Commander Chris Hadfield @ the International Space Station

Over the school holidays I started following Commander Chris Hadfield on Twitter (@Cmdr_Hadfield).  He is a Canadian astronaut currently living at the International Space Station for the next five months.  Each day I look forward to viewing the photos of places on Earth that Commander Hadfield takes from space.  The photos are breathtaking and you see the beauty of our planet Earth in a totally unique way. On January 29th, Commander Hadfield took this photo of the flood near Bundaberg.  It is an amazing “bird’s eye” view of the extent of the flood! 

You can see more of Commander Hadfield’s amazing photos of Earth from space HERE.

Commander Hadfield has also been talking to students from the International Space Station. How amazing is technology to allow students to ask their questions directly to an astronaut in space!!  Today he answered questions from Grade 5/6 students in Ottawa, Canada.

Commander Hadfield demonstrated how astronauts wash their hands in space...

This is a longer video (24 minutes) of Commander Hadfield answering the students’ questions in both English and French

What question would you ask Commander Hadfield?

Commander Hadfield and Ed Robertson collaborated to write the song “Is Somebody Singing” and thanks to technology they sang that song together on February, 8th with Commander Hadfield playing and singing from the International Space Station…what an amazing combination of music, science and technology!!

This is the Mud! by Kathryn Apel

In the second last week of term we received another special package for our LRC in the mail.  It was a copy of “This is the Mud” by Katherine Apel.  Kathryn heard about our flood damage and wanted to send us one of her books for our library.

We had SO much fun sharing this story!  Kathryn is also a fabulous poet and we really enjoyed her rhyming way with words.  We had a great time predicting how to get the cow and then all of the farm machines out of the mud.  Quite a few people suggested a crane and even a helicopter to do the job!

We know that Kathryn lives on a farm with her family and we were wondering if this story is actually based on a true story.  We also wondered if the lady farm worker who came to the rescue might have been Kathryn herself!

Thank you for your thoughtfulness in sending us such a fun story for our library Kathryn…we are lucky to have such a talented author and poet as one of our “LRC Friends”.

Thank you to our friends at St Luke’s, Blackburn South

Thank you so much to Mrs Coffa and the students at St Luke’s, Blackburn South who have been very generous in giving us two books for our LRC.   Mrs Coffa heard that our “W section” had lost nearly all of its books during the Christmas Day storms so she made sure we once again have copies of “Old Pig” and “Grandpa Baby” written by one of our favourite authors…Margaret Wild.  Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and generosity!

Thank you too for your lovely letters of support – Tessa,  Amelia S, Chloe and Joe  🙂

Thank you to our LRC friends

When things in life take an unexpected turn that’s when your friends are there for you…

After our LRC Flood our teacher librarian friend in Seattle, Mrs Hembree wrote a post on her Bulldog Reader’s Blog about our flood damage.  She wanted to help us in some way and kindly encouraged people to donate a book to our LRC.  Imagine my surprise, excitement and tears when I received lots of little packages in the post from generous people who had sent us books to replace our damaged books!

A HUGE thank you to….


Julie Hembree from Seattle, Washington, USA

Judith Way from Kew High School

 Michael Jongen from Preshil, Kew

 Heather Stapleton from St Joseph’s College, Newtown, Geelong

Kathleen Morris from Leopold Primary School, Geelong

Alma and Bianca from Leopold Primary School, Geelong

Jasmine Dwyer from Top End Group Schools, Darwin

 

We can’t wait to read our new books!!

The LRC is open for borrowing this week

The LRC will be open for normal borrowing before and after school this week for Grade 1-6 classes.  So come on in and say “Hi” to Miss Y, see if you can spot any changes in the LRC  and borrow a book or two!

What’s been happening in the LRC…

The Picture Book shelves are set up again and the books are back on the shelves

The empty shelves will have books again soon!

The Fiction shelves and furniture are back in the LRC from their holiday in the Lab

The soggy, smelly, mouldy books have been bagged to go into the skip

Our new book holders have arrived and are in lots of places waiting with books  for you to borrow

Thanks to Kay and Jessica at  Ward Sagar, lots of boxes of new books have already arrived at the LRC.  This week the books will be given their barcodes, labels and our school stamp so they will be ready for covering and then finally ready for you to borrow and read and enjoy once again!