Wicked Wheels

For Discovery this week we had an amazing time riding and using wheels at school.

 Duplo vehicles.
 

 Books about wheels.

 Dressing up to ride in the bus. Love those high heels!

 Car paintings.

Luckily our local toy library is well stocked with ride-ons.

For every Discovery session we try to provide our Mountaineers a variety of fun and interesting hands-on activities that allow children to learn through play. Each session is based on a different theme with lots of learning experiences based around that theme.  We try to foster skills and attitudes that we would like the children to practice and develop before they start school. Team work, sharing, taking turns, cutting, colouring, using a pen or pencil, constructing, and sensory activities are some of what the children will experience as a Mountaineer. 

Next term we have plans for themes based on; At the Farm, Dr Seuss, Under the Sea, and Autumn.

Check out my other posts about Discovery and Mountaineers to find out more about our Discovery sessions.

Chocolate Playdough

Just in time for Easter - Chocolate Playdough.

It smells delicious!

We have had a great time making chocolates in ice-cube containers, muffin tins, cupcake cases, and anything else that captures our imagination. Look at how the ice-block sticks are candles on our chocolate birthday cakes and how we added glass nuggets as yummy decorations. 

 Click here to see my inspiration.

Click in the 'label cloud' to see my other playdough posts and click here to see our persuasive writing about why we should eat chocolate.

Greedy Cat

 

After reading lots of different stories about Greedy Cat by the fantastic New Zealand author Joy Cowley, we made our own Greedy Cats.

Greedy Cat Peg Craft

Of course our Greedy Cats are not all cat colours, mainly because I ran out of orange pipe-cleaners.  But we think they are pretty cute, just like Greedy Cat.

 Use marker-pens to colour in the pegs. 

Put the pegs on Greedy Cat's body for his legs. 

Colour Greedy Cat's face the same colour as his legs, and cut it out.

Draw on some stripes or zig-zags on Greedy Cat's body.

Use glue dots or sellotape to stick on Greedy Cat's tail on one side of his body, and his head on the other.

I hung our Greedy Cats in front of our large window for everyone to see (unfortunately I don't have a suitable windowsill for our Greedy Cats to stand on).

I found nearly 100 wooden clothes-pegs for $2 at a local shop. Bargain!

Check out these posts about the amazing peg elephants and hanging peg bats that my class made last year.


I love using pegs in the classroom - opening and closing pegs is a fine motor skill that builds up those important hand and wrist muscles to get them ready for writing.