3...2...1.........Blast Off!

Wow! That was an amazing, unforgettable night! We just got back from the launch...there was a lot of traffic heading back as hundreds of cars parked along the side of the road to watch. I'm posting a couple of videos here for you to watch.

The first one is the video I took from where we were watching. We were at the Port Canaveral Cruise Terminal...where all the big cruise ships dock. The terminal is about 11 miles from the launch pad. In my video you can hear a lot of noise that sounds a bit like a rocket, but it's not. It was the wind. In fact, we couldn't hear the sound of the rocket until about 1 minute and 30 seconds after we saw the first light from the blast. If you think you know why, leave a comment! Here's my video:



Rocket Launch! from Erin Malkoske on Vimeo.

NASA takes lots of video of all of their launches. Here's a link to a video that shows the TDRS-K rocket from lots of different angles. They were a little closer than me :)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FPaVOR5zCjE

I hope you enjoy the videos. I started following lots of astronauts on Twitter this week too, inlcuding Chris Hadfield who is living on the International Space Station right now! He's tweeting from space! Your weekender homework this week is to think of some questions you might like to ask an astronaut and we can tweet them when I get back!

See you soon!
-Mrs. Malkoske

Rocket Launch!

Hello Room 9 readers!
It's about 8:00 in Orlando and I'm sitting on the side of the highway near the cruise ship docks just outside of Cocoa Beach waiting for NASA to launch the TDRS-K rocket! It's so exciting here... There are hundreds of cars parked on the side of the road just waiting for the rocket. We're sitting in the car having a picnic :)
I wasn't sure what to expect on the drive out. Even when we arrived, it wasn't quite as I expected. Most people are sitting in their cars just quietly waiting. There isn't music playing and most people are just sitting watching the sky.
Right now Mr. Hoeppner is talking with a man who has seen a couple of shuttle launches and a few rockets. They come whenever they can.
We also met a man who is walking across America right now. He left from Maine on October 1 and plans to reach Miami on Valentine's Day. He just happened to be passing through Florida at the right time.
Before our trip to Kennedy Space Center, I wasn't too excited about the launch but after spending the day learning, I can hardly wait! It's almost magical.
Mr. Hoeppner is VERY excited about the launch. He said that when he was a boy, he wanted to be an astronaut. He still knows a lot about space shuttles and rockets and the research they do on the missions.
Tomorrow I'll try and post a video of the launch... Gotta go for now. It's almost time!
-Mrs Malkoske

Hello from Orlando!

Hello Room 9 children, families and readers! I'm blogging to you from sunny Orlando, Florida! This week I'll be in Orlando for the Florida Education and Technology Conference (FETC). FETC is a huge conference for tech-minded educators. I am so excited to have been given the opportunity to attend this year and learn from some awesome ed tech leaders from all over the world!

I've come to Orlando with two of my favourite nerdy teachers, Mr. Hoeppner amd Ms. Welbergen, and plan to meet up with many other teachers from Winnipeg, and across Canada. I can hardly wait to share ideas, learn together, and talk about all of the great things our classes are doing.

We've been in Orlando for a couple of days now and had some time to visit The Kennedy Space Center. It was amazing! So much information and things to see... We could've spent an entire day there! We met astronaut Captain Jon McBride who was the pilot on the STS-41-G mission aboard the space shuttle Challenger. It was this mission that took the first Canadian astronaut, Marc Garneau, into space. We talked with him a little bit about his mission and he even signed a poster for the kids of room 9!

Here are a few pictures from Kennedy Space Center... And a couple of pictures of some things I'm bringing back to our classroom!




During our tour we saw a video of astronaut Neil Armstrong talking about his mission and he said something that stuck with me for the rest of the day. His message was simple and powerful...and I'll leave you with his words tonight. - Mrs. Malkoske

"With will and imagination and the courage to explore, any dream is possible."

-Neil Armstrong

Author Visit

On Thursday Sandi Sellen came to our classroom to share her new book with us! and it was called farmer frickle whizzlehipple thinks big and she read it to us and the guy name curtis he was helping her and he show the pictur and we got fatcat book marks and  fatcat pencels and we got coloring page and that book was good and we thot that was a really good  book because that book was graet

Teching the class

This week we took home our math bags for the first time. I taught my dad one of the math games. the game was called addition marathon. to play you rite two twelve.My dad taught me why  two and twelve are so hard to  roll because  there are only is one way to roll them. seven is the easiett number to roll. there are six ways to roll seven.I taught the class-Rylee

hockey in the gym

Today we are going to the gym to play flore hockey. Carter is vsing Brandon. Carters taem is tronto mapl leafs and brandons team is motreal canadeins. Andy is on Brandons team.n Nan of the girls are playing hockey and they are playing ringet . mrs Caster stertid this NHL stuff

What Makes Us Happy!

Today we read a  book calld  what maks us  Happy. it is fun to read the book.
This is what makes us happy:
Ella
Happiness is playing at the beach
Happiness is playing with my sister

Elly
Happiness is playing with my family
Happiness is playing with my firend                                                   Elly/Ella

bad case of stripes/ weather

This week we looked at a book called the bad case of stripes. After the book we read it we did an art project.
First we painted a big pease of paper with ahole bunch uf stripes. After that we cut it into a head and a set of legs and a set of arms. And if we wanted we got to cut out a bow or a shape to go on the pearsens shirt. Are last step is to make the shrt, pants, dress. We started it on wednesday. We finished on Friday
For the last few days we have been having some bad weather at school. So for the last few days we had to stay inside for recess. We stayed in beacase the weather was over 27. When we stayed in for lunch recess the grade 5s brought us games. We only got the games for one recess.
the weather caesed us to stay in for all 3 days. We only got to go out on monday and friday.




                                                     BY: Rhianna and Karys

Leaning Buddies!

The last little while we have been doing lots of crafts with our learning buddies. The first one that we did was making candy canes. To make that one we only needed pipcleaner and beads. The second one was fireworks these are the steps for making fireworks...
1. Draw your fireworks on a black piece of paper with pencil. To draw the fireworks you start with a dot for the middle and then either make your fireworks look like there going down or make them just exploding.
2. Put glue where you drew your fireworks.
3. Sprinkle glitter over top of the glue.
4. Let them dry.
The last one was painting squares. We painted squares because we're learning about shapes. We started on the outside and then worked into the middle. The most inportant thing about painting the squares was you have to use light and brght colours. It was awesome making all the crafts with our leaning buddies!

                                                      BY: SYDNEY AND REEGAN

Kids Blogging!

Starting today the kids in Room 9 are taking over! Each day two people will go and blog while everyone else does Work on Writing. The next day two different kids will blog. Stay tuned...

First Day of School 2013!!!!!!

Yesterday was our first day back to school. We got really excited and we were a little silly through the day. We had our learning buddies and we did a fun craft with them. The craft was making fireworks and our learning buddies did one as well. We did it because on New Year's Eve people celebrate with fireworks and have parties. -Rhianna
We made fireworks with our learning buddies. We had to write some new year's resolutions. There was school and home. We had to draw the fireworks with pencil then put some glue on then some glitter. -Nick
Yesterday we made some fireworks. We did some glue and then added some colour. -Sam
Today is our second day back of school. We did lots of fun things today. Today at recess I had lots of fun to celebrate the second day back at school. -Rylee
Today we had IBL. We went to the computer lab and we started our museums. You type all the facts that you learned on to a sheet and wehn you're all done, you put some pictures in it. After you're done the pictures you put it into a museum. People can go on-line and look at your museum. -Elly
Today we went to gym and we played a bunch of tag games and Olly, Olly, Octopus. -Ella
Today we had IBL and for the first time we all went in the computer lab. Before we went in the computer lab all the grade 2s looked in thier books of thier places and on a piece of paper we had to write all the facts that we learned and that were in the book. Today we typed all the information on our papers on to computer. I finished typing everything. -Syd
Today we made pictures of responsibility and our rights in IBL. We are making them into a show. -Reegan