Shelter from the storm...

Unfortunately today was too stormy to be out in the bush...so we carried on with our plan in the classroom: to use the tarpaulins to build a shelter in groups, and to finish off our senses learning by enjoying a taste...of marshmallows in our camp!

Everyone worked well together, using the tarps and string, plus the resources of the classroom that reminded us of the bush, ie the legs of the chairs and the tables made substitute trees and bushes! 

We all managed to construct a shelter big enough to sit in, and thoroughly enjoyed our marshmallows, despite not being able to roast them over a camp fire...

It was a great way to finish the term.

Smelly pots!

Today we had some fun with 'smelly pots': taking an empty yoghurt pot on a wander through the bush, and collecting one or several small items that might have an interesting smell. Then we looked for appropriate mixing sticks, added some water to the pots, and mashed the contents to release the smells. We ended up with all sorts of interesting combinations, of pine, lemon, earthy, woody smells, and we all enjoyed swapping around and having a sniff of each others' pots...we never realised how many different smells there were in the bush!

Working on our treasure frames

After some serious work by Becky with the glue gun, our treasure frames were up and ready to go again, and we had a great afternoon collecting more treasures and threading through the web. We didn't all get completely finished, but they are now hung up in Sanderson Whanau for everyone to admire...

Total absorption...

Cole did such an amazing job today...last out of the bush with his frame, still working on it as he walked along! And then back in the classroom after school, he continue to thread little treasures in that he had found around the playground: a leaf and flower from the nasturtiums in the edible garden; plus other small leaves and a daisy. Total absorption in his work, and so pleased with himself for his sustained concentration and beautiful work of art.

Setting up

Today the children took control of setting up our meeting area, which proved a little tricky... Working out how to fold the tarpaulins in half longways, and forming a rough circle with six of them is not the easiest thing to do when you are not very tall! But with a bit of help, we got there in the end...

Creating treasure frames

Today we started on our treasure frames: triangular stick frames with a string web through the middle, where we can weave our scavenger hunt treasures as a beautiful keepsake. The first job was to tie string on and wind it around the frame at different angles to make a web effect. This turned out to be quite tricky, as the string would slip sometimes, and not stay where it was intended. Everyone had a great attempt at this, but most of them didn't turn out as we had intended, so we thought we would give it a break and play '1,2,3 where are you?' instead, which, as always, was very popular!

Scavenger Hunt, part 2

We took our scavenger hunt boxes with us to the bush today, to see if we could complete our collections. Great teamwork, and sharing of ideas about where one team had found an illusive item enabled everyone to find everything they needed.

We are keeping all our items in preparation for our next challenge... More on that next week!