A Morning Learning at the Beach

I love going to the beach with the families of StrongStart.  The children are so curious and adventurous.  It always impresses me how many children will pick up crabs with no hesitation. 
                  
       We spent the morning at one of our local beaches with Natasha from
                         West Coast Environmental Education Society.
                   
             
    The Society promotes knowledge, appreciation and respect for the natural
          environment through its education program, science & nature.
                   
        
Natasha walked us out to the tide pools armed with tubs and strainers for
                                              collecting.

      Here is a glimpse of some of the fascinating creatures we found.
                 
                 
                 
               
                           
We then took our finds and put them in white trays to get a better look.
             
   
      
We found fish, shells, hermit crabs, jelly fish, pile worm, lots of crabs (big and small),
                               sea stars, snails, and limpets.
                      
                                 Some of us even saw a deer.

                  
         Natasha showed us a safe way to pick up a crab so it can’t pinch us.
                           
And how to tell the difference between a male (lighthouse shape underneath)
                      and female (beehive shape underneath) crab.
                            
             
There are forest schools around the world but wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an ocean school?  Imagine spending everyday at the beach exploring, creating and learning.
                   
We didn't find my favourite snail, moon snail, but we did find a couple of beautiful
                                        orange sea snails.

Spud Celebration 2015

We shared two of our tubs of spuds with two other classes in our school.  Today we all came together to celebrate our harvest.  In total we grew 200 potatoes in 5 tubs, that’s pretty awesome.
      
Before school I boiled the potatoes and left them for the children to mash.  The other classes were doing the same.  Our plan - use them to make Mashed Potato Sundaes.

We set up in our multi-purpose room.  Bowls of mashed potatoes ready on one table and two other tables holding all the Sundae toppings.

The toppings included…

  
When all was ready we gathered together and talked about our project.  How many potatoes we planted?  How we took care of them?  And how many potatoes we harvested from each tub.
          
Time to make our sundaes and eat.
        
  
I really enjoy sharing this project with other classes so we can come together
                  and enjoy what we have grown and learned together.

Hash brown Muffins

We harvested our last tub of spuds this week and we wondered if there were
                                    any potatoes in it.
 
We pulled the plants out then dumped the soil on the ground.  As you can see
                in the picture there were lots of roots but no potatoes.
                
We dug into the soil and found the odd spud but it wasn’t till we got closer
             to what would have been the top of pot did we find the rest.
          
We sorted them then guessed which size had the most.  There were more big potatoes then the rest.  But the interesting part was that even though it looks
like there are more medium sized than little there were actually less.

We went inside, cleaned the potatoes then made a new recipe,  Hash Brown Muffins.
 
I bought frozen shredded hash browns but we tried grating our own first.
                       
The recipe is really easy, just hash browns, shredded cheese and beaten eggs. 
   
Scoop it into a greased pan and bake for about 25 minutes.  You could add
                          garlic and onions but I kept it simple.
           
                                    They are delicious. 
                          Next we will have mashed potatoes.

There Was an Old Lady that…

At our picnic yesterday our facilitators performed a story.  I wrote a new version for the story of There Was An Old Lady.  Our old lady swallowed some bears.

                          

There was an old lady who stood on a chair and swallowed some bears.

I don’t know why she swallowed the bears but she didn’t care.

                               

There was an old lady who swallowed the some sun

She thought that would be fun to swallow the sun.

She swallowed the sun, to shine for the bears

I don’t know why she swallowed the bears but she didn’t care.

                               

There was an old lady who swallowed a sheet

She thought it would be neat to swallow a sheet.

She swallowed the sheet to lie under the sun

She swallowed the sun, some fun for the bears

I don’t know why she swallowed the bears but she didn’t care.

                           

There was an old lady who swallowed a basket

Wasn’t it fantastic that she swallowed a basket?

She swallowed the basket to sit on the sheet

She swallowed the sheet to lie under the sun

She swallowed the sun, some fun for the bears

I don’t know why she swallowed the bears but she didn’t care.

                                

There was an old lady who swallowed some snacks

She swallowed packs and packs of little fishy snacks.

She swallowed the snacks to go in the basket.

She swallowed the basket to sit on the sheet

She swallowed the sheet to lie under the sun

She swallowed the sun, some fun for the bears

I don’t know why she swallowed the bears but she didn’t care.

                                 

There was an old lady who swallowed a melon

There is no tellin’ how she swallowed that melon.

She swallowed the melon to go with the snacks

She swallowed the snacks to go in the basket.

She swallowed the basket to sit on the sheet

She swallowed the sheet to lie under the sun

She swallowed the sun, some fun for the bears

I don’t know why she swallowed the bears but she didn’t care.

                      

When she was full and jumped down from the chair

She turned to see a picnic for bears.

Here’s the video of our performance.

 

We have a great team of StrongStart facilitators in our district.
                            
Willing to have fun with our families.

Another StoryWalk at a Picnic

Today was our annual Picnic at the Gardens.  It was a beautiful day to be out meeting friends and enjoying many activities that were spread throughout the gardens.

One activity was a StoryWalk with the book The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood.
              
I set it up all around the outside of the garden so they could see what is in every
                                         part of the garden.
  
             
         Colleen, another facilitator, suggested we add props to this walk.

   
  I made scratch and sniff strawberries to add to the page that read,
   “The big hungry bear can smell a red, ripe strawberry a mile away.”

 
          Tin cans and sticks were placed with the page that read,
“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The bear will tromp through the forest on big, hungry feet.”

     
Colleen brought locks and keys to be with the page that read, “or who is guarding it.”

            
       
A basket of silly glasses were put with the page that read, “or how it is disguised.”

 
Beside the page that reads, “share half with me.” I placed strawberry cards that
                            I had cut in half and they had to match.

And finally they looked for the Big Hungry Bear at the end of the story.
                
 Adding props to the story brought it further to life and the children more involved.
                       I’ll do more like this next school year.