Christmas Craft - Chistmas Pudding Cakes

These Christmas puddings are easy peasy - no cooking in class involved. 

Ingredients - Cake crumbs, chocolate icing, melted chocolate, jaffa, and a green lolly.

Mix the crumbs and the icing together, shape into a ball, top with melted chocolate and the lollies.

Chistmas Craft - Folded Paper Doves

Our peace doves are spreading peace and quiet through Room 4. 

We used small plastic jewels I scavenged from table tops at a friends wedding. They have been languishing in my cupboard waiting for the right craft activity. Click here for a pdf template of our doves.

Merry Christmas for 2013

 The children worked hard decorating the Christmas tree for Discovery this morning. I love the presents underneath it. 

Weetbix anyone?

Here are a few of our Christmas activities.

Today was our last Discovery session for 2013. We will start Discovery again next year on the 12th February 2014.

Christmas Craft - Reindeer Food

Ingredients - Rolled oats, birdseed, and glitter.

(The glitter is so the reindeer can see the moon shining on it at night.)

Christmas Craft - Handprint Christmas Tree

Look what we made with our S-Block buddies. 

 They came over this afternoon to make something special with us. It was lovely to see the older children helping their younger buddies. My 5-year-olds are always excited to have 'buddy time.' 

The children outlined each others hand straight on to green paper, and after working together to cut it out they decorated their hand with crinkly green paper and glitter.

Christmas Craft - Candy Cane Mice

I was sick last Friday, but look what the children did without me!

Candy cane mice. 

I set this up before I left on Thursday afternoon, we used foam paper (hence the adventurous colours) and candy canes. But you could use normal paper or felt.

Today we hung them on our Christmas tree.

Christmas Craft - Beaded Candy Canes

We used different coloured wooden beads to make these candy cane decorations today. 

 

They are super easy, and great for fine motor skill practise. 

We threaded our beads on to pipe cleaners.

Summer Discovery 2013

Our summer Discovery session was lots of fun. 

Here are some of our craft activities:

 Cooling sponge necklaces and bracelets.

 Walnut shell sail boats.

Wind catchers with crepe paper and sticks from Mr Hunt's wood pile!

Only one more session to go!

Can you guess what we will be discovering about next week?

Christmas Craft - 3D Paper Snowflakes

Check out our amazing giant paper snowflakes. 

The children worked together and practised their wonderful cutting skills to make these. By the end of the session several children were teaching and helping their classmates fold, cut, and sellotape. (And look at my new blue shelves in the background!)

 Here is a You Tube tutorial.

Christmas Craft - Wrapping Presents

From today until we finish school on the 18th December, we will be busy creating all sorts of Christmas crafts and exploring different Christmas themed activities.

Today we wrapped the rock art we completed last week during outdoor week. The children chose the type of paper, the ribbon colour, and of course the lucky recipient! After carefully cutting, folding, and sellotaping, they wrote a label for their present. 

Hopefully all of our gifts made it home safely under the Christmas tree.

Outdoor Week - Day Five....

Just a quick post to share what we got up to on the last day of outdoor week. 

Bubbles and launching the air rocket in the morning, free-play on the playground and sausages before lunch, and kite flying and ice-blocks in the afternoon.

A great way to celebrate the end of outdoor week and the start of summer!

Outdoor Week - Day Four....

Check out some of the great things we practised at the gym!

 Headstands, swinging, balancing, climbing, and floor practise.

In the afternoon we used oil pastel and special sealant to decorate the rocks we collected yesterday.

 

Shhhh.... Next week will will wrap them up to put under the tree for Christmas presents.

Outdoor Week - Day Three....

We walked to the duckpond today and had a great time feeding the ducks and playing on the brand new playground next to the duck pond. There was so much bread that the ducks couldn't eat it all and left it floating in the water. 

 

Before we left were we lucky enough to feed the horses in the paddock next door.

After lunch we braved the drizzle and played on our 'wheels'.

Outdoor Week - Day Two ....

We were off to Tunnel Gully today. It was slightly damp, but we had a great time.

Outdoor Week - Day One...

We had a busy first day for Outdoor Week. 

First up.....

Kites, with a plastic bag and string.

Then after morning tea we had a treasure hunt and dug for treasure in the sandpit, then blew bubbles.

After lunch we had a water fight with the rest of J-Block. 

Hopefully, the weather for the rest of outdoor week will be beautiful.

 

Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse!

We celebrated Mickey Mouse's birthday yesterday for Discovery, apparently he is 85 this year!

 Every party needs (playdough) birthday cakes and (real) candles, balloons, and of course Mickey was given lots of presents.

 We wrote cards for Mickey, and made mouse ear magic wands. One of my lovely parents gave us heaps of Disneyland themed paper plates and badges after her recent trip to Disneyland. The children had lots of fun setting the table ready for Mickey's party.

 

 We also had lots of fun painting mouse whiskers and making Mickey Mouse ears too. We were very lucky to have a parent stay and help out with the face painting. Lately we have had heaps of Mountaineers (our pre-school visitors) visiting us for our Discovery session, so it is fantastic to have some amazing parent help.

And in New Zealand a child's party is not complete without fairybread - bread, butter, and 100's and 1000's. Yum!

World Kindness Day

We discovered today about World Kindness Day. 

13.11.13 is a special day to do something kind for someone, and when I arrived at school one of my colleagues had left a little chocolate bar on my desk!

So today, we did something kind for another child sick in hospital. We made special goody bags full of little presents to make someone smile.

Cute mouse bookmarks.

Pet rock monsters, with pastel, mod-podge, and googly eyes.

Elephant finger puppets.

Beaded bracelets.

These special bags are off to the pediatric unit at our local hospital.  

During our Discovery session we encouraged the children to work together and practise acts of kindness with their friends and classmates.  
Hopefully some of the children went home and were kind to their families too!

A Song....

I had to post the Days of the Week song we have been singing lately....

Boom, Wizz, Pop ....

(Imaginary) fireworks were exploding in J-Block this morning as we celebrated Guy Fawkes Night. Due to time constraints we were one day late, but we didn't let that stop us discovering about Guy Fawkes and fireworks.

 We painted our faces (and arms) with exploding fireworks and colourful sparklers. We also used cupcake cases to make a fireworks collage, this was a great cutting activity.

 We used dye, pipettes, and straws to make a huge mess colourful fireworks on paper. 

 

We made a Guy out of baby clothes and newspaper to push around in our toy stroller asking, "A penny for the Guy," and some children even gave us play money. In the doll hospital we took care of our dolls who had burns from the fireworks. This poor dolly is covered in plasters!

One very popular activity was making sparklers with chocolate finger biscuits and 100's and 1000's. Just dip one end of the biscuit in hot water, then quickly dip it in to the 100's and 1000's.

And my favourite activity - shooting the toy rocket into the sky, almost like real fireworks.

I can hardly believe we only have 4 more Discovery sessions this year!

Tissue Ghosts

I meant to post these photos last week, but I had a lazy weekend!

 On Friday we made these tissue ghosts with a cotton ball, string, and a tissue. They look great hanging in front of our window.

 I love how some of the ghosts have happy smiles, they are friendly ghosts, ready to welcome you to school.

Happy Halloween!

 

 We had a blast dressing up for our Halloween Discovery session. (The teacher in the cow onesie is not me, but one of the other amazing teachers in J-Block.)

I always try to plan activities that encourage the children to practise a variety of skills and attitudes we use at school. Cutting, gluing, folding, drawing, writing, copying, sharing, turn-taking, persevering, taking risks, and helping others are some of what I observed during today's Discovery session. Discovery allows the children to discover about school, about our topic for the week, and what they themselves are able achieve.

Have a look at some of the activities we explored today:

 

 We blew up balloons and drew jack-o-lantern faces on them. I bought 90 orange balloons to ensure we had enough!

 We made paper-towel mummies, spider thaumatropes, folding bat cards, skull masks, icky insect wristbands, and tissue ghosts.

One of my favourite activities was using a permanent marker to draw jack-o-lantern faces on oranges. Which we got to eat for lunch, yummy.

We played Toca Boca Monster Kitchen on the ipads. This is a free app where you have to choose food for the monsters, cook it, and then feed it to them. Sometimes they don't like it and will spit it out all over the screen.  (That's the best part!)