TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL

That’s right, these five children from Greenwood Independent School are too cool for school. So cool, in fact, that they were flown to Johannesburg to take part in the annual Eskom ETA awards; the youngest contestants in the event’s 21 year history.

The Grade 6 and 7 class, represented by Nicolas Reid, Kharma Rossi, Azi Ngumbela, Heather Anderson and Teva Shneor, designed an evaporative refrigerator, which is basically a tub surrounded by wet sand and held together with cloth and plastic mesh with a lid on top. Amazingly this device, made from scraps found around the home, lowers the temperature of its contents quite dramatically making electricity quite unnecessary in refrigeration.

The simplicity and practicality of this little fridge caught the eyes of the judges who were surprised at the youth of these inventors and were impressed with their understanding of the broader issues of sustainability. The famous five were feted at the event and a great fuss was made of their age and expertise. They were given a special award for their project in the Young Designers Category; other contestants were all from high schools.

The children owe their greatness to Susan Donald who is the facilitator for WESSA’s program for Environmental Education in the Bitou area. Susan works closely with Greenwood Independent School to include these kinds of projects in the everyday curriculum. Unfortunately she was unable to accompany the young inventors to Johannesburg as she is currently in Sweden for a month as part of an award for her efforts in environmental education!

FLIGHT OF THE STARSHIP SILVER GREY

What an amazing concert!! Last week the children of Greenwood, along with their very talented music teachers Tessa and Karin and the other teaching staff at Greenwood, put on a production that was worthy of being on Broadway!! All the primary school children were involved - either as robots, aliens, suger pop girls, space troopers and many other 'out of space' creatures! The audience was thrilled to be able to watch such a superb production. The arts and drama departments at Greenwood are excellent!!

Kaleigh Packwood as the 'Earthling".

Kharma Rossi as Captain Skylark and Nicholas Hill as the GobbledeGook.

The Milky Way Parade with all the aliens.

and the lovely Space Singers.

ESKOM’S ETA AWARDS 2010

Some of the Greenwood learners will be flying up to Johannesburg on Tuesday to do a presentation for the Eskom and the Department of Energy. Well done Greenwood!!!

See the info below:

Eskom and the Department of Energy have for the past 20 years rewarded excellence in the field of energy efficiency. The purpose of the ETA Awards is to reward exceptional effort in the more efficient use of energy by individuals, students, companies or other institutions. All of the awards comprise a cash amount of R30 000 for the winner in each category and R5 000 for each of the two runners-up in each category.

We were recently notified that GREENWOOD INDEPENDENT SCHOOL is one of the 5 FINALISTS in the Young Designers Category for their “Keep a Chill on Global Warming” entry! Refrigerators are one of our households biggest consumers of electricity and, with the help of Susan Donald, they have constructed an eco fridge, which does not use any electricity! This is the latest of our energy saving projects which started last year with our solar water heater. The fridge works on the principle of evaporation, just as the Zeer clay pots do. However it is bigger, uses easily obtained and inexpensive materials, which we can get at the local hardware store. (Shade cloth, netting and sand.) The fridge is being used to keep milk, water and lunchboxes cold—and in tests, lowered the temperature of liquids by between 8 and 10 degrees.

We are so proud of you Greenwood!! Good luck...

Hockey tournament in George (Saturday 4th Sept)

Yay it's Friday!

What a wonderful Greenwood week it has been. Last night we all enjoyed the Cultural Evening that the children did for us.... it included poems in English and Afrikaans, drama, gymnastics, piano recitals, songs from the school choir, solo songs, guitar players, Xhosa dancing and even a praise singer (Xhosa) praising the school and Mrs Solomon!! What a wonderful experience.

Praise singer translation: Greenwood you unite nations. Mrs Solomn, we would like to say "Carry on with your fruitful work". Forward, Greenwood, forward. Forward Mrs Solomon, forward.

It was truely one of those evenings that makes Greenwood such a special place.

Here are a couple of other links I thought you may be interested in:

• The grade 6/7 's had a conscious classroom session today run by Carol from The Journey. For more info have a look at this website...


• I love the look of this book of the week from DesignMom - The Lion and The Mouse. I love the fact that it has no words so the kids can make up their own story as they turn the pages.


• And check out this fabulous tree house - made by a talented carpenter and his Montessori teacher wife! Also have a look at their jungle gyms. WOW imagine if we could have these at our school!!!

New baby Jade

It is always so exciting when someone has a baby!! And it is especially exciting when it is someone we all know so well.....Michelle is our grade 4 and 5 teacher. Congrats to Michelle and Stephen on the birth of little Jade Emma who made her apperance last week. Jade only a couple of minutes old!

The perfect little bundle!

Children's Books

Syccamour stirrings blog has a great list of children's books and there is also a super list of Top 100 Childrens books of all time from The Book Scout - The space all about books for kids. Great blog if you are a keen book worm!

I also found this PreSchoolers 101: Emotions - it has a list of books that touch on the subject of emotions. I loved the look of the covers of the books - such super illustrations!!

I find it very hard to resist buying children's books.... do you also feel like this?

Happy reading!