The first Sunday in March is Children's Day. We celebrated a little early and the children discovered how special they are for our Discovery Children's Day session.
One very popular activity was eating an ice-cream cone - I told the children it was a gift from our Principal Mr Webby for being so fantastic!
I didn't get the photo of the Prince or Princess for a Day crowns the children made, but I hope they remembered to wear them on Sunday. (My child did!)
Diwali is the Indian Festival of Light and falls between mid October and mid November each year. We celebrated Diwali with lots of exciting activities.
One of the favourite activities was henna designs with real henna. Henna is a temporary tattoo, and the children enjoyed receiving a small tattoo on their hand. Once the henna dried the children washed it off and a pale brown tattoo remained.
We also had a vegetarian dal curry for the children to sample with basmati rice. Dal curry is made with lentils, and for some children it was the first time they had tried them.
We also dressed up in traditional Indian clothing, created rangoli patterns with coloured salt, and made diya to take home with tea-light candles and plasticine.
We have been learning about fractions in Room 4, particularly 1/2 and 1/4's.
We made sure to wash our apples before cutting them carefully into 1/2 then 1/4's. The children were excited to eat their pieces of apple in class and I was pleased to hear them describing their apple pieces using the fraction language we have been learning.
At home you can encourage the development of mathematical concepts like fractions by using words like 'half' and 'quarters' by using food. Asking your child if they want their toast or sandwich cut into half or
quarters and the same with fruit or other types of food is a good place to start. One half is 'one out of two', and one quarter is 'one out of four'.
We have also made and cut up fairy bread as part of our learning about fractions.
Last week for our Exploration Time Discovery session we made delicious waffles and delicious (for the birds) pine-cone bird feeders.
We had three waffle makers for our waffles and used this waffle recipe, it made close to 20 waffles so if you want to make less waffles try this website. We poured maple syrup or golden syrup over our waffles and the children enjoyed eating them up quickly before the syrup dripped everywhere.
We have made these bird feeders before and the birds love them. Because we had lots of expired peanut butter donated to us the children coated their pine-cone in peanut butter before rolling it in bird seed. You can use margarine if there are concerns about nut allergies.
The birds went nuts for their bird feeders and they were stripped of peanut butter and bird seed within 4 days.
The children had a great time last Friday making and eating fraction fairy bread. We have had lots of discussions about fractions during maths time and I thought fairy bread would be a great way to encourage the children to make their own fractions. At this stage the children are just learning about halves and quarters, so they cut their fairy bread into halves or quarters before they ate it.
Fairy
bread is a New Zealand birthday party tradition, if you haven't
made it before here are some step by step instructions.
Spread butter or margarine on a piece of bread.
Sprinkle 100's and 1000's over the top of the butter.
Cut the fairy bread in 1/2.
Then cut it into quarters.
I really enjoy letting the children experience practical life activities like this one.Next week we are cutting apples into fractions.
The Matariki stars start to rise at the end of May and the beginning of June, we celebrated Matariki a few days early (it traditionally begins on the the first day of the new moon following its rising - this year on the 28 June). Matariki is the traditional Maori new year, many years ago Matariki signified the end of the harvest and was a time of plenty.
We celebrated Matariki for Discovery with lots of star art and craft, including making telescopes and making special Matariki star biscuits to eat.
We were very lucky to have a parent bring in lots of biscuits, icing, and special edible stars to feast on during our session, and the children really enjoyed icing and decorating their biscuit.
When our Mountaineers (pre-school visitors) start Discovery with us we encourage parents or caregivers to stay to and help their children. Parental support makes a huge difference to the ease at which children transition to school. The parents that stay for Discovery are always willing to help out and we appreciate the support they provide for their own children and others. Some of the activities we choose for Discovery can provide a challenge for some children to complete and a supportive hand from an adult to complete a tricky task is always helpful and appreciated.
Here is a short clip explaining one of the myths behind Matariki.
This year Totara Park School started the milk for schools programme and after several weeks of drinking milk each day we have spent the last two weeks learning about cows and where milk comes from. Did you know that cows have 4 stomachs?
We wrote reports about cows and painted these amazing cow portraits. I used this blog post for inspiration for our paintings.
Before we wrote our reports we watched some clips from 'Rosie's World' and read some books about cows.
Here are some of our reports:
'Cows are animals. Milk comes from cows. Cows are red and white.'
'Cows are animals. Cows make milk. Cows eat grass, they burp up the cud. Cows have 4 stomachs. The grass goes into one tummy then into the next tummy.'
'Cows are animals. They make milk. They eat the grass and burp the cud.'
'Cows are animals. They make milk from their udders. They are white and they are brown. Cows eat grass. Then they make milk. They have 4 stomachs.'
We have also been reading the first verse of The Cow poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. Click here for a pdf.
Last Friday we had a party to say goodbye to some amazing children leaving Room 4 and heading off to Room 13. It's always sad to have children (and their parents) leave my classroom but with so many Mountaineers visiting us each week for their pre-school visits I know I will have more happy faces to teach during the rest of the year.
While the new Room 13 were visiting their new teacher the rest of us stayed behind and got ready for the party. We had fun making paper chains, decorating cups for our lemonade, and arranging the party food.
Check out the amazing autumn activities we explored last Wednesday for Discovery; mini leaf booklets, laminated leaves, leaf boats, leaf rubbing, apple cutting with our special apple cutting machines, hibernating hedgehog art, autumn leaf creatures, and pine-cone critter craft!
I love the apple cutting machines. They peel, core, and slice an apple in one amazing go. Funny enough, the children are just as fascinated as the adults!
We put on our red noses and clown hats this morning and went off to the big top to perform in the J-Block Circus for Discovery this morning.
The children made the clown hats from coloured card and stickers. Peeling and sticking stickers is a good fine motor activity to practise in preparation for writing.
On the way to the circus we decorated popcorn cups and watched popcorn explode from the popcorn poppers! Yum!
We sold circus tickets in the ticket booth using our play money, and wore these circus masks from Sparklebox.
We also coloured in mini circus books to take home and cut out these cute paper circus animals.
In Room 4 we have also been reading and practising the actions for this cute clown poem.
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!
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!
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.
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.
