Bokashi Juice for the Garden.

Bokashi is another form of composting we do at our kindergarten as it allows the faster breakdown of food especially citrus. The juice from the compost collects in the bottom bucket to which we add water and pour onto our garden providing rich nutrients for our vegetables and flowers.

Sarah Langi from the Nelson City Council will be coming again in the next few weeks to update teachers and parents on our sustainability programmes so watch the notice board for more details.

Children have continued to prepare meals from the garden and also families have been sharing in the extra produce. Watch the gardens over the next couple of weeks as we prepare the mound with grasses and more planting of vegetables, herbs and flowers.

Lee comes to play.

We have invited Lee Corlett just to come and play in the playground with us. We have been having a brilliant time too, learning many new things and taking time to practice the skills he has been teaching us. This week the children spent time jumping off the boxes into the octonut Lee added another challenge, they had to catch a ball while jumping. The next stage was to bat the ball into a hoolahoop while jumping off the boxes. Soon it was obvious the children were ready for another challenge and so we moved over to the catch a frame that I have borrowed. We had been using this to practice catching skills and Lee added another challenge of having to throw the bean bags and land them into different coloured hoolahoops( all for different amount of points) . I so appreciated having Lee to give me some different ways of using our equipment and I know the children benefit from having his input as well.We will put a note on the noticeboard when Lee is next coming to play, so if you have time come along and hang out with us.Thanks Lee for giving some of your time to us.

Trash Band

Monday 30th August

The trash band has been a great asset to the outdoor environment and the exploration of it by many children has been very evident. Here we see some of our afternoon children having a jam session. The little drummer was quite stunning as was the accompanying cymbal player! They were very in rhythm together and the enjoyment very evident on their faces. Thanks to Nayland Primary School for passing this on for our children to enjoy.

Creativity at the wheel

Every time the spinning wheel comes out the children start lining up for their turn, it never looses its appeal as every painting is a mystery.  When it is spinning it looks quite different to the finished product and I think that is half of the fascination - "What will my painting look like this time?".

Drawing the circle and making it big enough takes some practice and cutting it out provides lots of challenges.  The adults have to sit on their hands and use their words to allow the children to problem solve both these skills.  Each circle is unique to each child  and they are very proud of their finished product.  Choosing a range of colours in either paint or dye and a range of tools with brushes or squirty bottles, so that the effect on their paper is quite different.Some children complete many pictures each day and others return to it day after day.

The wheel is an old drill and battery which we recharge every day, good old NZ ingenuity.

The 3 pictures on the right belong to one boy who completed 5 pictures in one morning.  He managed the whole process by himself and as you can see each one is original.
Boys, technology and creativity all in one, toss in a little problem solving and noise and what do you get "Boys loving art too".

A visit to the Life Education Trust Caravan

You will have all spotted the big caravan in the Broadgreen Intermediate carpark by now and the morning session was lucky to have a visit inside to meet Harold.

Check out Harold's website for some resources and the fit and healthy messages he happily gives out to children and families.

 We met Harold the friendly giraffe and Virginia who takes Harold on tour all around the South Island.  Harold couldn't come out of his house because he was too tall and he might bump the roof, so Virginia told us to look out for him eating leaves off the trees outside during the day.

 We learnt about what our body needs to be healthy and fit and the things we would need to take away if we went for a holiday to grannys.  We found out that our bodies need food, sunlight, water, exercise and oxygen to stay fit and healthy.  The children helped Virginia complete the puzzle body with all the bits that we would need.
Harold knows all about being fit and healthy so he has shared lots of his songs and special resources on his website.

We met Harold and he sang us a song and we sang him twinkle twinkle little star and then blew out all the lights on the roof of his caravan.

Thanks for letting us visit Harold, we look forward to bringing some more children over next year.

Drawing - a tool for thinking

Children use drawing as a tool for for thinking and making meaning. Today drawing became central to children's shared investigation.
Every now and again we discover a cockroach in the bark in the playground. There was great excitement this morning as one was found climbing the sandpit curtains.
It was caught and a container found to stop it scuttling away. A magnifying sheet was found and we had turns observing it. "Does it eat raisins" someone asked and popped one into the container. As we watched the insect began to nibble away on the raisin. We talked about what we could see, colour, number of legs, shape of his body, and the antenae on his head. Shall we draw some pictures, I suggested. The answer was yes so this is what was created as we looked, thought and drew.

Artists at Work

Over the week we have been revisiting screen printing using underpainted sheets of paper as our base. This has proved an excellent way to recycle unnamed paintings and other pieces of paper. The children draw a picture and cut it out for their template. Then they place it on a piece of paper and place the screen over it. The final step is applying the paint over the screen to produce the print. They have also discovered that they can reuse their template over and over again, so producing multiple pictures of the same print but with different shadings. Another discovery they are learning about is the detail that they put into their drawing may not appear on their print unless they cut some of these out of the template. Some of the children have become very skilled in how to cut out eyes, mouth, legs and other such features.

Garden Harvest

We have watched the seedlings we planted in the kindergarten garden grow over the last two terms until they are finally ready to harvest.
This morning the children picked spring onions, pok choy, broccolli, and silverbeet. Once washed they set to work to chop and dice them ready to be stir fried. We included some mushrooms and a couple of carrots as well. While the chopping was underway we had a cup and a half of rice on the stove cooking.
Next step. Heat oil in our electric fry pan. Everyone had turns putting the veges in the pan and giving them a stir. What a lot of steam! Where did it come from. What made it happen. The children had their own ideas about that. Everyone was careful not to touch the sides of the hot pan.
A delicious smell started to fill the kindergarten.
We added the cooked rice. Why was it soft now? Where did the water go that we put in to cook it?
Stir the rice in the veges, add Tamari (wheat free soy sauce) and taste. Just in time for morning tea. YUMMY!

Will the birds like our apples?

Its always good to see the bird life in the trees around the kindergarten.
With an excess of apples in the fridge I thought I would try out an idea to feed the birds. I had help from children to make a hole through some apples. You needed to be quite strong to do this.
With everyone having a turn we were finally successful. Then it was time to thread some cord through and hang them from the trees. How would the birds know they were there. Did they like apples. How many birds would come. Would we be able to get some photos? So many Questions.

Hip Hop

Can we have the rock n roll music on?
This has been a regular request from our energetic dancers.
The rock and roll music is crazy frog techno music.
The T shirts come off ( very important ) and its all on.
We watch in awe as the dancers move their bodies standing on hands, knees, heads, backs and tummies. They spin, twist, kick and twirl.
To follow this interest with the children we invited Darney Takao who runs hip hop classes for children locally to visit us, to teach the children some new moves. We enjoyed the session with him and the children were able to impress him with their own dance moves.