Did you know that the Year 2007 is the Year of the Polar?  It is so, at CHPS, our Animal Club decided to do a polar animal activity.

For our activity we watched an IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) movie. 

This movie was all about seals and the dangers and threats that they face, like seal hunting and fishing nets.

It was a very interesting movie and we learnt a lot about seals that we didn’t know.

After we watched the movie we did a fun sheet on the movie to show the new things we had learnt.

Seals are beautiful animals and we all need to start looking after them and protecting them to make sure they aren’t hurt and don’t become extinct.
Some things we can all do now to help the seals are;

- Do Not Buy Seal Products
- Do Not Litter at the Beach
- Campaign Against Seal Hunting
- Support places that are helping to look after seals.

We hope you like our activity update and have learnt something new too.  Here are some pictures of our Seal Movie Meeting.

Today we had a famous author visit our school. His name is Jeffrey Masson. Some of his books have sold up to 1 million copies. He writes books about animals because
He is so passionate about animals, he would like people to believe that animals have feelings too! We certainly agree with him.

Jeffrey Masson during his visit to the Mount Lawley Animal Club

One of the things we found really interesting was when Jeffrey Masson went to do some research about elephants in India and thought he could talk to the elephants in ancient Sanskrit because this was an ancient language. Jeffrey went right up to the elephants and tried to speak to them and then the head female elephant flapped it’s ears and he thought she was saying “hello” but instead it started to charge and he had to run as fast as he could because the elephant could run up to 40km per hour and could throw him to the ground as well as stomp on him. The elephant was only trying to protect its newborn and that was why he had to run for his life. Event though Jeffrey did the wrong thing we already knew what he should have done which was not to go so close to a wild herd of elephants.

Another interesting story that Jeffrey Masson told us was when another scientist was doing some research on elephant bones, a baby elephant came up to her and picked up one of the forehead bones she was classifying and rubbed it onto it’s forehead. Later the lady discovered that the bone the little elephant baby had been holding was its mother’s forehead and this was very important because elephants rub their heads together as a sign of love. We really enjoyed listening to Jeffrey because he was such an energetic, exciting and funny speaker. We are doing our famous people projects at the moment and Jeffrey Masson would be a really good person to do because he cares so much about animals and hopes that one day enough people will think about animals differently. We would really like to hear him speak more about his books and compassion for animals so we hope he will come back to Mount Lawley Primary to visit us again.  Some of his books are “The Pig who sang to the Moon, When Elephants Weep and Dogs never lie about Love”. We can’t wait to read some of them and we hope to get more in our library.

By Sarah, Charlotte and Georgia
 

Animal Club discussed cage hens and eggs at their meeting today.  The children talked about the differences in free range eggs and cage eggs, why there was a distinct price variance and why people should buy either.  Many understood why the price for free range eggs were higher but thought that if more people bought them and created more demand, the free range eggs would eventually be more affordable.  Quite a few children’s families already use free range eggs only and some were unsure which eggs were used at home but would go home and find out.  It was mentioned that the Emanuel School canteen and D&T kitchen only use free range eggs.

An activity was carried out where a volunteer child was asked to remove her shoes and stand on a milk crate for about 10 seconds, while four of her friends stood around her, forming a “prison”.  The child told the group that it made her feel very uncomfortable and she couldn’t imagine standing like that for more than a minute.  The children tried to understand what it would be like for a hen to be caged like that for the rest of its life.  They were unanimous in supporting free range eggs and were very keen to visit a free range farm. 

 Emanuel School was honoured by a visit on Monday 5 February from Abbie Cornish, an Australian actress who is an Animal Club ambassador and has starred in various movies, including Somersault, Candy, A Good Year and The Golden Age.  Ms Cornish addressed the Animal Club members at lunchtime and interacted with the students on various animal-related issues, including participating in a farm activity supplied by Voiceless.  This memorable visit will be cherished by the students for quite some time!