A "Visit" Down Under

So, even with the snow, we had a full Fun Friday.  We are wrapping up most of our visit to Australia.  Will still do penguins, but that is about all that's left.  Will have to be taking down the Coral Reef bulletin board.  Today we talked about life on a "ranch" in the Outback.  They learned about sheep, hospitals of the sky and schools with no walls...computer/TV links only.  It is so hard for them to grasp how different it is.  Here is part of the cute flock of sheep they made.

They looked amazingly like the Serta sheep when finished!

The other area of focus was the Aboriginal people of Australia and how they were like our Native Americans...and different.  We looked at some original Aboriginal Art and then created our own.



This is them all put together.  We chose a circle for the sun/life motif.



Here are a few up close and personal.  They all get the same diretions and off they go...

We used Cray-Pas, crayons and tempera paint.  The dots were made by dipping a Q-tip stuck in a pony bead into the paint.

The other part of the day was 5 events in the Outback Olympics.  We did the Echidna Roll, Koala Climb, Kangaroo Jump, Platypus Race and Emu Run.  All of the events took place in the classroom.  Demonstrating the Echidna Roll was probably not a good idea.  Who knew you could be too old (or fat or something) to do a plain old forward roll?  Their favorite was probably the Koala Climb because we went out into the hall and climbed the metal bar between the double fire doors at the end of our hallway.  I did wrap it with masking tape to give them a little bit of traction.  Three of them shimmied right up to the top!  Each of the events was teaching them about the animal it was named for.  At the end of the day they each recieved their "medals" tied onto a "boomerang".  Here is one proud participant...and darn cute, too!

Fun Fridays are fun, but my room is always a mess at the end of the day!  Thank goodness for Teresa who can't leave with it in a mess.  She always gets it tidied up and disinfected! 
G'day, mates!  Hope you have a wonderful weekend.