Monthly Archives: March 2013

Our chicken update.

Posted on by under Emergent Curriculum, The Natural Environment

Boden’s mum brought his chickens back to kinder today for a progress report.

We noticed many differences between how they were 2 weeks ago and now – bigger! less fluffy – new feathers – new colors – much scratchier feet – louder cheeps. They’re starting to look much more like chooks.

Megan told us that they are starting to eat cracked wheat, not just the chicken crumbs they have been eating which is a bit like baby food for chickens.

Bailey looked underneath to see if they were a girl or a boy – but it’s not so easy with chickens!

Thanks for bringing them in again, Megan – this second visit has given us an insight into how chickens gradually change into chooks (hens for people who may not have heard of a chook).

Our Assessment and Rating

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Australia has a new national agenda for early childhood which includes new national standards  which all early childhood services will be assessed and rated against from now on. We were visited by the department staff last November and recently received our final report – Exceeding the National Quality Standards! This is a pretty big deal for us as we are a little country kinder and we haven’t bought any packages to support us through the process (you can spend  many $$$ to buy a feeling of security that if it’s cost a lot of money it must be going to make you somehow a top service). Yes, it was daunting and a lot of work and it’s ongoing – they will come around again in 3 years time – but we feel that we have a benchmark now and hopefully can get on with working with children and families – which is what we are here for!

Our Spiny Leaf Insect does something!

Posted on by under Emergent Curriculum, Enquiry & Discovery, The Natural Environment

 

Black leaf, our spiny leaf insect, lives a pretty quiet life – she nibbles gum leaves, hangs from the roof of her box, and enjoys showers of “Rain” sprayed by us often!

But today she did something really special!

Alissa was checking on her and we heard excited calls – “She’s had a baby, she’s had a baby!”

Now this was interesting because these insects don’t have babies, they lay eggs. So what was it?

We took the box outside to see it better.

And we discovered that what was little and pale and looked like a spiny leaf insect was in fact her old skin – she had grown out of it!

We thought she was probably hungry after all that hard work so we collected lots more leaves. She was also very wriggly and active – it must have been hard squeezed into that little skin when she was getting too big for it. Mrs Bell thought it might have felt a bit like a jumper that’s too small for us when we have grown out of it.

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