Choosing to Learn

Library Choices

I was so proud of K yesterday. Once a week, K goes to the school library with her wonderful Kindy class. She brings one book home.

This week she chose the below book...

She deliberately went past all the books about princesses and fun characters, and found a book about a bilby. It even had a burrowing bettong / boodie character in it.

We had fun reading about the bilby that got lost and had to ask the other native animals for help.

Opportunities

K's Work

K has a current fascination with having an 'activity' (worksheet, colouring in page) waiting for her on the table when she wakes up each morning. She has started asking me at bed time, to write myself a note to remember to put something on the table. K normally wakes between 5.30am and 6.00am. So these activities are normally done some time between 5.30 and 6.30 in the morning. I try and put out a simple worksheet or something easy to follow, so we can continue to get ready for work.

So far this week, we have done the following morning activities:
* Monday - two pages of a sticker book that Nana bought. K had to find the correct stickers to place on the shapes. She then drew a line between the shapes and their names. We sounded out the first few letters of each shape to help her find the correct word.

* Tuesday - two counting sheets where K had to count the objects then draw a line to the correct number. We talked about the numbers 10-15. K wrote a large 10, 11 and 12 on separate papers. She then found and circled the 10s, 11s and 12s on a page of numbers Mum had written. K can count to 20 and recognise/write numbers 1-9. We are going to start working on recognising the numbers 10-20 as the next step.

* Wednesday - drawing the correct number of apples on each apple tree page, numbers 1-20.

The other time K normally likes to busy herself is of an evening, usually after dinner between 6.30pm and 7. This week we:

* Monday - read a little about the boodies (burrowing bettongs) that we saw on the weekend, and coloured in a picture of a boodie. We also made cupcakes and tried to mix some different colours with the dye - making orange, purple, pink and aqua.

* Tuesday - coloured in a B is for Bee picture. We talked about the fact that we now know B is also for bilby and boodie. We practised writing 10, 11 and 12 in the bath (with soap and a drop of food colouring). K drew a picture. We weren't allowed to look at it until she had finished. She drew a strawberry tree with a swing hanging from it :-)

 

 

* Wednesday - Dad and K wrote the numbers 1-20 and hid them outside. When I got home, we went on a number hunt to find the number treasures.

 

 

Of course all week there was plenty of swinging.

 



 

Time during the week is always limited. It is very easy to after work, focus on the cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing that needs to get done. I have to remind myself to find these daily opportunities to play and engage, and accept that a messy house at this point in our lives is okay.

Snuffle

Book  Review

I have decided to include some book reviews by K. We visit the library each Saturday and collect a mountain of books to read, plus the odd DVD, puzzle or CD. It will be interesting to see how K's skill at reviewing a book / providing an opinion, changes over time.

Snuffle and the Flower
by Jonathan Lambert
A cute story about an elephant who discovers a sunflower seedling, but isn't sure what it is.

"I liked his name and I liked his trunk. I like sunflowers because I would like to drink out of them like the bees and the butterflies do. I like his feet because I would like to go boom, boom, boom".

B is for Bilby

A Family Visit

On the weekend, Uncle Tim flew West from Brisbane. K and I went to visit Nanna and Uncle Tim for a short while. We planned to visit the Barna Mia Animal Sanctuary, to hopefully see some bilbies and other native, endangered animals.

We prepared during the week by reading about bilbies, looking at photos and creating our own pictures.

We used different coloured sand we found in the garden to glue and create what we thought a bilby might look like.

The dalgyte or bilby (Macrotis lagotis) is a gentle animal with soft, blue-grey fur, long ears and a decorative black and white tail. It spends daylight hours in a deep burrow and emerges after dark to feed on insects, grubs, seeds, fungi and bulbs.

We headed out to Barna Mia just on dusk, taking plenty of care to drive slow on the gravel roads and avoid any kangaroos.



We stopped to take a photo in the woodland along the way.

At the animal sanctuary, we viewed an introductory slide show and talk on the breeding program and the current state of the animals the Department of Environment and Conservation are trying to save.

 

There was a large mural on the wall and K enjoyed trying to find, name and touch the animals.

The tour itself was under darkness with the guide using special red lights - so no photos. We were warned that because the moonlight was quite bright, it was unlikely we would see any bilbies (as they only come out when it is completely dark). We were lucky enough that one shy bilby did come to the feeding station for a short while. K did very well to contain her excitement and not move or speak (we had to be very still and quiet). 

We also saw a lot of boodies.The boodie or burrowing bettong is a social, vocal marsupial that lives in communal burrows. Once common in semi-arid parts of mainland Australia, it is now only found on a few small islands and mainland enclosures.

K was happy to use the $2 she had in her pocket to purchase this small souvenir.

The next morning, we made a quick trip to Yilliminning rock for a walk - a granite rock 48 metres high.

We climbed (walked) to the top with Uncle Tim.

K had fun pointing out what she could see in the distance.

We looked for shapes that we could identify.

On the drive home, we stopped to take some photos of the canola crop. K was fascinated by the masses of yellow flowers and kept exclaiming how beautiful the paddocks were. Thursday had to join in the photos as well.

I think this week we will read some more about bilbies and boodies, and also learn some more about canola crops (just right for practising our letters b and c). Although I grew up on farms, it has been a long time since I saw a canola crop being harvested.

Thanks Uncle Tim for joining our adventures. We hope to visit you, Aunty Melina and cousin Ethan in Brisbane one day soon.

Green Eggs and Ham

Fun with Dr Seuss

K loves rhyming at the moment. So we decided to re read this Dr Suess classic and incorporate some 'green' activities into our weekend.

We played Pin the Eggs on the Plate after getting up on Saturday morning.

We mixed different shades of green paint and made a variety of green creatures with paper plates.

We ate green foods - well, we tried some...

W coloured in. K originally kept the colours faithful to the book, but at the end, couldn't resist adding some green grass.

Green cupcakes were a certainty.

We made green playdough, and green playdough monsters.

We pretended to a Dr Seuss creature at the beach.

We did a lot of rhyming words

We made some green playdough eggs and decided to find objects that resembled scenes in the story.

Would you like them in a house?

 K then found objects that made their own rhymes. She had fun taking photos of the eggs with her rhyming objects.

Gate - Plate

Hat - Mat

Finger painting was fun - mixing yellow and blue to make green.

We used egg counters to do our first ever maths sheet.

K counted the correct eggs on to the blue plate, then filled in the sheet.

K then put together her own maths sheet for Mum to complete!

I do so like
green eggs and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am