Grass into hay: Little Boy Blue

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are investigating the nursery rhyme, “Little Boy Blue”.


Little Boy Blue – nursery rhyme with karaoke

Here are the factual Youtube clips we will be using to expand their field knowledge:


Haystack building using pitchforks


How to make grass into hay bales


Round baling hay


Blowing horns


Blowing 2 shofars

Chinese New Year – Year of the Dog

Students in Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 will be celebrating Chinese New Year as part of our Celebrations unit in literacy. This year, it will be the Year of the Dog. We will be reading the picture books, New year surprise! by Christopher Cheng & Di Wu and Made in China by Deborah Nash.

Here are some Youtube resources:


Year of the Dog – Wallace & Gromit


2018 Lion Dance in Pavilion KL ushering the Year of the Dog

And when revising our work on sheep:


World’s wooliest sheep ‘found in Australia’


Shaun the Sheep has been finally shorn!

We go crazy with some sheep

This week, Class 2RB celebrated the end of our investigations into nursery rhymes by collecting white objects, from home and around school, taking photographs in the school library, and brainstorming some rhyming text to create a crazy slideshow on PhotoPeach!


Baa baa white sheep

Meanwhile, Class 2S worked on a different story about a lonely, brown sheep. The students took some inspiration from the picture book, Hunwick’s egg by Mem Fox & Pamela Lofts, and our current Chicks ‘R’ Us program.


Ewe and the egg

Jack and Jill and friends

This week, our Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students were investigating the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill. The following digital slideshow dates back to 2011, and was created during the previous three-year cycle:


Jack and Jill

HooplaKidz TV present two Youtube videos about Jack and Jill. Note that, in the first one, Jack breaks a crown fit for a king, rather than his actual head.


Nursery rhymes for kids – Jack and Jill – nursery rhyme


Jack and Jill – Olive & the Rhyme Rescue Crew

We read two books on the theme of friends, Eight by Lyn Lee & Kim Gamble, about a lost toy octopus, and Brave Squish Rabbit by Katherine Battersby. Coincidentally, both picture books feature a thunderstorm. The students of Classes 2RB, 1IW and 2S then brainstormed the following digital story about friends:


We are friends!

UPDATE: I found a different slideshow about friends on Facebook, also by Year 1 students, at another school:


We are friends! by Mrs. Burnett’s First Grade class

Relaunching Baa baa black sheep!

Yesterday, I was able to dig up the old photos and recreate the students of 2011’s digital slideshow of a nursery rhyme, “Baa baa black sheep”:

Please click HERE.


Baa baa black sheep

And another one salvaged tonight:

Please click HERE.


The Gruffalo goes to the Joan

The giraffe neck project

New puppets

It’s an obsession! Despite resisting the urge to keep buying new puppets for the library. I found myself in need of a sheep puppet for next term at school, and yesterday I went back to find their last one. The bargain shop also had giraffes. The galah (it squawks!) and spotted quoll puppets were more expensive, from the local ABC Shop.

Giraffe project

The bargain shop had two no-necked giraffes left, so I have just combined two into one, to give my giraffe an appropriately long neck. A bargain-priced wooden paper-towel holder was disassembled and the stick glued inside the giraffe’s head. The original body “glove” was glued and wrapped around the wooden stick, then the beheaded body was sewn to the base of the resulting long neck.

Puppets 3

(Above left) Customised puppet-to-be: I hope to create a bat puppet from the spare giraffe’s head on a $3 spotty Dalmation dog puppet’s body. Yet to be dyed brown or grey. I’ll need some felt for the wings, and some sharp white teeth.
(Above right) Another dog puppet from the $6 range.