stanley. By Melinda	Flat Stanley Flat, boy, Flying, sliding, crashing Brother blew him up Flat Stanley Robert B

THE MAGIC OF COLOUR

In Science we investigated colour. We experimented  and discovered what happened when we mixed different colours together.	Look what happened when we put these colours together. red + blue = purple yellow + blue = green red + green = brown red+white=pink Black + white = grey	We talked about warm colours and cold colours.
	Then with a partner we took a couple of colour satchels from a paint selection card and went out into the school yard to find things from nature to match the cards. Some were harder to find than others but every colour was found.
	We discovered that trees were not just brown and green but had many shades of many colours like red, purple, blue, grey, pink, orange and black.
Then, one Friday, in September, with our partners, we mixed trays of paint to match the different paint satchels . We had lots of fun mixing colours to get it just right.	Next came the best bit. Using leaves from the  trees in the school garden and bark, we printed a huge tree together. In  the afternoon we created our own trees.	During the following week we thought about things that we knew that looked like or reminded us of the colours in the trees we had created. This helped us to write our poems titled  "The Colour of My Tree"
Here are a couple of our tree poems. Read more of our poems in the Authors Showcase. This is also the place to check out some of our wonderful writers recounts. For more of our Art work go to Art 2000	THE COLOURS OF MY TREE By Jacob In my tree I can see; Light blue like the sea when it is a sunny day Dark brown like a wild bear Orange like the fur of a fox Black like a chest thumping gorilla Light grey like the clouds on a sunny day Light green like the school grass Green like the roof tiles And yellow like butter These are the colours of my tree.	THE COLOURS OF MY TREE By Andrew In my tree I can see; Black like Mathiyos’s hair Dark green like school grass  Brown like chocolate icing on a donut White like a blank page Blue like the heavens These are the colours of my tree.

Special Moments

One Morning in May, just before school started Kelmscott was hit by a freak hail storm. The noise as the storm hit was eery.	All the teachers who were at school were surprised by how quickly the scene changed before their eyes. Within minutes everything (paths,  play areas and the oval were covered in hail.	It looked like a covering of snow. There  were still clumps of hail that hadn't melted lying around at lunchtime!

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