Where did this great idea come from – Sherry and Donna I think, or from a comment on their blog.
It has been very popular – Isaac and Tobi especially spent a long time at this activity today.
with the simple shapes soon becoming more complex….
and inviting play around ordering, patterning, matching, counting etc etc
One to one corespondence is easy to check when you have to connect the 2 pegs with a rubber band.
So much learning in a “simple” play idea.
The chickens are growing (as they do) and are beginning to spread their wings. We hope that they will stay as quiet as they are at present….
so that next year’s children will be able to enjoy
the same close -up connection
with our feathered friends.
BUT they scratched and pecked their way out of the kinder garden before we could stop them on Tuesday, and we were worried that they wouldn’t come home…. Our kind neighbour, Jan, brought them back (phew) so after some discussion about how to stop them from repeating their adventure, the children have decided to block the bottom of the fence up before letting them out.
We have discovered that some of the children have “the touch” when it comes to chooks….and they are the best ones to try and catch the little explorers at the end of the day.
Rocky River has become a popular camping spot at kinder. A visit to the opshop came up with a little tent and a billy can which have added to the interest.
Did you know that camping is a gendered activity? According to the boys, girls don’t go fishing…. but then Imogen had had a great idea for making fishing rods inside…
and lots of other children learnt how to make them from her…
Immie “saw it on Mr Maker” – we used some magnetic tape to stick onto the “worms” to pick up our fish…
We even had a fishing demonstration …
and the fishing rods went outside…and the boys bowed to the inevitable – girls can go fishing and camping too!
We use home made games a lot at kinder – and some calendar numbers and large pieces of cardboard seemed perfect as raw materials for Joel and William to make their own.
They did one together.
They found some old brochures from the Wild Action Australian animals show that visited us earlier in the year.
This was a good chance to practise cutting, which is so important for children about to start school (where you do a LOT of cutting), as well as planning and discussing.
There were decisions to make about what the game should be about, how many spaces to use, whether there should be bonus spaces or not…
When they finished, there was a crowd lined up to play.
We are enjoying getting to know some kinder children in Japan, and their friend that they have sent over to us – Ricky the Rhinocerus.
He has settled in very easily and often helps the children with their play.
We are learning a little about Japan – and one of the most popular things is about using chopsticks…
which most of us have found very tricky….
But Ricky doesn’t mind eating some of Thomas’s pizza with Jonty in the home corner.
We wonder if the children back in Japan ever eat pizza – we do!
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A few people have asked lately for some photos of how the new handpump, the dry creek bed and the new sandpit all fit together.This is how it looks from the old sandpit.
And down to the path and gate.
You can see down the front of this photo some paving – that was the edge of the “made” landscape in this area previously – it was the edge of the existing sandpit with sparse grass growing beyond to the fence and down to the left to the path in from the gate. This area was fairly underused previously.
The handpump (and new rainwater tanks) came first. They begged for a creek bed to sometimes benefit from the water that we could pump from them or to just link with it anyway.
We also put in a bridge. Very simple (and cheap)- but it still works as a bridge in their play!
We are still waiting for sandpit storage cupboards alongside the wall of our building to be able to store some of our loose parts – in the meantime, milk crates are useful.
The children’s play has extended in so many ways, and all in an area that had been pretty much unused before…
but not any more!
Starting a leaf bank is easy. First you collect your leaves.
Then you use the big empty box that someone kindly left at the kinder this morning. A bank needs a sign.
and customers (Ryan really did have to “hold his horse” while he waited to be served.)
The boys soon realised that they could use the box for more than a counter.
So Ben sat inside to take the papers that were passed through to him. Then he gave that many leaves back through the slot.
And the customers kept on coming.
We borrowed Sherry and Donna’s idea for playing the shape game recently – with one child drawing a shape and the other one turning it into a picture – very engaging!
So when we offered the children a chance to turn a regular shape like a circle or rhombus into a picture, we were rapt when Joel said – “It’s like the shape game”. Making connections is what learning is all about, and we love it when the children teach each other.
Chloe’s rhombus became a kite.
Ben’s triangles were tents.
and with chickens at kinder, circles were obvious chicken bodies… Ryan’s chicken is taking flight.
We bought some chickens at the Farmers’ Festival, and, as always, they are a big attraction.
So popular that the children found a cyclone bottle and started to time each other’s holds!
Things have to be fair….
We hope that they will be able to stay at kinder, under the tankstand out the back that some kind dads enclosed with chicken wire – Jonty worked out that they could grow up and lay eggs for us and Elliott thought we could get a rooster and keep on getting more chickens…We’ll have to tell them the saying “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch”….
The weather is starting to warm up and we are thinking about more ways to have fruit. We decided to make fruit smoothies with the children – a couple of them said they had never had one!
Strawberries and bananas are very popular choices to cut up roughly and put into the blender or food processor.
There was a big difference between the ingredients before and after.
Then whoosh it all around with some fruit yogurt and milk and share it out.
Delicious!