The Seven Stars of Matariki ...

This morning we have read the story 'Seven Stars of Matariki'. Matariki represents the Maori New Year. This star formation is only seen in the night sky in June ... check it out. We have asked the children to have a look in the sky before they go to bed. Let us know if you get to see the 'Seven beautiful women' (transformed into stars) in the night sky.

Rainbow discoveries....

We have been so busy this week finding more and more information about rainbows and how they are formed....Thanks to Acacia, Zak, Charlie and Jack Hume for their rainbow facts, photos and resources!! They were much appreciated and created much discussion amongst the children.

We have discussed how a rainbow is formed and discovered that it is the white light that gets 'bent' causing it to 'refract' and share it's beautiful colours with us. Hence the reason why we don't nessecarily need both sun and rain at the same time...Very interesting!!

We have also discussed the acronym ROY G BIV...a neat way of remembering which way the colours are distributed throughout the rainbow...Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet and we have been amazed at how quickly the children have picked this up...in particular, Dylan and Cameron.

We are continuing to find rainbows inside the kindergarten...A big thanks to Shianne for spotting not one but TWO different rainbows in the fish tank this week!

Check out the project room this week as the children continue to work on a large mosiac rainbow that will eventually be displayed in the Takahe mat area...It is starting to take shape and I must say it does look very very cool!!

Keep sending through those rainbow facts...they are great discussion starters with the children.

And a reminder to everyone that next week is the last week of Term 2 and we will be back for more adventures on the 19th of July!!

Have a great weekend everyone...

Kylie and Judy

Kaitrin McMullan - Storyteller.

Here is a wee snippet of the story teller that came to visit Kindergarten today.

She was absolutely amazing as I'm sure the children would agree.

Enjoy....

She shared both traditional tales such as "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (with a bit of a twist I must add) as well as some of her original tales. All the children, teachers and parents sat mesmerised as Kaitrin spun her story telling magic.

We hope the children enjoyed it as much as the adults did :)

Cheers,

Kylie

Where does a rainbow come from??

Rainbows have become the topic of conversation amongst many of the children over the past week. I must agree they are such an amazing phenomenon.

As part of our planning "Where can we find", Takahe group was asked to draw a picture of something they wanted to find out about. Liberty Jesperson wanted to know more about Rainbows. So the questioning begun...

While discussing what we already know about rainbows we had some really great suggestions...Skyla thought there had to be a storm for a rainbow to form, Ella Leith thought it had something to do with the sun, which quickly prompted Hunter to tell us that there had to be water and sun at the same time. How right you are Hunter...until we began to test that theory!!

Shianne, Hunter and Ella Robertson spotted a rainbow on the project room floor...Yes there was sun, but there was no rain!! How did it get there???? They tried to pick it up, but they couldn't, and when Cameron stood at the computer it was gone!! Did anyone think to check Cameron's back :)

Then when all the children had gone on Tuesday...there was a HUGE rainbow shining on the floor out to the back room!!! But when the children came back in the morning, it was gone!?!? When we discussed this with the children, they were full of ideas about 'why' this could be. Here are Sarah's thoughts, "The sun gets too tired making rainbows all the time so it needed to go for a sleep". Interesting Sarah.

I think we need to do some more experimenting....What is a rainbow, how is it formed and where do they come from?

We have discussed lots about 'Light'...maybe that is the clue.

We look forward to hearing the facts about rainbows next week. I wonder if we will solve some of the mysteries of the Rainbow........

Also if you manage to find a rainbow at your house, take a photo and email it through. We would love to see them.

(Apologies for the video quality, but it gives you an idea of how the children have been exploring the rainbow phenomenon)

Thanks to everyone for being such fabulous explorers this week,

Kylie and Judy!

Xara Does "The Gooney Bird Dance"

Check out this weeks Healthy Heart dance :)

V is for some Veggie Soup ...

These frosty mornings have made us think of some nice warm things to do and make ... so we began to find out what Veggies the children liked and talked about making some Veggie Soup. Thanks to everyone who was able to bring along some veggies from home to share ... we had leeks, broccoli, carrots, swede, potato, garlic & Jonty's Mum (Danielle) shot home and got us a soup bone to put into the pot. We had to grate & chop everything up and we only had to use two plasters (so that was pretty good). Shianne could tell us she has never does this before and what a great job she did. We even found some seeds to nurture (check the Project Room to see if they have germinated). And today, everyone arrived to the wafting smell of winter soup, slowly bubbly away on the range ... and just to accompany our soup we also had some toasties ... yummy. Maybe some hot cheese scones for next week ???? Let us know if you could view the video clip okay?

Where have all the bugs gone?

Randall is very very very intrigued by the snail house we made from various shapes & 'things' on the lightbox ... we were not sure if he was curious about the snail or where does a snail live? This week we have been outside ... not on a Bear Hunt but on a Bug Hunt. Charlie found a Bug Catcher in the 'Forest' @ Kindy (a National Geographic gift of a Bug Catcher, Magnifying Glass & Net) ... sooo of we went on a Bug Hunt. We turned over logs, stones, clods of dirt and usually we find something moving ... but this week NOTHING. We talked about how cold it was and how we were the furtherest away from the sun, at the moment, and we wondered if that had anything to do with NOT finding any bugs. Our next question is to ask ... where have they gone? We would LOVE you to ask your child & share their responses with us. Post them in the comments ...

Skyla and Eddie build us a 'Birdhouse'

Yay, I have figured out how to download movies again!! Yahoo... check out Skyla and Eddie, they have been finding out how to build a birdhouse for the children...and the birds I might add ... lots of sharing ideas & information ... such a wonderful way for young children to develop plasticity (sharing & changing ones own thoughts & ideas).
Keep an eye out for more movies on the blog.
Another thought...Maybe we could upload a slideshow of the week's events??
What are your thoughts ...



Enjoy,
Kylie and Judy