George Brothers at The Kid's ICT Expo

The Brothers have enjoyed helping set up with the teachers this morning and are very much looking forward t being a part of the expo this afternoon.

It's going to be great fun showing the community what they have learnt with the students from the Ashburton ICTPD Cluster. They will post a few more blog entries about it soon.

George Brothers provide advice in Kowhai...

The George Brothers have been getting curious and creative in art this week with Kowhai. We have been looking at myths in our writing and space as our topic. So for art we created the two and were creating mythical suns.
Curious and Creative have been whispering in our ears about how we could design and make our mythical Maori suns and what we could add to make them better. They have been busy helping us by giving us advice whether we wanted it or not; they think that they know best (especially Creative)! Curious and Creative helped us through all the steps, even the tricky part with the black sticky PVA glue which we put around the outsides of our suns.
They saw all the fun that we were having working with pastels that they decided that giving advice was not as fun as trying it out; so they had a go too.

Curious and Creative thought that they could make a mythical moon to go with our suns...

But to us it looks like a banana.

What do you think?

Another Space Adventure - Room 3 Tinwald School

After visiting the moon with the astronauts in Room 4 Curious George was really keen to go even further out into space. So off he went next door to persuade the children of Room 3 to let him try out their newly built space rocket.

Creative George had to work all night to develop new engines and some top secret fuel that would take them all the way to Saturn and back.

On the way they stopped breifly at a space station to fix the broken telescope.

They were both so excited when they got to take a space walk out near Jupiter and Saturn. Curious George was so tired he slept all the way home. Creative George hardly slept at all because his head was full of ideas for bigger better rockets that would take him even further out into space on his next trip.

'Creative Shows Musical Talents'

Today Creative was very fortunate to join in a singing workshop with specialist singing teacher Mrs Jo Castelow. Creative sat alongside the Borough choir members and listened really carefully, taking in all the expert skills and drills that Mrs Castelow was teaching the students.

It turns out that he's got a fabulous voice (just like his Dad) and that he really loves singing. (He mostly sings in the shower.)

Being the creative monkey that he is, we're sure he'll be keen to put his talent to good use.

Here's hoping there's a part for him in a school musical this year!

Roll Call in Manuka!

The George Brothers, Curious and Creative, are taking the morning roll call in Manuka. Did you notice the beanies? It is very cold in Manuka this morning because the builders have already started to renovate the classroom and there is no power - so no lights and no heating! Manuka are moving to Room 2 straight after the roll, and we will be there until next Friday. So if you are looking for us - come to Room 2. PS: can you guess who is under the beanies?

Up Into Space With Rimu - Room 4 At Tinwald School

The George Brothers are getting ready to zoom into outer space with our Rimu - Room 4 astronauts. They will zig zag between the planets and shoot past the stars in their shiny rockets.
"We will have to put on our space suits. I hope our tails will fit in," said Curious George. "We must remember to take our oxygen supply with us too because there is no air in space. I can't wait to collect moon rocks."
Creative George said "I am packing my camera to take photos of the craters on the moon. We will also have to take some dried bananas with us to eat."
"Away we go then."

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Ignition. Lift Off.

Equipment Checks in Totara

Here are the George brothers checking off all their equipment. They need 9 bits of equipment every day. Here are all the equipment pieces that they need, Blue and red pen, ruler, pencil, eraser, notebook, scissors, highliter and gluestick. Did they have everything?

First days in Totara's new classroom at Tinwald School

The George Brothers were lucky enough to spend a day with Totara as we unpacked our classroom stuff and moved back into our classroom. We have spent the last 8 weeks in squashy room 2 while we waited for the builders to come and modernize our room. Now we have new carpet; a heat pump; soft, cuddly walls and new windows. It looks great. The George Brothers like the colour scheme - blue and yellow. They got confused when they saw all the yellow cupboards. "Bananas!" they yelled. Our teacher thinks the colours are great - "Go the Highlanders!"

The George Brothers helped us untangle the computer cords, try out the data projector, play our classroom games that we hadn't seen for weeks and eat fruit during fruit break. Someone kept feeding them bananas. It was a busy day in Totara and we were glad that the George Brothers helped us move back.

Fair trade?

Kia ora koutou!

It's Creative here. I have been a lucky little monkey today.... I joined the International Club, one of Borough School's Friday afternoon enrichment options. The students got to experience what international trade can be like.

I was given the very important task of helping operate the Bank for an activity. I paid the students for the things they produced.

The students producing lollies got a lot more money than the sugar cane farmers who had to work really hard and with fewer resources. I felt a bit bad about that actually, especially when the sugar cane farmers complained that it wasn't fair. I agree with them actually, it wasn't fair, but what can you do?

The students looked rather glum after investigating the consequences for those who don't get paid fairly for the work they do. And even more so when they found out how much of the money their parents pay for a bag of sugar actually gets to the farmers.

Thankfully they learned about the possibility of buying fair trade goods and ended on a high note by sharing some Singaporian treats... I liked the little green pancakes the most. YUM! Almost as good as fair trade bananas!

George assisting with a science challenge. Room10

George learnt how infectious diseases can spread quickly when people share body fluids.Tiny organisms are carried when sneezing or coughing.Our body tries to protect us either with acid in our stomach,mucus in our lungs or scabs on our skin.If the microbes get past our natural barriers Our body uses white blood cells to attack the infection.It's a good idea to imunise non-infected people and/or quarantine infected people.