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!

Exploration

After finishing our scavenger hunt today, we had some exploration time, where we could all choose what we wanted to go and have a closer look at. Some of us chose to have a look around the old logs and see what insects we could find, some had a close look at the shapes in the bushes and trees that were growing around our meeting area, some followed paths to see where they led, and some took the challenge of trying to climb trees with no branches near the ground to give a foot-up.

There was a great level of concentration and absorption, with lots of sharing of ideas...

Sneaky Snatch

As we were down to one teacher this week, we stayed within the playground, which gave us a good opportunity to try out a new game. Sneaky Snatch has one blindfolded person in the middle of the circle with something in front of them that makes a noise - we used a bunch of keys. The plan is for the children in the circle to creep in and the quickest, quietest one to take the keys, but if the blindfolded person hears any movement noises, s/he points in the direction of the noise, and that player has to go back to the starting position and start again. We thought the big open space of the court would be a good place to practice, but unfortunately, the noise of the wind made it impossible for the blindfolded person to hear anyone coming! It was good to practise the game, but it will work much better in the bush, where the debris on the ground will make sneaking up quietly a bit more tricky...

Scavenger Hunt

After our game, we headed off on a 12 item scavenger hunt: one item for each space in an egg box! We worked in groups of 2 or 3, and focused on the bank area, as that has always got interesting little things to find. We had a list inside the lid of the egg box, including things such as a smooth leaf, a prickly leaf, a thin stick and a thick stick, a feather, a blade of grass, a mystery object...things to get us starting to use a variety of senses.

We didn't quite manage to find everything, but will continue next week.

More finds

Look what we found in the bush...

Look what we found in the bush...

After a game of 1,2,3, where are you?, which is proving to be very popular, we went on a scavenger hunt: the challenge was to find something unusual, interesting, beautiful or a mystery...

All sorts of items, in all shapes and sizes came back, and the children came up with some great descriptions of why they had made their choices. It was also great to see the self-confidence in choosing whether to work alone, or to team up with others.

Look what we carried back to school!

Some of us were so pleased with our discoveries that we had to enlist help to bring them back to school!

In Bush Gardens, Becky and I are taking the juniors into the bush, in an attempt to let kids be kids. The games, talk, questions, and observations in this new environment will stimulate their senses, and provide them with confidence.

We are providing our students with creative and regular physical activities and getting them to identify enjoyable experiences in the bush. A huge part of our teaching will be to look at safe practices in a range of contexts and identify people who can help.

The desired result would be for students to create their own game and activity in this environment and discuss them. To achieve this they will have to cooperate with others, being both a listener and contributor.