Biking at School

It's Bike to Work Week and the staff and students

are encouraged to ride their bikes to school.

To celebrate we closed off the parking lot this morning

so our littlest students could participate.

It was so much more space than the playground pavement

we've used for the past two years.

We did our favourite things;

decorate our bikes with ribbons, balloons and licence plates,

washing our bikes,

and of course ride our bikes.

Especially through our pretend bike wash.

I think I'm going to have to make it taller.

I set up a StoryRide around the perimeter of the parking lot.

A few children noticed and read it with their grown ups.

We had more than 30 children participate

plus the kindergarten class joined us.

We set it up early so the primary grades could use it during

their recess time

 so a lot of children

rode their bikes at school this morning.

Evening Session - Sharing My Backyard

Each month I close one morning to open one evening.

This gives the whole family time to come together to play

and share a meal.

We do a potluck, usually at the school.

This month I hosted it at my house.

I wanted to share my husband's passion for trains

and invited the families to come and play

in our backyard.

These pictures show a bit of what my husband, Raymond,

 has designed and created.

Knowing that the children would want to play with the trains 

Raymond set out two train tracks on the deck

for the children to use.

The rule was;

Everything on the deck was hands on to play with,

everything on the grass was just to look at. 

Although I did create a scavenger hunt with pictures of some of

the Playmobile objects he used.

The children played and played.

Taking turns with the controls or enjoying moving the people, buildings

and other vehicles around.

Occasionally a train would derail and Raymond would fix it.

But as we know children will watch everything we do

and they were soon fixing it themselves.

Back on the grass the children ran around chasing the train

seeing where it was going and trying to guess where it would come out.

One of the children stopped and told me

"There's so much to see"

After enjoying dinner the children created swiss roll trains for dessert.

 

Story time included lots of  books and stories

about trains.

If you want to see more of OpaNanaLand

check out this video.

Gardening with Grandfriends

Last week we spent some time out doors with our grand friends.

It was on their patio

and we planted seeds in some of their big pots.

Together they prepped the soil 

opened and shared the seeds,

then poked and spread the seeds in the soil.

Then the fun part was watering the seeds.

It took a lot of water and the children were up to the chore.

We slid all the tubs to a sunny spot

and placed a sign that we had made at school.

The looks of happiness shared between the grand friends

and the children, with few words spoken, was wonderful.

Sharing an experience that is common for some

and new for others

but 

pleasurable for all.

Reading Our Own StoryWalk

Yesterday we went outside with our Big Buddies to enjoy

the StoryWalk that the children created last week.

While I was busy putting the pages up around the playground,

Ms Seymour re -read the story "I Went Walking".

For such a simple story it amazes me how much the children enjoy it.

Then they were out and running around the school yard.

I loved how the little buddies challenged the big buddies to run

from page to page.

I think the best thing about writing our own StoryWalk, for this large of 

a group,

is that it doesn't matter where you start or which way you go.

Just pick a page and go from there.

We didn't have the congestion of waiting to read each page, in order, 

that we experienced on previous StoryWalks.

It was fun when they found their own page,

or when they tried to think of a sound for the new animal.

What kind of a sound would a Sneaver make?

To finish the fun they ran around once again to collect our pages.

What other story could we write?