Water World Discovery 2014

 The children really enjoyed this water themed Discovery session, they were able to explore several different types of activities; water based experiments, practical experiences, and art and craft activities.

They particularly enjoyed washing the car and washing the little toy dishes from the home corner. They were able to test which objects float and what will sink, and make music using coloured water and glass jars.

 We also melted ice to observe what happened, did you know salt makes ice melt?

We made these easy rainbows with strips of coloured paper. I was very pleased to see children working together to create their rainbows, one person to do the holding and one to do the stapling. When we aksed the children about how rainbows are made, one little girl said straight away "it's when the sun and rain mix together."

Spinning Art

Our spinning art is now decorating our classroom.

We used a special spinning machine to turn the paper and then dropped slightly runny paint on the spinning paper with oversize eye-droppers. 

We used white paint, glitter, and coloured paper for these artworks, previously we have used white paper and different colours of paint. The children enjoyed experimenting with mixing paint colours and exploring how to use the eye-dropper to create the most effective spinning art (instead of just one big blob!).

 

Wheels

It's hard to see in this collage of photos  but we explored lots of different wheeled activities for Discovery yesterday. 

Colour wheels, Benham's disks, scooters, Duplo vehicles, folding car paper-craft, and spinning art. 

At the end of our session I asked the children to tell me something that they discovered about wheels. I think that the time at the end of our sessions is a good opportunity for the children to reflect on what they have discovered and share with their classmates about what they created during the session. Often, we also spend this reflective time to discuss how they solved problems, helped others, or acted like TP Kid.

If you are as excited about the possibilities of spinning art as I am, watch for the next post as we are creating more spinning art works tomorrow!

St Patrick's Day Discovery 2014

Today we were lucky enough to have our local kindergarten round to visit us for Discovery. We spent the morning catching up with Totara Park Kindy friends and exploring lots of St Pat's Day crafts and activities. 

 

 My favourite activity was the very cute leprechaun spoon puppets.  

After our Discovery session we had a fantastic shared morning tea. The children's eyes lit up when they spied their special morning tea, it didn't last long before disappeared!

 

Meet Ruby Fish

Ruby moved into the fish tank with Rocky today. Already she is swimming around happily with him.

I picked her up at lunch time and after lunch the children and I discussed several possible names for our new fish before deciding on Ruby with a little help from our lovely office lady, Mrs Hunt.

Rocky is orange and Ruby is white and orange with black spots.

Something Sad....

Updated below...

I arrived at school this morning to find that one of our classroom fish has somehow gotten sucked into the fish tank filter by her tail. I quickly turned off the filter and pulled Ceena out, but her lovely long tail and some of her fins are damaged and she is finding it quite hard to swim. Hopefully she recovers, but she is not looking too well.

The children and I talked about how Ceena was hurt by the filter and isn't feeling well. I mentioned that she might die, but we would have to wait and see. I will have to pop into school over the weekend to see how she is going, and hopefully by Monday she is looking better.

Here is picture of Ceena taken last year when we got her, since this photo was taken she has grown a little bigger.

Updated - Poor Ceena died over the weekend, I will by getting another fish and the children will name her later this week.

Teddy Bears' Picnic 2014

Our teddies and other assorted soft toys came to visit school today, they stayed for a picnic during our Discovery session. 

Our teddies enjoyed all sorts of different teddy and picnic themed activities; fruit cutting, teddy box cars, icing teddy biscuits, hanging clean teddy washing, play dough with teddies, and teddy ear head bands.

 These teddy bear face biscuits are super easy and just right for our five year olds and four year old Mountaineer visitors to make by themselves. One plain biscuit, reasonably stiff icing, 3 chocolate buttons, and eyes and a mouth with those icing gel pens. They were very cute, and most were nibbled on before they even made it to the picnic blanket.

Another, bigger Teddy Bears' Picnic is on this Saturday 8 March at Harcourt Park from 2.00 till 5.00 (at the Cossie if it's wet!). Check out page 37 of our local paper for more information.

Next week for Discovery our local kindergarten are coming to visit, we will be very busy!