What can we do today?

Let's fly!

After lunch we had a small group of children up.
As we filled in notebooks, Callan and Logan had their pens and paper and they were 'writing' to!
This evolved into something else - making paper planes!
Callan loved to try and fly them and Lilly joined in the fun!
We tried lots of different designs and some flew better than others. And sometimes it depended on how fast or hard they were thrown.







The children are learning about the properties of paper and how when it is folded different ways it has different effects on the way the paper planes fly.
What a fun way to introduce scientific concepts such as physics to the children.

Soup glorious soup!

Lets make some soup!

We have been collecting vegetables for our soup day! Bex and Kirsty bought in their slowcookers and Amanda bought in her stock pot so we decided we could make 3 soups; a pumpkin soup, a minestrone soup and a vegetable soup.
This afternoon we started to prepare the vegetables and the children were able to help us!
Hannah, Charlie, Logan, Callan and Lilly all had a butter knife each and they had a try at cutting the celery.
Now this is a very difficult skill for the children to master but they gave it a really good go and I am sure we will have more practice soon.
We can't wait until tomorrow when we make our bread rolls and taste our yummy soup!

Our new worms!

We are so excited because we finally have our new worms for our worm cafe!
We took the bag down to their new home and Bex opened the bag. We were very curious so took the opportunity to have a really good look at the worms!
Bex broke up the dirt and we saw heaps of worms! She did try to find some egg casings for us to see but we couldn't find any.
Louise has been feeding the worms daily with the food scraps from our lunches so hopefully we will have lots of 'liquid gold' to put on our gardens so our vegetables grow big and delicious!

Our messy morning!

Today it was raining! What can we do? We made gloop and we had a messy morning!

The children loved running their fingers through the gloop and picking it up! Lily was really good at catching the gloop in her hands and Elizabeth loved to use her finger and push through the gloop.




Amanda then put some glitter in it and Callan, Libby and Hannah tried to pick up the glitter.



They had so much fun this morning, aren't we lucky this activity isn't limited to wet weather!!!!

Organic snail bait...

This afternoon we laid our organic snail bait. Louise saved the peels from our mandarins and eggs from our baking and Bex brought in some saw dust from home. I wonder if it will work?

Pesky Pests!!!

The last couple of mornings when we have gone down to the garden we have noticed that someone or something has been eating our new plants!
It must be those pesky snails....
Look at what they have done to our plants!




But look at our strawberry plants...untouched! Which means that snails don't like strawberries!

Bex did some research about organic ways to repel snails and found that they don't like citrus peels, egg shells or saw dust, so watch this space for our organic trials to rid us of our pesky pests!

The Grand Opening 20th May 2011

Greer turns 1!

Today it was Greer's turn to have a birthday!
Because Laura is such a spectacular baker, she made some little cakes - one for each child and we had a had a celebration at afternoon tea!
We all sang Happy Birthday to her and Bex helped Greer blow out the candle.
Yay - another celebration with our children - we love it!

Logan turns one!

It was Logan's first birthday on Monday and it was cool to celebrate it with him.
We love to celebrate these special moments with our children.

Its finished!

How exciting! Our new outdoor area is finished and the children love it!
Paul has done a fantastic job redesigning the area. It now incorporates a bark area and swing, a water feature, a secret garden for the children to walk through and seats to sit under the kowhai tree. We also have expanded storage space to house our outdoor play equipment, prams and gardening equipment.
When the area was finished, we thought about what we could do next and one of our Mum's suggested we apply for a grant through the Hawkes Bay Regional Council to purchase equipment and seeds for our new gardens. So off went Bex to get quotes for children's gardening equipment, seeds and a worm cafe.
We were so excited when the grant was approved and Bex was even more excited to go to Mitre 10 Mega in Hastings with Paul and purchase the stuff!!
Bex and the children spent the next few days planting and playing and planning! We can't wait for our 'Grand Opening' so everyone can see the new outdoor area!
Come and view the new garden and play area from 3pm on Friday 20th May and have some afternoon tea with us!

Cress heads - Day 4

Day 4 and look at them grow! Today, unfortunately though, it was a little overcast so we put the cress heads in the hot water cupboard so they would have the warmth they needed to grow!
I wonder how much they will grow by tomorrow? And tomorrow we are going to eat them with mayonnaise and fresh bread!