Harmony Day

Today was Harmony Day. One of our activities was Little Japan. We had a chance to write numbers one to ten, use chopsticks, learn origami and try on a kimono. It was a lot of fun.

The Birdman

Darcy's Grandfather ('Poppy') came to our class with 16 birds in cages. He told us all about how to breed and care for finches. Darcy and Phoebe have won many ribbons for their birds.

Crazy Hair Day at SHNPS

Yesterday it was crazy hair day and Matt’s hair looked good. I loved Matt’s hair and I liked my hair. Matt had big spikes and sparkles on the spikes, I had plaits with colour and sparkles. We both had grey sparkles on our hair.
Heather 15.03.07

Pivot Movie

A few weeks ago four 2M students chose to make Pivot Animation Movies as part of their homework. Click here to view their work.

More Fruity Pictures

Clever Matthew made three faces on one apple!


Taylor's nana knows how to relax.


Frankie's pet went pear-shaped.

Food Pictures inspired by Saxton Freymann

Who is torturing the banana boy?

Krystal made this mandarin man.

Logo

Here are some of our Logo patterns.

Food Pics

Here are two of our food sculptures inspired by Saxton Freymann. Tysto made the scary lemon man and Isabelle created the kiwi monkey.

Using MSW Logo

Using MSW Logo is a little tricky but it is fun. Here is one way to make a square pattern:

1. MSW Logo
Download from www.softronix.com/logo.html - just click on Setup Kit and do what you’re told!

Lesson 1
In the command window (bottom of screen) type fd 200 and press Enter.
Type rt 90 and press Enter. What happened?

Click on Reset to start again. Now make a square.
How would you make a rectangle? Bigger square? Smaller square?


Lesson 2
Click on File – Edit. A little Procedure box opens.
Type sq in the title space and click OK.
Write a program for making a square. It should look like this –

To sq
fd 200 rt 90 fd 200 rt 90 fd 200 rt 90 fd 200 rt 90
End

Now go to File -
Save and Exit.

Type sq and Enter. Type rt 30 and Enter. Repeat sq rt 30 until you complete the pattern.

Save as a bitmap in a safe place!

Lesson 3
Open Paint and File – Open – browse to your logo picture. Centre it in the Paint screen, then colour in and save appropriately.

Food Pictures

This week we will be looking at books by Saxton Freymann in our reading groups. You can see his work at his website - click here.

We will make some pictures using fruit and vegetables. We willpost them on this blog. Here are some made by Mr McLoughlin's former students:

Three Little Gems

Here are three excellent programs which we will be using in 2M in the coming weeks. They are all free downloads (shareware) and help you have fun while you are learning.

1. MSW Logo - A turtle has a pen on his tail. You give him commands and he leaves
a trail as he goes. Here is a picture made by Matthew using Logo.(He hasn't
coloured it yet). You can download MSW from this link.

2. Audacity - a program for recording and editing sound files. You can record
telling a story, saying a poem, singing a song, etc. You can turn your
recording into an MP3. You can download Audacity from this link. The students at
Mr McLoughlin's old school made some podcasts with Audacity. Click here and select "Podcasts" to listen.

3. Pivot Stickfigure Animator - we've looked at this elsewhere in this blog.

Class Report

2M Class Report

Thank you to all those parents who came along for the “Meet the Teachers” evening on Monday. It was great to see such a strong attendance despite the inclement weather.

We have started learning to play the recorder with Mr Hawkins. All students have quickly mastered the contents of Lesson One. Next week the children will bring home their recorders to delight their families (just for a day or two!).

We have also established a junior choir in the school which met for the first time on Wednesday afternoon. The choir consists of 26 angelic singers from 1S and 2M and we will practise a wide variety of simple songs for performance at assemblies and similar occasions.
2M students have a had an introduction to ‘Maths on the Net’ , which is part of the NSW Country Areas Program. Each week a problem is presented for each stage (2M are Stage 1) and answers may be posted online. Later in March there is a bigger Web Challenge. You can have a look at http://www.cap.nsw.edu.au/motn/index.htm

Sean McLoughlin
2M Class teacher