HAEPI IISTA

 Have a hop hop hoppity Easter everyone.

 

The collage above has scenes from our Easter egg hunt and 'going on a bear bunny hunt'

 

The collage below shows the Norf'k langwij Easter greeting 'Haepi Iista', Easter playdough with a view, our Easter banner, Easter crafts such as painting egg boxes and gluing some baby cotton wool ball chicks inside, stamping, gluing tissue paper Easter wreaths and foil eggs. Rodney the rooster comes into our rainbow yard for a daily hello. Drawing lots of hot cross buns onto the bakery blackboard.

Our Preschool Permaculture garden begins

These are the sad photos or the before photos.

 

How do I begin to thank some very good friends who stepped in and totally transformed our piece of dry hard baked earth we tried to call a veggie garden?

 These friends certainly have the Midas touch of the plant world, instead of turning everything to gold, they turned it into instant grow.

 So here is our little preschool garden journey.

Watch its progress as we all grow and learn together.

To Graeme and Moira (and Dan, who is in his final year of school and was one of my original pre-schoolers long long ago) We cannot thank you enough for the life you magically breathed into our gardens.

xox Love from  the pre-schoolers and me.

Here is the wonderful new garden taking shape.

We really are so very lucky. We will show you how our garden grows on our blog and on our facebook page.

For those who want to know more about soil therapy you can see Graeme's website here

His company Nutri-tech solutions are also a proud sponsor of edible school gardens

The cow who thought she was a dog.

 This is the story of a cow

 who followed us on a walk from preschool, just like a dog.

 It stayed right next to us, just like Kello the puppy did. Even while we were reading a story at Prince Phillip lookout, the cow was still there.

 Even while we played running races, the cow was still there watching the children with curious eyes.

 It seemed as if she wanted to play too.

 even photobombing a class photo!

 Every time we turned around, there was the cow again.

 Kello puppy wasn't sure what to make of it.

 it pretended not to be near us....

 and then followed close behind when we walked away.

 There it is again

 What a funny cow.

witchy poo with the colourful toenails

Dressing up is such fun.
We love you Miss J. ♥

princess for a day

Dont we all want to be a princess for a day?

xox. We L♥VE you Miss K.

Off to NZ for Waitangi day

We had fun celebrating Waitangi day and learning all about our neighbouring east island NZ.

Another stamp for our passports :)

Another little Mr. B turns 3

Happiest third birthday to you.

The chicken whisperer

They call me the chicken whisperer! I have been telling the children everyday during lunch that one day I would pick up and have a cuddle of the local feral rooster who cleans up any lunch crumbs.
Everybody please meet Rodney who sat very still on my lap for almost half an hour while we inspected his beautiful feathers at close range. The children loved it and still couldn't believe I did it.

 I actually raised 8 chickens in eggs at my preschool in QLD. 7 turned out to be roosters, so I was often reading the children books with a rooster on my shoulder hehehehe.
I also raised baby duck eggs and they lived happily in my old next door neighbours dam for years waddling over to my place for a feed each day. We lost a few duck and chickens to 5 metre long pythons and foxes...I don't miss those days.

By the way, these photo was taken by 3 and 4 year olds on my digital SLR camera...lots of lessons learned today :) Did I mention 'I love my job' ♥

xox Cristina Rose

Happy Chinese New Year

Or as my son said. "Happy New EAR".

 

 

Happy year of the Snake.

 

We are inspired to learn about china and other customs that include Chinese new year.

 

There were dragons, lanterns and dress ups as well as a rice dish.

Throw in pancake Tuesday and Valentines day as well and it was a pretty busy yet rewarding week.

 

Pumice and a touch of landscape gardening

WE were having some fun with the pumice stones which have recently washed up onto our beaches in huge numbers from an undersea volcanic eruption somewhere in the South Pacific.

There were many lessons to be had as the children decided to grade and sort the lightweight airy rocks into small medium and large piles and weigh them on our scales.

One of our beautiful little people Mr A settled himself beside our new pot plants and spent hours and hours arranging and rearranging the pumice stones around the plants.

Wouldn't it be amazing if he ended up as a landscape gardener or other career involving moving and placing rocks in their right positions.

lunchbox of the week (Month of February)

We love encouraging.
We love creative lunches using a range of clever ideas such as seasonal produce served 101 different ways and dinner leftovers to lunchbox yum.
We love rubbish free lunchboxes.
Here is our newest encouragement called lunchbox of the week. We encourage the children to eat healthier as well as giving some great lunchbox ideas to parents who may be struggling with new ways to serve lunchbox nutrition and treats without resorting to pre packaged and processed foods.

Follow the Norfolk Island lunchbox on facebook for more tips and tricks.

Here is just a sample of our January/February contenders of lunchbox of the week.
We hope you find even a little inspiration.

1. Porridge, Sao Crackers, banana/plun, cold roast meat, combination in a container of fresh pineapple,capsicum and carrot sticks and chick peas, tinned fruit, water to drink.

2. Peanut butter on brown bread sandwiches, ham slices, sao's and cruskits, rice crackers, water to drink.

3. cheese slices, sultanas, yoghurt in reusable container, coleslaw and ham in container, fresh passionfruit, sausage and baked beans in container, water to drink.

4.crackers, brown bread sandwich with cream cheese, porpay (cherry guava), carrot sticks, shredded cabbage, red and yellow capsicum slices.

5. washable container filled with capsicum, tomato and zucchini strips, brown rice & sausages & sauce in a container, seaweed rice crackers, brown bread sandwich with Vegemite & cheese, diced tin fruit in a reusable container, and a muesli bar (just in case I finish everything, the child informs me)

WELL DONE to all parents for constantly packing interesting, nutritional foods for your children to try. You are very inspirational to me.