Only A Week Away

Hello Everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday break and got to enjoy sometime off with friends and family. I know I enjoyed my break.

Can you believe it? Only 7 days until we get to share our experience with you. I am getting even more excited to learn new things and to experience a n ew culture.

Hope you all have a wonderful New Years!

-Alli Thompson

7 Days to go!

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

I can't believe we're leaving in one week! I'm very excited to go on this trip and I anticipate learning many new things! This will be a nice break from home, school, and work for a few weeks. I look forward to sharing new information with all of you when we arrive in Australia.

Talk to you all soon!

-Trecia

Wishing you well as you start your journey!

We received our new Character Education T-shirts!

Room 8 sends you our best!

Hello Students!

Thank you for sharing the information on science. I have not had a science class in a couple years. Here at UW-Oshkosh we are only required to take a certain number of science classes throughout our time here. Since I have taken the class my first and second year here I have forget some of the information. I know they offer many different types of science classes here such as , Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Physics and Anatomy. These are just some of the main types of science classes. The time is coming close to when we leave to fly to Australia. I hope you are excited to hear the information we have to share with you all. Thank you for sharing your pictures of what you are doing and I can't wait to show you pictures of what we are doing.

Have a great holiday break!
Talk to you soon,
Kelsey

Hello Students!

Hey Guys!

I am so glad to be connected with you guys :) I think this trip is going to be an awesome way for us to share more about the Australian culture with you all. Everyone had some great questions, and Shannon did a good job answering them. I think when we get to Australia, we will be able to answer some of your questions a little bit better. I can wait to tell you all about everything we get to do, and all of the awesome things we will see!

We'll chat soon!

Emmy M

Science Rules...

So here's the deal. We're catching up on our science projects today. So we thought we would tell you guys about one of our science activities. Our class is studying the concept of how things float or sink. This is called buoyancy. We've tested many different objects of different sizes and shapes to determine their relative weight. We also tested whether or not they sink or float in water at room temperature. We've made observations and sketches about their sizes and shapes. We've come up with various hypotheses. Today we were testing how to change the shape of clay objects in order to affect their buoyancy. Many of us were able to create clay shapes that could hold a large number of marbles and float in water! We also tried it with tin foil. We've come to the conclusion that shape definitely has an impact on the buoyancy of an object floating in water. Take a look at one of our clay models.

Hunter told the class today that he is reading a cool science book right now called Biology. Did you know that "bio" means life and that biology is the scientific study of life?

Thank you for your newspaper pages and great questions

WOW, we can tell that your class has been busy. We especially loved your newspaper pages, thank you for them. It was very easy to see that you spent A LOT of time on them. The newspapers were a good way to let our class get to know your class a little better. I am very impressed with the questions that you asked. I will try to answer the ones that I can now and we will work on answering the rest when we are in Australia.
· Kaitlin, I also am fascinated by cultural anthropology and the Aboriginal people of Australia. I believe we will learn a lot more about them during our first week there. We will definitely keep you posted on the different things that we learn about this fascinating group of people.
· Max, I think that deer, ducks, rabbits, wild pigs, wild goats, and kangaroos are hunted in Australia. As our trip progresses, we will update this list. We may be able to find out what you need to do to be a game warden in Australia.
· Hunter, you have a tougher question. We will have to do some research to find the answers. Stay tuned for updates.
· Morgan, I’m sorry, maybe your team will do better next season.
· Cody, we will look into your question more when we arrive in Australia. However, I know that European foxes have caused some negative impact on agriculture and the on the environment.
· Nicole, I also want to know more about the different types of children’s books that are there. I see from your newspaper page that you like The Princess Academy. I will look to see if there are books that are similar to that one.
· Jonathon we have already learned that cricket, golf, tennis, skiing, boating, and Australian rules football and rugby are popular in Australia. We will see if we can expand on that list once we are there.
· Tony, I wonder about that too. I hope it is something that tastes good. We will post our plane menu once we arrive.
· Chelsea, we will be better able to answer your questions on our second day in Australia. That is when we will be going to the Daintree Rainforest. We will give a full report then.
· Matt, I am also excited about going to the Great Barrier Reef. I know there could potentially be Manta Rays and different kinds of sharks at the Great Barrier Reef. I am not sure about whales and eels. But I also know that we will be completely safe on our trip. We will post a list of animals that we see there.
The time to leave for our trip is fast approaching and we are getting anxious to go. Most of us are getting to go. This week most of us are wrapping up our classes for this semester, meaning that we have a break from school until we leave for Australia.

We had a nice Friday!

We had a productive Friday. Today we had Spanish class, worked on how to make and use line graphs to interpret data, wrote letters with our Kindergarten Buddies, selected and read books from the school library, watched CNN student news, worked on writing responses to literature we are reading, wrote poetry, visited and used the Scholastic Homework Hub to learn how to write well composed book reports, learned more about the colonization of America in New England by the British, practiced writing analogies and direct quotations, and completed a SMART board vocabulary activity. Some of us are tired! Some of us are glad it's Friday! All of us are looking forward to reading more of your blog entries.

Here are some notes we thought we would pass on from individual students...

• Kaitlin wants to be a cultural anthropologist and would like to know more about indigenous Australians.
• Max is a hunter and would like to know about which animals are hunted in Australia and whether some are hunted to extinction. He wants to be a game warden when he gets older.
• Hunter is interested in becoming a scientist and loves physics, electricity and energy. He wants to know about how they generate electricity in Australia. He also wants to know if they have good science programs at UW Oshkosh.
• Morgan loves the Chicago Bears. Enough said.
• Cody loves foxes and wants to know if they have different kinds of foxes in Australia.
• Nicole loves great books and would like to know what good books there are about Australia for kids.
• Jonathon loves playing football and asks if there are certain sports that Australians love.
• Tony is wondering what the food is going to be like on the plane trip.
• Chelsea is wondering what outdoor games kids like to play in Australia. Do they go in the forest to play? Do they see cool animals?
• Matt wonders about the Great Barrier Reef. Will you see any sharks? Or whales? Or manta rays? Or eels?

We know these are hard questions to answer, so maybe once the trip starts you can tell us more.

Have a great weekend!

Kids from Room 8

End of the Semester!

Hello O.H. Schultz students! Thought I'd leave you a message and tell you how excited I am that our winter break is underway as of today! In college, our school year is split in half, with 2 semesters- one in fall and one in spring. Today was the last day of our fall semester, so all of our classes are done until we come back in February for our spring semester! Going to Australia in January counts as part of our semester because it's for school and our study abroad program. I can't wait to hear more about what you guys are up to! What kind of things are you learning in school right now? Are you getting excited to have off for your winter break, too? What are your favorite things about winter?

--Kayla

Greetings!

Hello Everyone!

My name is Beatriz Contreras. I will be accompanying the study abroad group to Australia and look forward to working with the students and assisting Courtney Bauder, the group instructor. I am from Puerto Rico. This will be my first visit to the continent of Australia! I am very excited. I hope you all are, too!

It is Hat Day at O.H.S.!

As in Crazy Hat Day! We thought you might like to see some of our hats!

Hello Friends!

Hello Everyone!!

I want to say THANK YOU so much for the newspapers. It was super creative and a fun way to learn a little about who you are and some of your favorite interests. I am now getting excited to have a wonderful experience in Australia now that finals are over. I am looking forward to meeting some Aboriginals and just to hear their stories. I personally find their story fascinating. Hope you all are looking forward to Holiday Season although I hate to say this, but I would like to have a little snow.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Your Friend,

Alli

Thank you for the newspapers!

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to say thanks for sending us the newspapers you all made. I I'm starting to get really excited to go to Australia. I can't believe that our departure date is almost here. The activity I'm most looking forward to is scuba diving or snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef.

New Dreamtime 2012 blog design....heads up!

Hi everyone and welcome aboard Dreamtime-2012. My name is John Thompson and I am the 5th grade teacher you will be working with virtually to help you communicate your travel experiences with our students here in Mishicot! I am so pleased to be able to once again be part of great group of students and educators who want to collaborate to help our young people learn more about the world around them! Australia is a place I've never been to, but through your unique blog posts, photos, and videos from your travel experiences my students have benefited tremendously. We look forward to another great adventure Down Under!

We have made some changes to the blog in order to facilitate better communications. The test blog, Dreamtime 2012, has been modified and we are up and running as Dreamtime-2012. We will post more messages as we get going.

Please re-accept your email invitations to the updated blog so you can be listed as an author. Also, continue to send your profiles and profile photos to Courtney so we can get those posted too.

Great to hear from everyone so far!

John

Hi there!

Hello students!

Thank you so much for sending us your newspapers, they were all so cool! I saw that someone was a Donald Driver fan, he's my favorite player as well! I've already started a countdown for our trip which is at 25 days! I can't wait to go, I'm most excited for the kangaroos, hopefully we'll get some good pictures to share with you. I hope you are all as excited as we are to be sharing this experience with us, let us know if you have any questions!