year1rc

On Tuesday Year 1 and Year 2 visited a farm to learn more about animals, where our food comes from and sorting out our ‘needs’ from our ‘wants’.

It was such great fun seeing, touching, smelling and listening to all the animals on this farm. There were mummies, daddies and babies of lots of different kinds of animals and our guide Jess told us all about them.

Did you know a baby rabbit is called a kitten?

Did you know a daddy pig is called a boar?

Did you know a mummy sheep is called a ewe?

We went on a great tractor ride, where Farmer Ryan told us that the only way to make the tractor go faster was to scream as loudly as possible!!

We watched 3 amazing sheep dogs round up the sheep. Rusty, the kelpie, can run sooo.. fast.

Then Farmer Ryan showed us how to shear a sheep, there is so much wool on one sheep.. I wonder if they feel so much lighter when they have lost their big woollen coat.?

On Friday we went up to Year 2 classroom to watch a very special visitor called Sally make cheese.

She is very clever and knows so much about cheese. She told us how the first cheese was made 3,500 years ago by a man called Homer ( NO! not Simpson..) He had milked a cow and had to travel a long way home so he carried the milk in a sheeps stomach ( because they didn’t have plastic containers back then) By the time he had walked home in the heat the milk had turned into cheese, with the help of the enzymes and bacteria that were present in the sheeps stomach.

Sally put 1 litre of milk in a saucepan to heat up, while several girls squeezed 3 lemons. Once the milk in the pan was hot she added 4 tlbs of natural yoghurt (bacteria), then juice from the lemons (enzymes). The milk separated into curds and whey. Next Sally tipped the contents of the saucepan into a collander lined with paper towel to let the whey drain through and keep the curds in the bowl. In the end we had a decent size ball of whey – cheese !!!!  All cheese starts this way but they add different bits to add taste, or heat or cool, or add pressure.

We all had a taste of our cheese on a cracker and the overall verdict was……..DELICIOUS!!!!

Thank you so much Sally for visiting us and demonstrating how to make cheese for us. We all enjoyed watching, helping and tasting.

You could try to make your own cheese at home. Let us know how you go.

awww… the eggs are hatching….. we are recording all the details about the cutest little members of Year 1.

An update and the latest photos of our little chicks …….. so cute

They have all hatched, we have a fluffy selection of black and yellow chicks.

We had fun on Friday making Mother’s Day cards and shopping for just the right present from the great selection at the Mother’s Day stall.

A big thankyou to the buyers and sellers for the stall.

The girls in Year 1 have been working hard on our Science topic this term -

                       “Up, Down and All Around”

We have used our iPads to make a mind map, which shows our understanding of the topic. The program we used is called ‘Popplet’ – it is fun and easy to use. We have enjoyed making our popplets and we love to show them to each other.

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        If you would like to see them come in and ask us to show them to you.

We had to follow a recipe to decorate Easter biscuits. A recipe is a style of writing called a ‘procedure’. We measured and mixed ingredients, had fun adding the decorations (lollies) on top. BUT……..the best part was eating our biscuits!                      Yummmmm!   They were delicious

We are good cooks.

On Friday 22nd March 2013 we turned off computers, lights, fans and the smartboard to observe ‘Earth Hour’ from 8.30am – 10.30am. So we had ‘Earth Hour’ for 2 hours!! It was fun and quite dark in our classroom. In today’s digital society we recoil in horror at the thought of having no electricity. But ‘Earth Hour’ Day (23rd March), the largest environmental event in history, reminds us that switching off can be a good thing, we are helping to look after our world. So we hope that on Saturday night you had a nice candlelight dinner and played cards or a board game with your family, and had fun!!

Make a stand in 2013 for climate issues –
The official Earth Hour Day website http://www.earthhour.org/

This first term has certainly been a busy and exciting one for Year 1.

Below are some photos of us working in the classroom, on the computers, in reading groups, in DEAR time, observing around us for science outside, playing musical instruments and for some of us enjoying being in a new school and meeting new friends. We worked hard to prepare for Open Day, which was also a celebration of our school’s birthday – we came to school on Saturday and sang a song and showed the parents a demonstration lesson.

The best thing that happened to us this term ………….. we were given iPads!!!!  We were so excited and have now written stories, drawn pictures for the characters and made our own show using our iPads. We love using our iPads to work on and lately have been exploring Space as part of our science topic.

We wish everyone a Happy and relaxing Easter, and look forward to hearing your comments about our blog.


It's great to be back !
I have had a long exciting overseas vacation. I feel very blessed that I was able to take some of my Long Service Leave in conjunction with the holiday break, making my time away a relaxing, exciting, adventurous, wonderful holiday. I visited 8 countries, used 3 different currencies, had to try and speak 4 different languages and saw many different cultures. I was cruising around the Mediteranean on a big beautiful ship called the Ruby Princess. The weather was hot and sunny everyday, so I am noticing the cold back here. I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the places I visited - lots of castles, ruins, cathedrals and some magnificent art.