Pirate Day 2015

We celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day down at the wrecks.
     
We pretended to sail our pirate ship, looking for other pirates and following a treasure map.
   

          Down on the beach was where the treasure was hidden.
    
They had to walk through ooey gooey sticky mud to find it.  If they stood in one place too long their boots became stuck.  It was an adventure.

We went on a StoryWalk.  The book was by Phoebe Gilman, Grandma and the Pirates.
         
                 And of course we shared a story altogether.
                        
     Other then Halloween this is my favourite get together.

Hammering Hazelnuts

                       
                  The children love to hammer, especially the boys.
         
    I brought in hazelnuts to see how well they would do cracking them.
          
By putting them on carpet squares it dampened the noise and how far the shells would fly.
               
Picking the shell apart to get to the meat of the nut worked those finger muscles.
                         
Safety first.  Goggles were to be worn at all times while hammering.  Fortunately we are able to use hazelnuts as we do not have anyone with allergy.

Autumn Leaves

             
A favourite activity to do at this time of year is to paint leaves and make prints.
 
               

                 
        
You can paint over the same leaf with more colour and the prints continue to look wonderful.

Stone Soup

There are many versions of the story “Stone Soup”.  The one I chose was about soldiers coming home from war.   They were hungry and tricked villagers into sharing their food by making soup from a stone.

                                
It took the soup took just under a half hour to cook.  I had cut the vegetables quite small, one so it would cook quickly and two to decrease any choking threat.
                                    
I brought my bread maker and made a loaf of bread to go with it.  I think the children enjoyed the bread more then the soup.
                         
                                   But they did enjoy the soup too.

Visit to a Farm Market

The children have really enjoyed playing in our centre’s Farmer’s Market so today we went and visited a real one.
 
We started out in the field admiring the pumpkins and climbing on a tractor.  Then we met the owner, Charlene, and she pointed out that some of the corn had been eaten right on the stalk.  We took a closer look and tried to guess what might have eaten it.  Was it a bird? A mouse?  She told us to look at the marks on the ground and we saw hoof prints, it was a deer.  Pretty clever that they can husk the cob to get to the kernels.
               
We walked over to the market stand and I handed each child a clipboard for a fruit and vegetable hunt. 
  
             
This gave the children with their grown ups a chance to explore all the produce that is still available.
         
Charlene showed us some vegetables that she had pulled straight from the field that morning.  Did we know what they were?  The beet, yes but the parsnip was difficult for the children to recognize.
We smelled the leek with it’s hairy root.
    
The brussel sprout plant is fascinating.  We each tried one and most liked them.

Part of our visit was to buy ingredients for Stone Soup.  The children collected the ingredients and we learned about the scale.


              From the scale to the bag to take back to school.
            
      We’ll take a closer at the tops and bottoms that we brought home.