Porthole Pictures

We've nearly finished our work on Twenty Thousand Legues Under the Sea and will start work on Journey to the Centre of the Earth which we finished listening too this morning. I've also just started reading Around the World in Eighty Days ( Jules Verne had very long book titles! ) which we'll finish by the end of next week. 

Today we worked on our porthole pictures.

We cut out the portholes on metallic cardboard.

We added a background of marbled paper that looks like the ocean.

We also added interesting animals for Professor Aronnax to be stunned by.

On display.

We also started sketching savage giant attacking squid over the top of our newspaper front pages using black ink and old fashioned ink pens.

The kids working on the Minton stories have nearly finished. They are currently working on their story maps.

Malcolm Fraser dies

Vale Malcolm Fraser.

I never thought I'd be sorry to hear about Malcolm Fraser's death. I'm old enough to remember the dismissal and I had a remarkably Bolshie father who was very angry about Fraser, Kerr, Reg Withers et al and what he called 'the coup'. 

Fraser however re-invented himself during his long retirement and became an outspoken critic of apartheid ( which put him into a collision course with Thatcher and Howard) and a very vocal advocate for refugees rights which started with his support for Vietnamese refugees ( something modern conservatives forget) He became great friends with Gough Whitlam ( If it's good enough for Gough....) As Bill Hayden said : "One of the most significant efforts carved out by Malcolm and Gough was that they were both big enough intellectually and emotionally to put the sensational political events of 40 years ago behind them for the good of Australia." Together they were a thorn in John Howard's side and both loathed Abbott.

They will both be missed.