Hows our science experiment going??

Looks like the Dirty hands and Floor have grown quite a few germs!!  Interesting however that our clean hands have too!!

A visit from Forte!!

What a wonderful morning of music!!  Thanks Elena from Forte Music school for once again coming in and doing a music class with us.  We so enjoyed all the singing, parachute and stretchy cord movement songs and we were all so pleased to see Jack again and meet his new friend Hector the crab!
Forte Music Visit on PhotoPeach

Matariki Mat-time with Howick Library

What a busy week of Matariki celebrations!!  We are so lucky to live in such a wonderful supportive community.  Earlier in the week we visited the Marae next door and today we had Leanne from the Howick library come especially to us to share some Matariki stories with us.  She told us all about the stars of Matariki, shared the story of the seven kites, the waka and the Little kiwi's Matariki.  We even got to be a part of a little rhyme called the seven stars.   What a great learning opportunity, many thanks to the staff at Howick library and to the children of Uxbridge who once again were so welcoming to our special visitor.

Here is a video of us taking part in the seven stars rhyme

Sunny Girl visits us at mat-time!!

We had a special visitor at mat-time today.  Say hello to Sunny Girl!!  Sunny girl came to tell us all about germs and the winter bugs!!  She talked about keeping warm on these cold winter days by wearing our hats, jackets and by keeping our shoes and socks on.  Renee was kind enough to show Sunny girl where we keep our tissues at kindy too just incase she has a runny nose and how to cough in our sleeve, Ka pai Renee.  Kailah has also shared a special song she likes to sing at home with mum about washing hands, so we will give it a whirl, it's kind of catchy.  Wash, wash, wash your hands, wash them nice and clean.  Wash them on the outside and wash them in between!!

Talking about germs Liz thought it would be fun to do a little experiment with us, we have really been enjoying our science inquiries and teacher Liz just loves to experiment!!

First we needed 3 pieces of bread.  The first piece we rubbed our dirty hands on, the second we rubbed dirty hands and the dirty floor on (ewww!!) and the third we rubbed our clean washed hands on.  We have placed these pieces of bread in a glad bag each and will now wait to see which one grows the most germs.

It's so exciting to be scientists!!

 

 

 

Visiting our local Marae

Matariki Marae Visit on PhotoPeach

Matariki celebrations at Uxbridge!!

Our Matariki Hakari!!

Preparing and sharing Kai is a way of celebrating Matariki.   Today at Uxbridge we had our own Hakari, a feast of lovingly homemade vegetable soup and kumara bread! Our feast was perfect timing for the harvesting of our garden too and so we dug out some of our carrots and took cuttings of silverbeet to use as ingredients in the soup. Everyone brought in a vegetable to contribute to our soup, we had a lot of variety, carrots, kumara, potato, celery, tomato, onion, courgette, parsnip, pumpkin, even a tokonashi that we had never seen before (thanks Renee).   All the children contributed in some way whether it was in the preparation of the food, making the table decorations, setting the table or in of course, eating the food!!  We sung our Karakia and then there was silence at the lunch table as everyone dug into their kai.  You all really enjoyed sharing a meal together.  What a great team effort for a special occassion, well done Uxbridge children xx.   Here are some photo's to share of the big event............

Being very organised, we baked our kumara bread on Thursday

 

Today, we brought in our vegetables

Renee's tokonashi

Amber's Pumpkin

Nate's tomato

Leo's Potato

 We harvested our garden

 

Prepared our kai, washing, peeling, cutting, buttering our bread.....

 

  

  

Made our table decorations and set the table...

 

Sung our Karakia and enjoyed our shared kai together!!

Who will notice what's in the tyre??

Today we filled up our tyre with a whole bunch of leaves that had fallen from our beautiful tree,  we wondered how long it would take for anyone to notice!!  And when they did, what would they do?

Harriet and Georgia were the first to stumble across it.  Then Iris, Robert, Summer, Ella................

Harriet and Georgia decided to transport some leaves over to the table

Robert couldn't wait to just jump in

Summer and Iris followed by jumping in and swishing the leaves around with their hands.  What's that hidden amongst the leaves?

Iris just couldn't resist digging her hands in and throwing the leaves in the air

Ooh, creepy crawly bugs of all different colours

"Look, a red bug!" says Iris

What a great morning of exploration and fun!  We love using all our natural resources around us to create learning opportunities.