Butterflies, Butterflies

We have been so lucky to watch butterflies hatch this week.  Thank you to Zoe who brought in 5 chrysalis for us.
We managed to watch a butterfly hatch only after a few seconds of it starting to emerge.  

Look how big the abdomen is and how small the wings are when it first comes out.

Then another one hatched, and this time Edie came to tag it as part of our monarch butterfly tagging programme.

Holding the butterfly carefully to apply the tag

Tag on!

Edie talking to the children about why we tag the butterflies:

All ready to fly away!  I wonder where the butterfly will fly away to?

Harvest Festival

We had a lovely time this week preparing for and then holding our Harvest Festival.
First, we foraged in our Kitchen garden for yummy things to put on our pizza.

We found cucumber, silverbeet, lots of basil, tomatoes, purple peppers, and marjoram. 

Next we made our pizza!

Rolling the dough

Hmm? What shall we put on?

Spreading the delicious tomato sauce

Sprinkling the toppings

Ta da!  Our yummy pizza!

Then it was time for our shared kai and our Harvest Festival.

This experience allowed children to see food made from the beginning, and to use food from our garden - a garden to plate experience.  

Sharing food is a lovely thing to do, and there were conversations about how the food had been made, as well as how yummy it was.  

This links to our toolkit:

Curious: I am learning to think:

I use a range of thinking tools, am curious about the world around us, asks questions, and reflects on learning

Connected: I am learning to participate and contribute:

I learn in for and about the environment and celebrate cultural diversity.

Easter eggs

Some beautiful Easter craft.

Sunflowers 2

We went to the Kitchen Garden this morning to look at the giant sunflowers there.
There was so much to explore besides sunflowers...

A very big grasshopper landed on someone's arm! 

Sunflowers

We have been learning about growing cycles, and have studied the sunflower for this.
We have been reading The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.  

This is a beautifully illustrated story of how a little seed journeys across land and sea through the seasons to grow as a giant flower in the summer, and then to repeat the cycle at the end of summer.

Here we are looking at some sunflowers growing near our room.  

We can see the seeds ready to burst out of the dried flower head

We wonder if we can plant these seeds again now - will they grow or do we have to wait until next Spring?

 The children then drew, coloured and dyed some very beautiful sunflowers.  I also got these as lovely cards to wish me a speedy recovery after my surgery.  

Thank you!!

Clay Time

Megan, Edwards Mum, brought some clay to school for us to create with!  
There were all sorts of interesting tools to use on the clay, to make the clay wet, and to make differnt patterns.
Thaank you so much Megan, we had a great time working with the clay.

Water Safety

As part of our swimming programme, we had a session on water safety.  
It was a little bit scary but also exciting as we got to wear life jackets.

Thumbs Up!

Ready to try something new!

 We had to hold onto each other in a circle then float on our backs.

Making a safety circle

It was a bit scary when the instructors started to splash water on our faces.

 Next we learnt how to tow each other.  

This was good fun!