Pre-Primary Explorations: August 2013

Kids Love School!

No seriously! Check out the gorgeous 'kids' in the classroom this morning!

Meet Honey and Coco :) They were our surprise visitors, kindly brought in by Nicole and Carolyn (Kingsley folk) Both lots of 'kids' loved their cuddles, big kids too and no one wanted our little goat friends to leave! They were just too cute.

We have been so lucky this term, with all of our amphibian, insect and animal guests!!

Oh, and guess what? ....

I Finally have FROGSPAWN! :D (thanks Mrs H) So excited! Don't forget to come on in and check it out. Take a look here, a really close look, can you see lots of little tadpoles in their jelly eggs???

Stay tuned for more exciting pre-primary explorations!

Book Week, Bouncing Bunnies and Butterflies!!

What a busy week we just finished at Kingsley! I don't know about the kids but what I do know is that the teachers were definitely ready to recharge their batteries by Friday afternoon!!

Last week so many wonderful things took place at school. Firstly it was Book Week, so we continued discussing the role of authors and illustrators and shared many great books together. We went to the Book Fair and made a wish list of the stories we would like to buy and read and concluded the week with a celebration on Friday at the Book Parade. Lots of us dressed up as our favourite book characters and brought along the story that our characters were from.

Here are the Room 15 teachers and children looking smashing as their favourite book characters!

From left: Mrs Clarkson as Nicholas Ickle from 'The Wrong Book', Me as the dog from 'If You Give A Dog A Donut', Miss Pitchford as Wally from 'Where's Wally?', Mrs Decristaforio as Dora from 'Dora The Explorer' and Mrs Arnold as 'Odette' from 'Swan Lake'.

Room 15 book characters!

Smurfette & Snow White

Our Super Heroes

Smurfette checks out Mog's cool flying broom

Our very own Cat in a Hat

My Book Week Winner!
How uncanny is the resemblance! hehe :) Love ya Mrs D!

Bouncing Bunnies!

On Thursday, we had 2 very cute bunnies come and visit us for the morning, 'Brittany' and 'Love'. They were very well behaved and seemed to enjoy their cuddles from the very excited pre-primary children.

... Our Butterflies Emerge!

You had to be there to witness the extreme excitement and amazement that the children displayed as they realized the butterflies were about to emerge from their chrysalises. Not only did we get to watch these caterpillars shed their skin as they turned into a chrysalis, now we were able to watch them emerge as beautiful butterflies as well!

Here you can see the chrysalis just before it hatched.

The process was simply captivating - the children oohed and ahhed and watched ecstatically as these small butterflies left their chrysalis' with small, shriveled, wet wings. Within moments, their wings grew slightly bigger as they softly lifted them up and down to dry them.

Look how tiny her wings are.

...A little bit bigger now.

It only took about 15 minutes for their wings to look smooth and flat, however, we knew they were not ready to fly away, as they did not have the strength to lift themselves upright.

Look how beautiful they are!

The children could not keep their eyes off the butterflies, so what better time to start our new butterfly observations.

Miss Pitchford guided the children as they made their observations, prompting discussion about what they saw and how they would create their butterfly diagrams. The children were very observant and decided they would only need a few colours for their pictures.

You can see how carefully the children are looking at the butterflies as they draw their pictures. They really did do an amazing job!

As always, the children have learned so much this week but I have to say, becoming parents to 3 beautiful butterflies, and knowing there are still more on the way, was definitely the highlight of the week for me!! How exciting!

Bush Day!

Well, almost 2 weeks on and I am finally getting around to posting about our fabulous Bush Day adventures! The children had a great day and although Mother Nature rained on the Bush Day Parade for the rest of the school, down in the early childhood area, we were lucky enough to go on with our bush activities! When did a little (or a lot!) of rain ever stop a bunch of kids from having fun!?

Most children arrived at school thinking their classroom had burned down! But alas! It was just Miss Clarkson and Mrs Beattie trying to light the camp fire! (...warning! Miss Clarkson is not a fabulous fire maker! Thanks to our super hero dad for saving the day...) As the kids made their way into the classroom through the cloud of smoke, they got ready for their first Bush Day adventure.

Here we are enjoying a bit of bush dancing to start the day. We buddied up with a year 6/7 student and we tapped, clapped and jigged our way around the undercover area for almost an hour!!

Heel and toe, heel and toe, step 2, 3, 4!

On the previous day, we all went for a nature walk around the school, collecting anything and everything from the school's bush lands to use in our nature boxes. We had so much fun exploring and filling our bags with goodies. The most exciting part was when we found these amazing honkey nuts all over the ground... they were huge and we were quickly filling our bags... when suddenly we realised we had invaded someone's habitat! ANTS! Ants EVERYWHERE! We screamed, we flicked them, we ran... we had ants crawling up our legs, down our arms, in our hair and out of our bags of goodies! It was a little bit horrible but still very funny. We had a giggle and made sure everyone was clear of our little visitors and continued on with our bush foraging. Thankfully no one was bitten.

Here you can see some of our Nature Boxes.

We weaved leaves, sticks, grass, nuts and all kinds of natural products though our pre-designed boxes. It was a lot of fun.

This is a group of us kneading our very own damper. Later we wrapped it in alfoil and cooked it under the coals on the fire pit. YUM! It smelled delicious as it was baking!

I'm not sure if I forgot to take photos of us spreading butter and jam over our delicious, warm damper or if I had my hands... and mouth... full of yummy, sticky damper!