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!

 

 

 



Frogs, Chrysalises and Exciting Explorations!

We're going on a frog hunt!

We have had so much fun investigating frogs over the last few weeks! 

The children have been busy discovering many new words and their meanings and have learnt a great new song about Metamorphosis! Check out some or our explorations below!

Did you know that frogs live on every continent except Antarctica?
We do! Ask me why frogs don't live there and I will tell you.

Exploring the life cycle of a frog...

Check out our gorgeous frog life cycle play dough creations!

A Special Delivery

Earlier in the week, Mrs Hollis, a wonderful teacher in the classroom next door, delivered a very special gift to us!

2 CHRYSALISES!

...and later in the week also surprised us with 2 more chrysalises and some caterpillars too!

We were so excited about our new gifts that we started some very important observations straight away.

One of our caterpillars has already formed its chrysalis and is beginning to change. We have learnt that this is called metamorphosis!

 

A Frog's Habitat

What is a habitat? A habitat is the place where an animal lives of course! 

With this question in mind, the pre-primary children decided we needed to go on a frog hunt to see if our school was the right habitat for a frog...

We looked in old tyres with puddles of water inside... but no frogs there.

We looked in tree trunks... 

Behind rocks...

 
 Along the bush paths and tracks. But no frogs there either!...

 We found lots of other interesting things though!

Although we had a wonderful morning out on our frog hunt, we did not hear or see any frogs. We went back to class and shared our ideas about why we didn't have any frogs at school and the children thought that maybe it was because there was no quiet place with water for a frog to lay their eggs... How clever are these amazing kids!?!

We now plan to design and build a frog pond in the early childhood area, in the hope of attracting frogs to our school! 

How exciting! 

Our Surprises Kept on Coming!

One of the Kindy children in Room 13, heard we were doing an investigation on frogs and had found one swimming in his swimming pool that Sunday. He brought it in for us to observe for the day, which was a very exciting event for us! We had to remember to be very quiet as the classroom was not the best habitat for a frog but his aquarium had some water, bark, grass and a rock to hide under to keep him comfortable for the day.

Can you see him on the side of the aquarium?

He's now back home in his own habitat... hopefully not taking a swim in their pool ! :)

Dabbling with blogs.... New explorations for Miss Bec!

Well, after many a late night... and perhaps some fairly early mornings also, perusing and stealing wonderful ideas from other teachers' amazing blogs, I have finally decided to give it a go myself! And can I just say, that in itself left me sleep deprived and glued to my computer chair, hot Milo in hand, just trying to decide on a theme and a blog name that would suit my new endeavour! (Thank you Leelou Blogs for coming to my rescue!) 

In my head I have this grand vision of all the wonderful things I'd love to share but in my heart of hearts I know this whole blog dabbling thing is going to be a slow process... I'm quickly realising how computer illiterate I really am! But with that in mind, I'm still very excited to be giving it a go.

So, hello to any of you who visit my site... Welcome... and may the dabbling begin!

Term 3 Explorations

So, there has been loads and loads of 'imaginary blog posting' going on in that busy brain of mine but since we always hit the new school term running, I'm only just getting around to posting now...  I'm hoping that some of my children from Room 15 and their families have accepted my invitation to come and check out my new Pre-primary Explorations blog and make it a regular, shared viewing time at home, where conversations are generated and together you can check out all the great things we have been up to in the pre-primary classroom and around the school! 

* Hello to the amazing pre-primary kids of Room 15! *

I love the way the kids are always so keen to get back to school and catch up with their friends after the holidays! Full of beans and extra energy! Luckily we have started an investigation on 'Frogs' which they are thoroughly enjoying... and it is only just the beginning!

Here's how we started...

I asked the children a simple question.... What is a frog?

After a bit of a brainstorm and lots of discussions, the children decided they needed to know more and generated their own questions about frogs.

For my teacher friends out there, here's where I found some wonderful  resources! 
Deanna Jump's Frog Frenzy unit, Pink Polka Dots and Pre - K for the Frog Ten Frames and Miss Teacher Resources 101 for her Frog Life Cycle unit.

Our Families

Although we have begun some new and exciting explorations this term, the children are continuing to share all the wonderful things they know about their families and are still learning about themselves and their place in the world. They have really had their eyes opened to how different each and every one of us really is and have loved talking about and exploring how all of our families are unique and special. 

We have created a family album wall display which has been a wonderful conversation starter! I hope to be able to post some pictures soon. 



I have some great pictures of the timeline activities the children completed with our student teacher Mrs W. late last term, showing what they looked like when they were a baby and the things they used to do, how they look now and what changes have taken place and lastly, what the children think they will look like and be able to do when they become an adult. I loved some of their adult responses!

I'm just waiting on the final image permissions to be approved and these photos will be posted soon!

Bush Day

We will be participating in a whole school 'Bush Day' event on Thursday 8th August. Be sure to come back and check out the Pre-primary Explorations blog next week to find out what we got up to!

See you all soon!