A Plateful of Zombies...

'You need to bring a plate', how many times have I heard this? It's always at the last minute too, but never mind I will sort it.  Easy, I made Zombie Cupcakes....boys love Zombies as a matter of fact this girl does too! My dream is to do the' Zombie Walk' that would be just fantastic, but for now I will have to settle for cupcakes!

I have used my Banana Cake recipe for these cupcakes. I made two batches and I managed to make about thirty cupcakes, with only one disappearing.....I wonder where that went?

Zombie Cupcakes with the missing graveyard cupcake, 
So much fun invite the children to take part in the decorating!

'The Invention of Hugo Cabret' and 'Wonder Struck' by Brian Selznick

I am very lucky to have a signed copy of Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  I've read this book to children in Year 5/6 (9-10 year olds), and I have just finished reading this story to Year 3/4 children (7-8 year olds).  Both age groups really enjoyed the mix of film images, intertwined with the written text and visual text.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been an inspiration for my own classes movie making projects. We watched some of the old movies that Georges Méliès created. You will find many of them on YouTube. The main movie featured in this books is  A Trip to the Moon.  

This story is set at the train station Gare Montparnasse and also features a photograph of the famous train crash in 1895.  One very talented child in my class has written a song about a boy meeting the girl of his dreams at a train station.  They're now busy creating a music video with their own drawings of this famous trains crash.

You can imagine all of our amazement when we received a copy of 'Wonder Struck.'  I also have a deaf girl in my class and no one has yet has worked out that one of the main characters in this book is also deaf.  We're only up to reading page 94.  

I'm also going to use this book to build on the children's visual literacy skills, their skills of making predictions and their inferencing skills.  

If you're a David Bowie fan, then this book could be your excuse to play some of his music in your class...I'm now off to the iTunes story to buy Major Tom!  

The Megamogs....

The Megamogs is one picture book I really love!  I've read this book to both junior children and older children.  I love reading the voices of the cats with expression, especially Glitzy Mitzy and Kevin Katflap.  I add exaggeration each time Kevin Katflap uses the expression....'It's going to be BIG!'  I purchased this book 15 years ago and I think it's now out of print.

This year I used The Megamogs, by Peter Haswell as a an ignition activity to introduce children to writing descriptions.  I then got children to create their own Megamog and write a description about their moggy.  These were then placed onto the class blog.  Click here to see more mogs.

Start the school Year with a Digital Pet Day!

I started a class blog site about a year ago and for some of the families, in my class, blogging is something they've never tried.  I thought of an idea to hook parents and whanau into viewing our class blog... a Digital Pet Day.

A Digital Pet Day; where we can view all of our pets in cyberspace!  So no need to bring your pets to school, no worries about pets not getting along or getting into mischief!

I sent out an e-mail explaining to parents the idea behind Digital Pet Day.  Most of the photos were sent digitally to me by e-mail or saved onto a pen drive.

I created an advert for our Digital Pet Day and placed this at the top of our class blog.  At the start of the year I'd also spent a bit of time with my seven and eight year old children showing them how to navigate round our class blog.

Our first Digital Pet Day was set down for February.  However, due to the Christchurch Earthquake on Tuesday 22nd February this was cancelled.

Upon their return to school we talked and blogged about what we'd been up to during this traumatic time.  It appeared that all of our pets were accounted for and the children were still keen to have a Digital Pet Day.

I think this also gave us something else to focus on.  It provided the children with the opportunity to tell stories about their pets, write descriptions, talk about their pets and share any funny stories.  Most importantly it encouraged children to view other pet posts and make comments.  They were then inspired to go home and share the blog with their family.

All the posts for Digital Pet Day where scheduled to post in the early hours of the morning on Friday 1st April.  Two days before this I sent a letter/e-mail to parents explaining how they could access their child's post (using labels/tags) and how they could write comments.

I would definitely do this again with a new class and we're now thinking of what other days we could have!

Click here to view our Digital Pet Day 2011.