Decorating the christmas tree!!

Doesn't our tree look beautiful!!  We spent the afternoon sorting through all the boxes of decorations, finding tinsel and baubles of all different colours and stuck them on to make our tree look fabulous. We found an extra big red star to stick on the top.

 

The arrival of our new water trough!!

So exciting when the courier man turns up with a big parcel and this was big!!  Our new water trough is pretty cool, it is just the right size and height for us and has a lid too, great for shallow water play and lots of messy play which we love.  We can't wait to have fun and explore all it's uses.

 

Making our Worm Tea!!

With such a strong interest in the garden it has naturally increased the children's curiosity in our worm farm. We feed the worms our scraps of food and have been adding lots of bean scraps to the worm farm too as we enjoy tasting the produce we have grown. This process has fostered a range of new language and ideas as we learn about how worms help our garden and what the liquid is in the bottom of the farm. The children started to ask "what are we going to do with the worm wee?" we came up with the ideas to add this to our own garden here and also that we could sell the worm wee to our Mums and Dad's for everyone gardens at home. Now to extract the wees and poos (worm juice) from our worm farm.....

 

We asked the children "what do we need to let the parents know that we are selling the worm tea?"  "A sign" they eagerly suggested, so we set out to make a sign......We found a piece of card we could use for the sign and discussed what colour to make the sign "Green" Kain suggested as it was the colour of the garden. The children are learning that colours can represent things and remind us of things. This started a conversion about how green means go and red means stop. After painting the sign green we asked "Is the sign finished now?" "Will people know what we are selling?"   Jack laughed at this and said "We need words to tell them."  He also suggested we could make worm pictures for the sign, so colours some sheets of paper brown and pink and cut of wiggle worm shapes. We added some letters to spell out WORM TEA and that it would be $1. We discussed what the dollar sign was and how symbols can represent different things too.

 

 

 We were now ready to bottle the tea. This was the fun part.  Using a syphon, a measuring jug and our Charlie's water bottles, it was a 1:10 ratio.  We got to practice our measuring and pouring skills.  We made sure we put on our gloves so we didn't get any of the wees and poos on our hands.

 

 

Our worm tea is all bottled and just about ready for sale, what a great job Uxbridge friends.  Just one more step and then we will be ready to set up shop and sell our famous Uxbridge Worm Tea!  We are going to use the IPAD to make labels - These will read Worm Tea $1 so our customers will know exactly what we are selling and how much it is. Hopefully our store will be set up just in time for christmas, what a great gift these will make.

 

 

 

Our Sock Puppets!!

The interest in puppets since our show has grown and so today we made our very own sock puppets.  Using technology (IPAD) is a great way for us to research and get some idea's and useful images of what these puppets could look like and what materials we will need to make them.

 

Benjamin and Felix helped with the search.  We discovered you can use all sorts of things to make different faces, animals.... - we could use some buttons, google eyes, wool, pompoms, paper, felts, material.  

 

 Felix found a Blue pompom to use, Benjamin is however, not quite sure on the colour!

Yep, just two eyes

Adding some red spots, just like the clown from Do whacky do who was sick with the spotty dotty flu

All princesses must have pink hair

And Elsa plaits

And a bat-man mask

This was a great activity to showcase our creativity and use different resources and skills in the making.  The shows continued in the playground as we took our puppets out to play.

Safe risks!!

It is extremely important for children to take risks while young. This helps them to become experts in decision making and recognising safe and unsafe risks. You will draw from your experiences to predict the consequences and decide whether to take the risk or not.       

Today as the Ninja's were bombarding the playground, Noah grabs the get away swing and jumps, "yah", he yells!  The children playing with him, looked tempted to give it a go.  You can do it Ninja's!!!!  Declan takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, he holds on tight, then takes a leap of faith!!  There was a shriek, then a giggle and a then a huge rewarding smile.  Fantastic!!

The boys through their play are developing confidence and decision making skills, while learning to analyse risk, take turns, and control and develop their  muscles and proprioceptive systems.
 

Making rain clouds

With such a heavy downpour after a beautiful sunny morning it was the perfect afternoon to experiment making our own rain clouds. We started off with clear water in a jar which represented our clear and sunny day. We then put a cloud on top of our water with shaving foam and used droppers with blue colour to fill the cloud with rain. When the blue rain got too heavy for our cloud it came through into our water which was a mesmerizing sight. This was such a fun since experiment that helped us learn about how the clouds work and why why it starts to rain!