Linking into our adventure, A Whole New World, we have begun to learn how to play part of the song from Aladdin on the cornet.
Searching around school, we found the seven items that Barnaby Miles had lost from the balloon: a compass, a video-camera, a map, survival kit, a pair of binoculars, a postcard from New York and clips from a TV documentary.
These strange items piqued our curiosity and we began to wonder just who this Barnaby Miles could be...
Who do you think he might be?
As we take off, the strong winds blow us off course. Instead of Tokyo, we end up in nearby Nepal and decide to use the opportunity to learn about the local religion: Buddhism.
We began with a Burn 2 Learn to help us learn about Buddhism. The story of the Buddha was cut into sections and hidden around school near a picture of one of the Buddhist temples. We had to find the snippet of story and organize back into the right order - all in under 5 minutes!
To really reinforce the story in our minds, we acted out the story in our adventure groups:
In order to make the Story of Buddha clear for the shows audience, we decided to retell the story using the many writing techniques we have learned in school.
Having gathered much information about both the Himalayas and Buddhism, we were ready to record the next episode of A Whole New World!
After recording we were ready to set out once again. We crowded into the balloon and drifted east on the wind until we arrived in Tokyo, Japan.
Having been away from home for several weeks, some of us were beginning to feel a little homesick so while in Tokyo we stopped to write a postcard to sent home to our worried families.
While in Tokyo, we decided to try some of the local cuisine - Sushi. We even made our own vegetarian sushi using carrots, cucumbers, avocado, rice and Nori sheets (made from seaweed). The trickiest part was definitely using the rolling mats.
Sushi sampled, we recorded a short episode about Tokyo for Barnaby and we began the next leg of our adventure. Soaring into the air, the balloon drifted south, past Taiwan and the Philippines, until we reached Australia.
Australia, we discovered, is made up of several different states. As part of a Burn 2 Learn, we had to assemble Australia like a jigsaw from the separate states, however whenever the music played, we had to stop the task and do the conga around the classroom!
Next, using what we had learned about human and physical geography, we had to use a map of Sydney to label the areas of human and physical geography:
Feeling increasingly homesick, we decided to film the last episode of A Whole New World and set off for home.
In order to remember all the places we'd been and all the things we'd done, we decided to make a collage using pictures of everything we had seen on our amazing adventure.
All episodes filmed, we sent them on ahead, back to Westwood, ready for a special premier of the series in school. We invited our families and even got in some bubbly for the occasion!
Finally we were ready to depart Australia and fly across the Pacific Ocean for a short stop in New York before finally heading home. As we left Australia behind, strong winds and dark clouds appeared from nowhere and began to batter the balloon from side-to-side. Scared and worried, we began to tell each other stories to take our minds off the storm:
Blown off course, who knows where we will all end up!