ART ATTACK

In room 21 we have been exploring the reasons why people wear adornments such as jewellery in different cultures. We have found out that there are a range of reasons why people wear jewellery, and in particular necklaces. Some wear them to enhance how they look, while others believe that the jewels and precious metals help keep them safe, and yet others wear necklaces to tell a story.

We decided that we would have a go at making necklaces to put into the Art Attack as a fundraiser for the school.

Below are some photos of the process we went through as we made beads and then designed our necklaces.

Photos of the completed necklaces are below as well.

DESIGNING LUNCHTIME GAMES!

Room 21 writers have been busy learning about instructional (procedure) writing and to show case their skills, they decided it would be great to design some lunchtime games for year 1 and 2 children to play at school.

They got into groups and brainstormed some ideas, then raided the PE shed to test their ideas out. Here are some photos of them testing their games.










The next step will be for each group to write a procedure and take photos so that the Year one and two children can learn and use the games they created to play at lunchtime. At Red Beach School, we call this 'Making a Difference'!

Postcards from Space

In Room 21, we have been exploring facts about the solar system. We pretended we had travelled to different planets and we sent postcards back home to share our experiences with our family and friends.



Dear Kaiya,
I finally reached Pluto. It is cold here. It's 230 degrees. Pluto is dark. It is a dwarf planet. We played hide and seek. I nearly froze on Pluto. Pluto is dark purple like a grape.
Love from Kaisee

Dear Mum and Dad,
I have visited Venus. Venus is the hottest planet in the Universe. Venus would burn me if I was on it so I have to stay in a special suit.
Love from Megan

Dear Megoo,
I've just flown through the asteroid belt. That made me feel sick and dizzy. At least, I landed on the icy planet Neptune. You'd love it there Megoo because you can float about. Here's some facts I found out about Nepture. 1. On Neptune there is lots of gas that gives Nepture its blue colour. 2. One day on Neptune is 16 Earth hours. I really miss you. See you in two days.
Love you lots, from Katie G

Dear Ms McPhail,
I've just reached Pluto. It is really dark and cold on Pluto but the good thing is that we might be able to play spot light tonight when its dark. The next morning me and my buddies played Jump It. Jump It is a game that you jump to one rock then the next rock. Ms McPhail if you ever want to go to Pluto you will need bed equipment, space equipment, warm clothes and food.
Kind regards
Hayley

Dear Ms McPhail,
We have arrived at Pluto! But don't worry about the cold and the dark because Hayley and I have five heaters on which run on batteries and most of our clothes on. For light, we have a torch each. Hayley and I dug a crater wider to sleep in, with a heater on plus all our blankets on. We had to share a bed because we could not dig that crater big enough. We also saw a comet far away. It made a loud banging sound as it hit Uranus.
Love from Charlotte

Dear Family,
Did you know that I needed to fly through the astroid belt? Here on Uranus it is very very cold because Uranus is an ice planet. Uranus takes eighty four Earth years to orbit the sun. Do you know it takes you one hundred and fifty nine billion years to travel to Uranus. Did you know it takes one hundred and twenty seven days for Uranus to rotate.
Love from Bailey

Dear Tino,
I went to Uranus but an asteroid flew past. Uranus is best know as the seventh planet closest to the sun. Uranus is blue. It is surrounded with rings.
By Tana

Dear Dad,
I just arrived on Saturn. I could see the spectacular rings around it. But wait a minute! Dad, you should see how many moons Saturn has. Dad did you know that it takes Saturn 29.46 years to orbit the Sun.
Love Hamish

Dear Jared,
I went to Pluto today. It was 2300kms across! It's very very, very, very cold and there are 1,000,000 rocks on Pluto! There are aliens! Run for your lives. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Love from Hamy

Dear Mum and Dad,
On Mars there are large volcanoes and it takes Mars 687 Earth days to go around the sun and Mars is the fourth planet in the galaxy.
Love Wian

Dear Nana,
At last we're on Pluto. Pluto is the coldest planet in our solar system. When we left Pluto we went to its moon, Charon. Charon was as cold as Pluto. Pluto is not a planet any more because it is too small. So it's called a dwarf planet. See you in five light years.
From Marshall

Dear Mum,
We have just landed on Saturn. The rings are so big. It was very hard to get through the asteriod belt. It has moons. More moons than Earth!
Love from Ashly

Dear Mum and Dad,
I have landed on Venus. From Venus, Earth looks like a star. There are clouds surrounding Venus. Venus is the slowest to turn around to make a day.
From Vaughan

Dear Mum,
I found the postcard you sent me. I just got back from Venus and now I'm on the very hot Mercury. I've discovered that Venus is hotter than Mercury. It took ages for me to work out why and the answer was because Venus has a big cloud around it that Mercury doesn't have. I just got a new rocket because my other one burned down on Venus. This one did the same. I may not be getting home for a while.
From Emily

Dear Benjamin,
I've just landed on Pluto. It is very, very dark. Me and Olivia T and Tana played spotlight and it was so so fun. Bye for now.
From Jayden

Dear Mum,
It is so hot at Mars. I couldn't breathe. I nearly fainted! I would never sleep.
From Hunter


Dear Mum,
I just landed on Jupiter this morning. Jupiter is so big you don't know where you are. Jupiter is made out of hydrogen gas so I hope I don't fall through it. The food we have in the space craft is so yucky it tastes like pulp. Guess how long it takes Jupiter to orbit the Sun? Twelve years! I'll be 18 when I get back to Earth! We now have landed our space craft and are coming back home.
From Maddie

Dear Mum and Nana,
We have just arrived on Pluto. It is very dark and cold. We can not see anything. We think we should go to another place because it is too dark and cold. Tomorrow we are going to go to the Moon because it is better.
Love from Charlee

Dear Family,
I have just landed on Pluto. Pluto is dark and cold. I had to get my warm coat on. It takes 248 years for Pluto to go round the sun! Pluto is 5,900,000,000km away from the sun. Also, Pluto is the smallest planet.
Love Alannah
P.S. I miss your company

Dear William,
I have just blasted off. I am going to the hottest planet Venus. When I got there I didn't want to land on Venus because its atmosphere is 27% carbon dioxide and nitrogen and it will melt my space bus! When I flew back to Earth I saw an asteroid. I had to put a parachute on to land safely
From Benjamin

Dear Mum and Dad,
In Earth down where the people live we can see half of the moon. The moon is very very white. The moon is a big, big, big ball.
Love from Katie B

Dear Jayden,
I've just left the moon. I am excited because we are going to Pluto now in a spaceship rocket. Pluto is very dark and it is cold. I was shivering because I was cold. You can go home now I said to Mum.
Love from Olivia T

Explosions....Bright Lights...Science

Black Holes!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won't be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday.

That is definitely not the norm for gamma ray bursts, energetic blasts that typically flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, often the sign of the death throes of a collapsing star.

"This is truly different from any explosive event we have seen before," said Joshua Bloom of the University of California-Berkeley, a co-author of research on the blast published in the journal Science.

Initially spied on March 28 by NASA's Swift spacecraft, which is trolling the universe for gamma ray bursts, this particular flash has lasted more than two months and is still going on, Bloom said in a telephone interview.

What makes this even stranger is that the black hole, located in the constellation Draco (The Dragon) about 4 billion light years, or 24 trillion miles (38.62 trillion km) from Earth, was sitting quietly, not eating much, when a star about the mass of our Sun moved into range.

"We have this otherwise dormant black hole, not gobbling up an appreciable amount of mass, and along comes this star which just happens to be on some orbit which puts it close to the black hole," Bloom said.

FEEDING FRENZY

"This was a black hole which was otherwise quiescent and it sort of has an impulsive feeding frenzy on this one star," he said.

Bloom figures this may happen once per black hole per million years.

This kind of behavior is different from what active black holes generally do, which is to suck in everything their vast gravity can pull in, even light. Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, are thought to harbor black holes in their hearts.

Black holes are invisible, but astronomers can infer their existence because the material they pull in lights up before it gets sucked in.

In this case, though, the black hole feasted on one star -- about the same mass as our Sun -- with such relish that it tore the star apart before gulping it down. As it did so, the black hole emitted powerful gamma ray jets from its center as bits of the dying star were turned into energy.

The black hole's gravitational pull was so great that it exerted what's called a tidal disruption on the passing star.

Astronomers could use this observation to help them learn more about how black holes grow, Bloom said.

"We still don't understand how black holes and the universe grow," he said. "We think most black holes start off as being no more than the mass of our Sun ... How they go from 10 solar masses to a billion solar masses is critical."

There is a strong connection between the mass of black holes and the mass of the galaxies that host them, with black holes feeding on gas and stars that come near.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Samoan Assembly

What a stunning effort the Community put into their Assembly last Friday. We all enjoyed dressing up in our lavalava and sharing our learning with the whole school. It was also great to have the parents come and join us for a morning tea afterwards in Room 2019.

Here are some pics of us enjoying time with our Samoan Community and parents.

Telling the time - Same but Different!

In room 21 we have been learning how to tell the time. We know that there are analog clocks which are round and have the numbers 1-12, a big hand and a little hand on them. We also know that there are digital clocks (which we think are easier to read) and they also tell the time. They both do the SAME job in DIFFERENT ways!

Today we worked with a buddy practising telling the time.