Mem Fox Celebration Day!

We began our Mem Fox Celebration Day by Skyping a teacher in Australia, Amanda Marrinan! It was quite an adventure! It was 1:00 am her time but she stayed up so we could have a conversation. Each class had prepared a question so the children asked everything from if she had known the Crocodile Hunter and if she had been to the Australian Zoo to what she thought of Mem Fox when she met her and her favorite Mem Fox book. She had even prepared some of the Aussie dishes that the children had read about in Possum Magic such as lamington, pavlova, minties and even Australian tim tams. We are indebted to our Technologist Melanie Holtsman for traveling around the world virtually to make the experience available to our youngsters!

Our next adventure was hearing a former Creeker play the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal wind instrument native to Australia. Sam had lived in Australia when was a first grader! He left his college classes to come share with our children. They were fascinated by the handmade instrument and it's sound and the story he told about termites carving the hollow tube of the gum tree !

Then it was back to our classroom to preform Mem Fox Readers' Theatre scripts that the children have been practicing all week. They presented Koala Lou, Hattie and the Fox and Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge to the delight of their classmates. We tasted pavlova and made some Australian crafts. We completed the day by playing Mem Fox Bingo which was a review of all of the books, characters, Australian animals and places that we had learned about throughout the four week study. While the children have loved Mem's pattern books, they equally loved her touching stories. It will be hard to say good-by to this amazing author.