Elmer the Elephant

We have spent the last few days making these gorgeous collage Elmer elephants.

I've made these patchwork elephants last year too. Click here to find out how we made them.

 

We also wanted to tell other people facts about elephants they might not know. So we wrote some reports about elephants too.

Here are some of our elephant reports: 

Elephants are animals. They have long trunks. Elephants play in the water. They are grey. Elephants balance balls on their trunks like basketball players. 

 Elephants are animals. They are bluey-grey. They have a long trunk. Elephants have a short tail. They live in India, Africa, and Asia. Elephants are strong like weight-lifters.

Elephants are animals. They are brown. They have a long trunk. They have four legs and have four toes on their back legs and three toes on their front. Elephants have a short tail. They live in Asia, Africa, and India and in Zoos. Elephants chase people when they get close. Look out!

Elephants are animals. They are grey. They have 2 tusks for digging up grass with. Elephants like the mud to cool down. 

 Elephants are animals. They are big. They have a long trunk. They use it for picking up food. Elephants have strong legs. Elephants like to push down trees. They are strong like weight-lifters.

When I Grow Up I Want To Be a ....

When I was a little girl, like many of my classmates, I wanted to be a teacher. 

This week we asked the children to think about what they want to be when they grow up. To foster their ambitions and spark their imagination we provided a variety of different role-play and job experiences.  

  Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

Albert Einstein

 We encouraged the children to dress up. Here we have a builder .....

..... and a naval officer. 

A local policeman visited with the gigantic police van. 

Some children got to try on his extremely heavy stab proof vest (and practise arresting each other with real police hand-cuffs). 

A fashion designer visited us shared some of her designs and helped the children sew these super cute miniature bunting flags. 

 

 Using the needle was not easy work and was great fine-motor practise.

A community nurse came to see us and shared about her job looking after people who can't make it to the doctors office. She helped the children make badges, just like what a real nurse wears.

Aspiring builders were busy at the construction table....

..... office workers practiced addressing and mailing letters.....

..... we also had several paleontologists digging for fossils, chefs cooking in the play-house kitchen, vets nursing sick toy animals, teachers teaching, and artists painting. 

It certainly was a very busy Discovery session.

We love role-play for Discovery:

 Role play – being able to become someone or something else comes quite naturally to most children from an early age. It is a vital activity for children, stimulating their imagination and enhancing their social development – encouraging friendship through cooperation, listening and turn taking.  It can improve their language and movement skills and can help them to understand different points of view, go into the future or the past, and travel anywhere in the world and beyond. Through role play we can explore moral issues and problems safely.

 http://theatre-education.co.uk/2011/05/why-role-play-is-important/

Pirates 2012

 Ahoy, me hearties....

 

Wednesday 19 September was international Talk Like a Pirate Day, so of course we had to dress-up like pirates and learn all about them for Discovery.

We made pirate hats, hooks, and eye-patches.

  We made treasure maps.....

 

.... then we dug for pirate treasure.....

......jumped off the plank into shark invested water.... 

.....and made our own pirate coins for our treasure chests.

Swinging Monkeys

Our paper monkeys are busy swinging with their friends in the tree by our reading corner. 

Click here for a blackline master of our monkeys. We folded strips of paper to make the monkeys arms and legs, the folding encouraged use of those fine motor skills. Of course, colouring and cutting are always great to practise, and the tail is just a curly strip of paper that we wrapped around a pencil. Our swinging paper monkeys are hanging out with these alphabet monkeys.

We have also been reading this monkey poem. And we have been learning to write a report about monkeys. We wanted to be able to tell someone information about monkeys that they might not know. I encouraged the children to think of what sport a monkey would be great at (to relate our writing back to our Olympic Inquiry unit), most children compared monkeys to gymnasts, but one clever boy said that "Monkeys were like basketball players when they hang from a hoop".

Here are some of our reports:

Monkeys are animals. Monkeys eat fruit, they swing on trees. Monkeys scratch. Monkeys eat bananas. Monkeys have brown fur. Monkeys have brown furry arms and legs. They have black eyes. They scratch under their arms. Monkeys go high over the bars like gymnasts.

Monkeys are animals. They bite bananas. Monkeys live in zoos. Monkeys do poo’s. Monkeys would be good at gymnastics.

Monkeys are animals. Monkeys like to eat bananas and feijoas. Monkeys swing from vine to vine. Monkeys have brown fur and long arms and legs. They use them to hang on to things. They have black eyes and a long tail too. They live in the jungle and the zoo. Monkeys are good at gymnastics like people. 

Monkeys are animals. They like bananas and fruit. Monkeys have brown fur. They have sharp teeth. Monkeys are like gymnasts, because they are good at swinging.