Children's Day 2015

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!)

Happy Valentines Day 2015

This week we discovered about Valentines Day and explored about how to show others that we care about them. 

 We made love bug bookmarks with our thumbprints. Click for a pdf.

My youngest son and I went out the other night and collected small stones and the children used them to show someone special that 'you rock!' Click for a pdf.

We made delicious waffles with maple syrup. Luckily my waffle machine makes a waffle that you can split into 5 hearts.

We made bead bracelets to give away.

And we used marbles to make these cool heart paintings to take home.

I was really pleased to have 9 new children come today for their first discovery session, it is always exciting to meet new children and see younger siblings of previous students finally come to school. We encourage parents or caregivers to come along to our Discovery sessions with their children (at least for the first few sessions). So today was very busy! 

We call our pre-school visitors Mountaineers and they have between 7 and 10 visits before they start school. Our Discovery sessions are only until 10.30, but for our Mountaineer's last 3 visits they stay longer and participate in a normal classroom programme. We have found that by the time our Mountaineers turn 5 they are ready for school and confident and excited about starting.

Mini Beasts and Creepy Crawlies

Today we were very lucky to have an entomologist (a scientist who studies insects) come to Discovery and bring some amazing bugs and insect resources for us to explore. 

We had fun catching mosquito larvae to take home, then looking at real live locusts, spiders, mosquitoes, snails, and worms. The children used a microscope to look closely at insects set into resin.

When we have visitors come to school to share their knowledge the children are fascinated to talk to them and enjoy the opportunity to learn from experts. Luckily our entomologist is a parent and volunteered his time and resources. 

If you have something (knowledge, resources, or time) to offer us for Discovery please mention it to a teacher. We would love to have you help out.

Today was also a special session as we had lots of new Mountaineers start their school visits. We call our pre-school visitors Mountaineers as they are 'scaling the heights of learning'. It was great to meet lots of new children and their parents. We encourage parents to stay for our Discovery session to provide support for their children, after a few sessions it is a good idea for parents to leave for a short time before returning for morning tea at 10.30.

Ahoy, me Hearties!

Wow! It's been over two weeks since I last posted an update about what we have been up to in Room 4. Yesterday we came to school dressed in our pirate gear and explored like pirates for our Pirate Discovery session. We dug for gold, walked the plank and jumped into shark invested waters, drew treasure maps, folded newspaper pirate hats, threaded bracelets with special beads, made eye-patches, and created hooks for our hands just in case we need them! Whew....

Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day and the whole school is dressing up like pirates. 

Here is some of the 'Pirate Talk' I've been practising:

Ahoy! - Hello!
Ahoy, Matey - Hello, my friend!
Ahoy, me Hearties! - the same as saying "Hello, my friends!"
All hand hoay! - comparable to all hands on deck
Avast ye - stop and check this out or pay attention
Aye - yes
Booty - treasure
Crow's nest - small platform atop the mast where the lookout stands
Cutlass - short heavy curved bladed sword used by pirates
Doubloons - other coins or found in pirate hoards and stashes
Head - the pirate ship's toilet
Heave Ho - give it some muscle and push it
Jolly Roger - pirate's flag including white skull and crossbones over a black field
Lad, lass, lassie - a younger person
Landlubber - big, slow clumsy person who doesn't know how to sail
Old Salt - an experienced sailor
Pieces of eight - coins or found in pirate stashes
Savvy? - do you understand and do you agree?
Scuttle - to sink a ship
Seadog - old pirate or sailor
Shark bait - will soon join Davy Jones' Locker
Shipshape - cleaned up and under control
Thar she blows! - Whale sighting
Ye - you
Yo Ho Ho - cheerful exhortation to demand attention

And you can create your own pirate name with this Pirate Name Generator.

Spring Has Sprung

I can hardly believe it is the 1st September. We wrote stories about spring this morning and spent last week learning about spring for Discovery. Last Friday (29th August) was Daffodil Day in New Zealand and is a fund-raising and awareness day for the Cancer Society. So some of our Discovery activities were about daffodils and Daffodil Day.

The children painted watercolour pictures of a jug of daffodils.

 And we made our own daffodil badges with yellow and orange cupcake cases.

I like how one of my children described it this morning - "the daffodils are waking up."

Waffles and Bird Feeders

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. 

Robots!

Look who came to visit us during our last Discovery session.....

A cardboard box robot!

The Friendly Games

 Our 'Friendly Games' Discovery session was busy this morning with lots of Commonwealth Games inspired activities that encouraged the children to practise their friendship skills.

 

 Here we are completing a mountain biking dot to dot, last night New Zealand came 1st and 2nd in the mens mountain biking!

 

 The children enjoying taking turns on the fitness circuit.

 And this is my personal favourite - Judo Jaguar!

As the Commonwealth Games are in Scotland this year the children used blue paper triangles to complete the Scottish flag.

The children made these very cool highland terrier dogs - just like the real dogs that escorted the teams at the opening ceremony. 

 Photo from here.

These pipe cleaner people are ready to compete at the games, just use one pipe cleaner to make the head and legs, and bend another to make the arms. 

Winter Wonderland

The day before our Winter Wonderland Discovery session it snowed overnight and when we came to school in the morning the hills around Upper Hutt were covered in a white blanket of snow. Perfect timing for our session and for lots of descriptive winter writing too!

The children had a great time exploring lots of winter themed activities. I particularly loved the snowmen made out of polystyrene cups with a cupcake case hat and sorting some winter clothes into washing baskets.

Discovery...

We have Discovery every Wednesday morning. Each session involves our three new-entrant classrooms meeting together and exploring activities based around a theme. Our pre-school visitors also join us for Discovery and it provides them with a time to visit school with the support of a parent or caregiver. Our visitors are called Mountaineers, they are scaling the heights of learning.

We choose themes based on special events during the term or topics the children have expressed an interest in. There is no shortage of ideas about what we want to discover. Each session is carefully planned to provide the children with a variety of experiences. We plan art and crafts, writing and reading activities, colouring, cutting activities, counting and number activities, sensory experiences, roleplay, cooking and food experiences, and cooperative experiences.  

When the bell goes in the morning we all meet together in one classroom share our class greetings, at Totara Park School we a very lucky that our Junior classrooms are joined by folding glass doors, so on Discovery mornings we fold the doors back and have a large space for the children to explore. After the roll the teachers share some of the activities that are available and talk about the types of behaviour that we are encouraging.

During the session the children can visit any classroom and complete or participate the activities that they are interested in. We are very lucky to have extra parent help and teacher aide time during Discovery and our Mountaineers parents are encouraged to spend some time with their children which help them to feel more comfortable at school. It can be pretty scary during the first visit and having Mum, Dad, or Nana there makes it a lot easier.

After our session we tidy up together and sit back down on the mat to share about what the children have discovered and how they worked together. 

Then .... 

.... it's morning tea time!

Click on the Discovery and Mountaineers labels to find out more about what we do during Discovery, or check out the Starting School and Transition to School Book pages at the top of the blog.

Dinosaur Discovery

Here are a few photos of what we got up to for our last Discovery session of term 2. Dinosaurs provided us with lots of inspiration and is always one of my favourite sessions. 

 

We dug for fossils in the sand trough, made paper plate dinosaurs (click here for details), cut dinosaur finger puppets, made mini-colouring-in books (thanks Sparklebox), helped our dinosaurs hatch out of eggs, and lots of fun with our plastic dinosaurs.

 

Happy Matariki!

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.

Puppets!

 Check out these gorgeous sock puppets! 

We made them the other day during our 'puppet' Discovery session, along with lots of other puppets....

I especially loved the shadow puppet shows.

Hero Discovery

We had a fantastic Hero Discovery session last week. We were very lucky to have some special visitors; a fireman, police officers, and 5 police dogs!

We practised our 'get down, get low, get out' fire safety procedure and talked about a safe meeting point. Later during the session the children got to make a fire-truck money-box and talk to Jamie the Fireman about his job. Some lucky children even got to try on his fire-fighting gear.

The police van came for us to explore and as a lucky surprise some police dogs dropped by for us to meet. We learned about how to pat a dog safely - after checking the dog is okay to pat with its owner, put your hand out for the dog to sniff and then scratch them gently under the chin or on the shoulder. After patting the police dogs we made some police dogs out of paper. Check here for dog origami instructions similar to what we used. We took our fingerprints, got to play with some real handcuffs, and try on a stab-resistant vest.

 

 We also turned into superheroes and practised saving J-Block!

Queen's Birthday Discovery 2014

I love these royal masks, the J-Block teachers wore them last year for a funny staff photo, and last Wednesday for our Queen's Birthday Discovery session the children enjoyed wearing them too.

 

 We also made these beautiful crowns....

 ... and stunning brooches.

 

Party Time!

 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.

Off to the Marae!

Tomorrow we are on the bus and off to our local Marae. Orongomai Marae is our local Marae, but for me and many of the children it will be our first visit.

For Discovery last Wednesday we explored several art and craft activities designed to give the children some experiences in Maori culture that they might not have had before. They made poi, practised with rakau, wove with paper, drew koru, and made headbands.

We have also been practising our hongi - just in case!