Making Super Soup!

To celebrate the end of our healthy eating inquiry unit we made and ate (or tasted) this super soup full of vegetables. We have been learning about how we need lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and that we should eat a variety of 'brainfood' to help make our brains smart and our bodies strong.

 

 

The children enjoyed peeling and cutting the vegetables themselves. Our soup was full of celery, carrots, potato, pumpkin, kumara, onion, and one giant bacon hock. (I always partially cook pumpkin prior to cutting it up, this makes it much easier for children to peel and cut.)

We talked about how bacon comes from pigs, and where on the pigs body the hock comes from.

 

During the school year I try to provide lots of opportunities for the children to practise real-life skills, including the chance to safely use a knife.

We prepared the soup on Thursday and put it into the slow-cooker. I turned on the slow-cooker just before I left school late on Thursday afternoon, and our soup cooked slowly all night. When we arrived at school on Friday morning our classroom smelt delicious!

Just before lunchtime on Friday we each buttered and cut up a slice of bread to dip into our cup of soup. 

I encouraged all of the children to try at least a mouthful, some ate a whole cup of soup and two children even went back for second helpings. 

Check out our juice recipes with heaps of different of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Happy Birthday Your Majesty

Our Mountaineers had a great time celebrating Queen's Birthday for Discovery earlier today. The Queen turned 87 in April earlier this year, but we celebrate her birthday at the start of June.

 

 The Queen loves jewellery so we were busy making rings out of pipe cleaners and beads....

.... this was a good activity to practise our fine motor skills. 

We made paper flowers out of cupcake cases, a straw, and a button. This simple flower craft is fast to complete and we had some extremely colourful flowers. (Just remember to turn the cupcake cases inside out to you can see their colours and patterns easily.) 

Here is a smiley-face flower.

We made birthday cards. I love the flowers on this card.

We wrote shopping lists for party food, do you think The Queen would like a milo for her party?

We ordered Union Jack bunting.

 We wrote "Queen" words on the mini-chalk boards.

 We coloured, cut, and made our own crowns.

 We coloured Union Jack flags. I found these flags here.

 We made origami corgi dogs. Corgis are The Queen's favourite type of dog. Check out this post for more information about origami dogs.

Whew! What a busy session.

Did you know that you can send The Queen a card or letter? We try and do this every year and we always get an official reply on her behalf. Have a look at this website to find out how to contact The Queen.

Welcome to Room 4 Rocky and Ceena

We were very excited today, our new class pets arrived after morning tea. A lovely mother has kindly donated all of the bits and pieces that we need (including the fish!) and given me a crash course in looking after them.

After much discussion and several interesting suggestions for names we decided on Rocky and Ceena. (I liked Larry and Barry!)

 Ceena Fish

Rocky Fish

Rocky and Ceena are settling in to their new home. We are going to look out for a little ornament for their tank to make a special place to for them to hide when it all gets a bit too much!

On a practical note - to encourage the children to care for Rocky and Ceena we have worked out a feeding schedule. 

As they don't need to be fed everyday we are going to use this amazing fish peg (made by the very clever teacher aide who works in my classroom) to peg next to each child's name written on this list. We just move the peg down the list so that everyone eventually gets a turn.

I used a permanent marker to write the names on after it was laminated. That way when children leave or join my classroom it is easy to update.

Catching Fish 2013

Can you guess who may be joining our class next week?

Here is a clue!

 So to make our new class-member feel welcome we created these textured hanging fish.

Using rubbings as part of our artwork is the start of a variety printmaking techniques we will be exploring this term. Last week we rubbed over corrugated cardboard as part of our autumn leaf art. For these fish we enjoyed the autumn sun and rubbed over concrete outside our classroom. 

How to make a hanging fish:

Choose any colour of crayon you want for the eyes, fins, and tails of your fish. Click here for a copy.

Then choose one colour to create scales for the fish. Put your fish over concrete and push the crayon on its side over the body of the fish.

Cut out and then dye the fish. We used warm and cool colours for our fish, if the scales were a warm colour, then the dye was a cool colour, and vise versa. 

I glued the fish to coloured card and hung them from the net in our classroom. 

We have also been reading this poem 'Once I Caught a Fish Alive'.

Puppet Discovery 2013

We transformed our classrooms into several puppet theatres for Discovery today. Some children loved performing,while others preferred to be an appreciative audience.

 One of the most popular puppets shows performed by the children was the shadow threatre. I think we have a ghost and a puppy performing in this show. The children traced their puppet onto card, cut it out, and used a wooden skewer for the handle.

 One of our junior school teachers has a huge collection of finger and glove puppets, including this Cat in the Hat and snapping crocodile.

 

 We encouraged the children to make their own puppets, I love the expressions on the faces of these spoon puppets.

These easy octopus puppets are made with a paper plate and crepe paper streamers, they are decorated with a collage of tissue paper and glitter. You can sellotape the bottom of the paper plate to the back of the puppet as a handle.

The Leaves Came Sailing Down....

 Our Autumn leaves are falling off the trees and into our classroom.

 These leaves are created with a crayon and dye wax resist. Click here to see how we made our leaves.

 

 We have also been reading these Autumn poems - Autumn and An Autumn Greeting.