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!

Buster the boxer – persuasive digital stories

Each year, UK department store, John Lewis, hires a team to create a special ad for the Christmas season. These ads are excellent examples of persuasive visual texts.


John Lewis Christmas advert 2016 – #BustertheBoxer

Previous annual links to John Lewis ads are HERE.

Dogs, dogs, dogs

This week, Early Stage 1 and Stage students are investigating factual information about dogs.

We also discussed a few famous literary dogs, such as Clifford, Fearless and Spot.

Clifford & Phoebe at Penrith PS (2011):

Travelling Fearless at Penrith PS (Book Week 2010):

Travelling Fearless, Part 2: Farewell Fearless! (Book Week 2010):

An Easter tale (2014):

Hicketty Picketty: preparing for Chicks R Us

This week, students in Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 will be learning the nursery rhyme Hicketty Picketty. We will also be reading Out of the egg, by Tina Matthews, which is a variation of The little red hen fairy tale.

The inclement weather last Friday gave Class 1HB another chance to brainstorm a digital story. This time they ended up with an Easter theme, which will prove useful with other classes as the term progresses:


An Easter tale

The subsequent week consolidates the learning with this digital quiz on PhotoPeach, which draws upon images and information gathered in 2011 after a unit of work based upon the annual Chicks R Us experience:


What’s in the egg?

Another picture book favourite is Clifford’s happy Easter by Norman Bridwell, which features a North American (spring season!) Easter egg hunt and the dyeing of boiled eggs.

And our PhotoPeach digital story about Clifford the Big Red Dog’s last visit to our school library:


Clifford & Phoebe at Penrith PS

Pupils make most of web in storytelling adventure

Stage 1 students create digital stories

Stage 1 students are media stars again! The full article by Jessica Aquilina is HERE, courtesy of today’s Penrith City Star newspaper. Above photo courtesy of Gary Warrick, Penrith City Star.

Our digital stories are here:


Champions read!


Superheroes are champion readers!


How the whale got a hole in his head


Selby licks a lollipop: a Candyland adventure


Lovely library limericks


The elephant’s child


The three little pigs

Let it snow!

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are learning about the season of winter this week. After reading “What-a-Mess in winter” by Frank Muir & Joseph Wright, which is set during the approach of Christmas festivities in England, we investigated these two Youtube video clips:


Spectacular footage – Train plowing through deep snow Arthur’s Pass


Snow flakes

Closer to home…

Penrith snowman in a hailstorm

Here’s a Photo Peach slideshow from the day that Penrith Public School had a freak summer hailstorm, turning a typical December day into a winter wonderland!


Penrith PS in December: a white Christmas

More puppets! It’s an obsession!

Puppets 1

Bargain basement animal puppets at $3 each from The Reject Shop, Penrith Plaza. Not sure why the Dalmatian has a yellow nose. I originally rejected these four puppets as my least favourites, but at just $3 each they made a hard bargain to pass up.

Puppets 2

More cute animal puppets, this time from the online Sunshine Markets, Queensland. The parcel arrived today! These were an irresistible Internet find: crocodile, leopard and (what the online catalogue called) “the Big Good Wolf”. Really? With those eyes?

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.