Last year, I spied these large fish wind socks hanging from the awning of Goldfish, a gift store in Berry, in southern NSW. They came in a rainbow of colours, but I had to wait to see what contrasting colour choices I would have in the finished BER library. My selection: green, like the doors!
I couldn’t help but buy myself a rainbow lorikeet wind sock as well. It’ll come in handy when the K-2 students study “How the birds got their colours”:
The temporary fence finally came down on the new school library, just after the new signage, old shade cloth and new TV aerial went up (it’s been many years since our school had a functional TV aerial!).
The beautifully-laid new concrete went unmarred by students and adults attempting to sign their name in the wet cement – but one of our playground birds managed to perform a spectacular “feet” of graffiti.
My bizarre Book Week story:
When I spotted these shoes on a recent foggy winter morning, I was originally convinced I was seeing two birds on the rail. Trying to work out why one bird was seemingly hanging upside down, I approached slowly. Was it a bat? As I took out my iPhone to snap a quick shot, I was also bewildered as to why the other bird hadn’t yet flown away.
What remains unexplained is that these beautiful shoes aren’t even a matched pair! If you’ve read and enjoyed the poignant CBCA shortlisted picture book, “Schumann the shoeman” by John & Stella Danalis, you’ll understand why this local example of urban art gave me a few chills.
Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are enjoying this great animation from Youtube.
First information request of the new school year:
A Year 4/5 composite class is in need of pictures of peacocks. The poster collection was rather depleted in the bird area, but I did find numerous short peacock and peahen videos on Youtube. The best one is probably this:
It had to happen: another of my analogies has taken on a life of its own.
Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students at my school have been studying Aboriginal Dreaming stories, interspersed with factual information about the animals/characters featured.
A few weeks ago, it was “Why the emu cannot fly”, followed by information reports about emus and other flightless birds. We also backed up the accumulation of facts with a few picture books, such as “Edwina the emu” by Sheena Knowles and Rod Clement, because fictitious Edwinda leaves poor ol’ partner Edward on the nest of large green eggs, just like in real life.
The students discussed possibilities of why emu eggs were green, and we considered the camouflaging patterns of baby emus, which enable them to hide in the shadows, away from predators. I compared their stripey patterns to that of zebras in Africa.
In our final week of the unit about dreaming stories, we’ve been using a book of Australian birds and I’ve been modelling the use of the index to look examples. The students were facinated that this particular index had no X, Y or Z, but someone in each class has usually been able to explain that, obviously, there are no major Australian birds starting with those letters. (I think I even said something stupid like, “If zebras were Australian birds, they’d be listed down here”, as I pointed to the end of the index – with my index finger.)
Of course, a whole week later, our oral revision of Australian bird facts had turned up the inadequacies of human memories. My question about camouflaging emu chicks was answered thusly:
“Baby emus have stripes so that goannas and snakes will mistake them for zebras.”
I’d been consoling myself by telling another teacher who came into the library the next day – we had a good laugh about it – but then, as if planned that way, one of her students came out the same factoid.
Oh dear. Chinese whispers are alive and well. And so, too, are Australia’s feral zebras, it seems.
The infamous spotted zebra of western Sydney: we believe he can camouflage in a litter of dalmations.