Bubbles!

Early last week our senior school buddies came to visit us for some bubble blowing fun. 

After they left we sat down to write about our bubble blowing experience.

My bubbles went over the fence. I blew them myself.

I blew bubbles then I popped them.

I blew big bubbles. They went over the fence.

My bubbles floated away, then they popped.

And later in the week we made bubble art. 

Bubble art is easy, although messy! I mixed some bubble mixture and dye in a cup, and put that cup in an empty ice-cream container to contain any overflow. We used straws to blow up lots of bubbles before popping them with a piece of paper on the top of the cup. 

We have also been reading this bubble poem.

I make my own bubble mixture, it is much cheaper than buying it ready made. 
In a big bottle mix:

1.7 L of water

.3L of cheap dish-washing liquid

2 tablespoons of glycerine (from the pharmacy)

If you can leave the bubble mixture for a few days before using it, it seems work better.

Children's Day 2014

The first Sunday in March is Children's Day. For Discovery we celebrated Children's Day a little early this year with delicious ice-cream cones and some other special treats and activities.

Have a look here at the official Children's Day website for New Zealand and see what you can do this Sunday.

A Busy Week

Wow, last week was extremely busy. It's only now that I have had the time to sit down to write a post.

On Tuesday all of J-Block walked to Harcourt Park, we had a great time in the paddling pool and playing on the amazing playground. Thanks to all the parents who came along to help us out. Activities like this wouldn't be possible without parental support.

On Wednesday we celebrated Chinese New Year for Discovery. The best part was our dragon parade around the school. We made heaps of noise with our musical instruments and lots of children watched us out their windows and doorways.

On Thursday we had the 'Soaky' Olympics, the whole school split in to small groups, the big kids were able to look after my little guys and they all went round 6 different water activities. My favourite was the slip and slide, but we also had funny relay races, bucket and sponge races, and 'duck, duck, splash'.  

Now that we have experienced all of these fantastic activities, all we have to do is write about them!

Wax Resist Hearts

As it was Valentine's Day, of course we had to create these hearts last Friday. 

I was very impressed with the careful pastel work and painting that the children showed this week. They really enjoyed creating these artworks and I'm looking forward to exploring other art mediums. Each Friday I try to teach an art activity and while I love to see the progress the children display over the year, they love to make something special to display in our classroom or take home to mum and dad.

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Every Wednesday morning we have a Discovery session. Our Mountaineers (pre-school visitors due to start school in the next 10 weeks) come to school for Discovery and have fun exploring and learning about the sorts of activities we do at school. We encourage mums and dads to stay with their children to make the transition easier, that means on Discovery days we have lots of extra adults in our new-entrant classrooms and all those spare hands are always appreciated, especially at clean up time.

 Today we learned about showing others we love them.

Look at all of the things we were busy making this morning at Discovery to celebrate Valentine's Day. I really enjoyed reading in inside of some of the Valentine's Day cards, the messages were very sweet. (I'm sure the recipients will enjoy them as much as I did.)

Of course today lots of children were also busy playing with the cars, making potato head people, playing trains, building lego, and playing tag outside. 

 Next week we are celebrating Chinese New Year.

Watermelon Art

Welcome back! School has started for 2014 and we have been very busy in Room 4; learning routines, practising games, writing, reading, singing, counting, playing, and making art. Luckily at the start of the year I have a very small class, only 10 children. This means that I can spend lots of one-on-one time with each child in my class, which I really enjoy. 

With lots of children starting school with us during this term I will have about 15 children by the end of February, so it is important now that I focus on establishing routines and expectations that all the children understand about how my classroom is going to work. As the year goes on older children in my class are able to show our pre-school visitors and other children new to school how things work in Room 4. This makes life easier for me and gives the children a feeling of responsibility and an opportunity to show leadership.

 

 

 This week we made watermelon out of paper plates and coloured paper. Sadly, they don't taste as nice as the real slices of watermelon that we ate and wrote about at the start of the week.