Sunday, October 30, 2011

Everybody's got a Water buffalo


This song has been in my head for the past week. (well actually the superchick version because it's more fun...but youtube doesn't seem to think so)
I was having a bit of an emotional day at the end of last week & at one point I found myself crying "everyone else has a baby! where's my baby! why don't I have a baby?" and I realised how veggie-tale-esque my woes were. This doesn't make the ache of my heart any less there, but does make it more humorous.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Choose Your Charity...

Last term our Year 4s had a market day, one of my absolute favourite days of the year! With their powers combined (like the Captain Planet team...oh side note Captain Planet the movie is apparently being made! I've been prediciting this for yeaaaaaars!) they raised around $1400! Go Team!

It's tradition for our Year foursies to give 10% of what they raise to a charity, of their collective choice.
Last year they gave to our sister school in the Philippines and the year before to the girl who used to work in our office and now works with sex-slaves in Greece. I love seeing the cause that arouses the hearts of our little people.

Our current Year 4s have had a few weeks to mull over who/what they wanted to support this year and today was decision day! We started with a brainstorm... I love that each kid had a story behind why they chose a particular charity... one girl chose the orphanage her brothers came from, another chose a cancer related charity because her mum just had a throat cancer removed, one boy chose a children's hospital in Melbourne because he had seen it on BTN (oh don't get me started on how much I love BTN).

We wrote all of these up and then had a vote.... and the winner was 'Sumatran Tigers'. Over a third of the kids felt compelled to help the endangered animals from Sumatra. I am still to figure out how this became such a passion of theirs. But I love that it is! Of course some staff were annoyed that we let them support an animal, rather than helping the orphans or something, and to some degree I agree...but as the kids said 'they are God's creation and it's not fair that they are not being looked after!'

The four boys who suggested Sumatran tigers in the first place had the job of finding a charity we could donate to. (When they found 'adopt a tiger' they got slightly concerned as to where we would keep it...um)
We decided on going through Taronga, the zoo we camped at last month, and the boys wrote this email...

To whom it may concern:

(our school's) Year 4 students would like to donate to help the Sumatran  tigers.
We recently had a fundraiser for our Junior School Graduation and have decided to spend 10% of what we raised on a charity. This is $140.
Most of Year 4 students voted to help the Sumatran tigers because they are God’s creation and they don’t deserve to die. We feel sad that the tigers are not being taken care of and that they may become extinct. We hope that our money can help provide food for them and help to restore their environment.
Can you tell us where to donate the money so it will best help the tigers?

From P, L, J and E
On behalf of Year 4 at(our school)
Super sweet hey!

In the process of researching Sumatran tiger charities, the boys also decided they wanted to make a powerpoint presentation (of course!) to show the other students why it is so important to help these creatures. I may have to help them edit it before they show Kindergarten gruesome images of mistreated animals, but I so admire their initiative!

Oh I am sad that I only have 29 more school days with these beautiful kids before they head...all the way up the hill to Middle School. :-)

Monday, October 24, 2011

I Accidentally Called it a Project

I may have mentioned my class' love of 'projects' before... I realised last term that if I called anything a 'project' my class works super hard and gets so excited about researching and presenting what they learn.
So this afternoon I brought a simple research task down for our 'fairtrade' unit. They just needed to use the computers to find the answers to 5 questions and colour a map to represent their finidings. I figured they could get this done this afternoon...
But then I was thrown the excited "is this a PROJECTTT!!!!!!!!!!!???" and when I should have said "No, sorry, this is just this afternoon's work," instead I got caught up in the hype and agreed with them. So now the afternoon task is a week-long task with presentations on Friday afternoon. This means there will be Powerpoints, posters and maybe even a dramatic performance. Oh, what have I done? haha

Also, this week we are auditioning for our SUPER... performance - for the main roles. Some kids have even asked if they can bring in props for the audition. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Also Also, it's only 50 days till I go! eeeeek!

Also Also Also, my beautiful friend had a baby girl last Friday. I got to meet her on Saturday. Sooooo cute! Oh I could hold a sleeping baby forever...I know that isn't possible cos of how babies don't sleep forever, maybe I could hold a series of babies on rotation when they are sleeping...although that may make the teaching thing tricky...hmm I haven't thought this through. I'll keep you posted if I come up with a solution.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Condensed

Moving out of your own home is a funny experience.
Today I spent a few hours cleaning out the spare room (or "Louise's room") because the 2nd of the four girls who are living here next year is moving in on Thursday.

My house is not super big. It's not small either, but it's just not enormous. So moving all the stuff out of the spare room left me with conundrum of where to put such things... while that 1 particular room is now super tidy...the rest of my house is not.

I have a mega pile, by the door, of junk to give my kids (haha their parents are going to looooove me!), another pile of things to return to people (ummm), another pile of rubbish that I should've taken out, but forgot to, and a pile of 1 yellow raincoat. Does anyone else have things they can't stand to touch? My dad gave me that raincoat and it's super cute, but touching it gives me the heebie jeebies and the sound of it... (I can't accurately put into words my whole body's reaction to that sound...I really need to stop telling people this though, because usually statements like that get followed with "what? this sound?" Arrrgh!)

My bedroom has also acquired a whole bunch of stuff... mostly toys and games which are being stored for the next 15 months in the toppest cupboards of my room. However, I had the dilemma this afternoon of what to do with the Christmas tree. I technically won't be in the country for Christmas so I did just pack it into the back of the cupboard, BUT I am hosting family Christmas breakfast on December 10th... and everyone knows you need a tree for such things. So there's no point storing it if I just have to get it out real soon again hey. At the moment it is just laying on my bedroom floor... I think I'll probably put it up by the end of the week. My ipod concurs.. it started playing carols when I suggested the fact this afternoon.

Other things I only just thought about about (hehe) having a 3rd person living in my house:
- 3 girls, 1 bathroom...hmm
- I need to clear her some bathroom shelf space...where will I put those things?
- She will also need some kitchen pantry space hey (the fridge will be fine once we throw out the out of date stuff)...hmm I might have to give up my 'party shelf'
- I may need to meet her at some point

In summary... my house is slowly becoming less 'kaye' (lucky we painted it, so it won't lose me completely :) ) and my bedroom is rapidly becoming more crowded... thing is I need to move out of here too. hmm.

In other news:
I took up mouthwash this week... and I am not a fan. it buuuurns! I wish it was strawberry flavoured. why do tooth things all have to be flavoured mint?
This term is going to go so fast.
I downloaded a count-down app today...eeek 58 days!
My new favourite Boost Juice is strawberries and cream.
Last night I minded Hayden, he is so fun. He even poked me in the eye with a toothbrush. haha
We have a gala day on thursday! Woohoo!
OOOOooooh and I got to hang with baby Annaleise on Thursday. She is so small and snuggly! sooo cute!

The end.




Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Wordle of Encouragement (yeh cheesy title)


So.
Today for Art we made wordles. 
Have you used wordle.net before? Basically you type in a bunch of words then press go and it arranges them in a cool cloud shape. The bigger the words, the more often it has been used in the text you entered. fun.

After lunch we booked out the computer lab and I had each kid write their name in the wordle text box. We then rotated computers... 25 times and wrote a sentence describing what we like about that person.
I seriously thought that we would maybe have time to get to half of the computers, considering the age of my Year 3 & 4 kids, but they are incredible typers! I can't believe how fast they can type! (well some just wrote short things) 
At the end each child had a page of super nice things about themselves (as did I...see above). My favourite part was being able to write somethings I love about each of my kids. It does your heart so good to think about the positives of people doesn't it!
My second favourite thing was reading the cute things my kids wrote on mine (wish I had more time to edit it... not super happy with the colours or size of letters I picked, but there were a few frozen computers and printing issues to deal with). I love that the word 'superior' was used haha. 

At the end of the lesson my class unanimously voted that it was a great activity and couldn't stop talking about the things people had said about them. I love that every kid in my class could think of something nice about every other kid in my class! (even if it was just 'nice hair') I am so blessed to work with such cool kids.

PS... Yes we are learning the Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious dance! 
We even got the Year 4 class in on it. 51 kids. Yes I am crazy!
But they have already learnt the actions for SUPERCALIFRAGILISTIC! We are more than half way after just 3 short practices! ha!

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Just a Spoonful of Sugar

Yesterday it was finally the 8th of October!
 The day we went to see Mary Poppins the Musical!
There ended up being a group of 21 of us! (that is a lot of people to organise...and a lot of people when you buy all the tickets on your card...eek!)
It was a super random group of people...including friends from work, friends from church, friends from high school, as well as my mum, sisters, aunty (who flew down for it) and Grandma!

The musical was absolutely brilliant! The sets were amazing...seriously, furniture moved around magically & the house opened like a reaaaaallly giant dolls' house. My favourites would have to be Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and Step in Time. Absolutely amazing!
I seriously want to teach my class the S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-S dance... what do you think my chances are?I think if anyone can it's this year's class.

I made everyone a special treat for the day... A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR!!!! mmm

We got a bit of Spoonful of Sugar envy! My grandma even took hers back to show the other ladies at church. cute!


Family! This is my aunty, grandma, mum, sisters & I with our spoons.


Some of my lovely friends! (the others were at the bathroom, pfft priorities people!) I am so blessed to have these people in my life! Also do you like my double stocking layering?


I'm thinking of claiming Mary Poppins on tax as it was great training for being a nanny! I learnt some fantastic skills, if only I could master the sliding up banisters I would be set! 

I love fun adventures to the city with people I love. :-)

Oh also... holidays are over, it's back to school tomorrow, I serious feel like it's been about 4 days.
although I am not  quite prepared, I can't wait to see my little people (and get started on that dance...haha am I joking? I'm not even sure, we'll see)!!