Happy 40th Birthday Deanne

Wonderful Deanne celebrated her 40th Birthday with all of us on Monday.  The children not only made Deanne a beautiful, butterfly birthday card but they also worked with Claire to make a chocolate cake.
The fabulous cake was decorated with sprinkles and we lit four large candles (forty would have been a bit much for those smoke alarms!).  We all had a piece of the cake and it truly was delicious.
Deanne, we all hope you had a fantastic birthday!

Butterflies and Caterpillars!!

As we anxiously await and watch our caterpillars on the swan plant, we have been learning all about the lifecycle of the butterfly.  We have also been taking part in lots of arts and crafts and using different mediums - painting, collage, dye dropping and we have been enjoying using the glue guns to make our creations, check it out....

A bit of team work and collaboration!!

Team work, collaboration and some possibility thinking certainly goes a long way when you are trying to figure out how to join the pipes and get the water to the bottom.  Awesome work Uxbridge children!!

Taking Risks!!

Risk taking is an important part of learning, it helps children to develop and trust their own judgement, learning their limits and gaining a better understanding of the consequences of their actions.  Being able to take risks in the kindy environment allows the risk taking to be relatively safe yet still challenging and adventurous.

Today Joseph was certainly up for a bit of that risk and challenge outdoors as he took on the car track Jo had drawn out with chalk.  Awesome Joseph, we knew you could do it!!

Our trips to the library!!

Over the last couple of terms we have been able to go and visit our local community library in our afternoon sessions.  Our children are always so excited when it comes to their turn to go.  They have to be super organised getting ready for their visit, they need to find their book bags, put shoes on and the most important thing - make sure we have the library card!  

Our trips to the library involved a lot of learning for all our children:

Road safety - walking to and from the library, being made aware of hazards in the carpark and holding an adults hand.

Responsibility - returning the library book and looking after their book bag.

Process - scanning the book using the library card

Self-help skills - choosing a book they want.

Literacy skills - understand that words and pictures have meaning, that a book consists of a front cover, back and spine.  Books have an author and an illustrator.  A story had a beginning and end and develop the knowledge that in English we read from left to right.

What a lot of great knowledge they have gained!!  And it is pretty special to share and read our books with our friends back at Kindy too!!  We love our trips to the library!

Our new class pets!!

All summer our swan plant has no caterpillars and we have not been able to experience the wonderful learning of the butterfly lifecycle :-(  Mia and Paige have their own swan plant at home and lately they have brought in and shared photo's of the beautiful butterflies that have hatched.  We kindly asked Mia and Paige if they might like to share some caterpillars for our plant at Kindy and today they brought some in.  Thank you very muchly, we are so excited about our new class pets and have set them up a special area inside to keep them safe.  Let the learning begin...........

Having fun learning music with Forte!!

What a wonderful opportunity and experience for the children today.  Joy, from Forte school of Music in Howick came and visited Uxbridge and delivered one of their special music programmes for us.  We LOVE visitors and how super fun it was learning new songs, actions, doing the parachute and special elastic bungy song.  Joy had a special puppet too, Jack, he was super cute!!  We loved it when he hid away!!  All the teachers were super impressed with how everyone listened and participated and seeing as we were so good,  Joy gave us each a sticker.  Thanks for coming Joy, we really enjoyed having you, hopefully we might see you again one day :-)

Valentines Gifts!!

Hearts and Cookies for the one's we love  "Happy Valentines Day" xox
Pretty exciting using the new oven for the first time too :-)

Happy Chinese New Year 2016!!

It's always exciting when Chinese New Year falls and we get to learn and explore all about the chinese culture.  In celebration of this special occassion we have been very busy indeed!!  The children at Uxbridge have been making lanterns, cherry blossoms, fans, looking at different pictures and chinese writing and Teacher Deanne dressed up and shared a special story on Chinese New Year. It turns out that we were quite fascinated in the story of the Great Race and how each year is named after an animal.  And this year, 2016, is the year of the Monkey.  We also thought the idea of giving red packets was pretty cool!!!  Shi Ming even told us all about the red packets he received, what a lucky boy he is!!  On the menu at Kindy was chinese dumplings and what a great job we did, super simple to make and they were yummy!!

The Story of the Great Race

Making Chinese Noodles

Cherry Blossom Pictures

Stirring the Mixture

Squishing the dough

Rolling the Dumpling

Scooping the Mixture

Cooking our dumplings