What did we do at Minischool in August 2013?

Hello everyone. Here is our August newsletter.

We kick started the month of August with a local farm tour. Thanks to Farmer Lou and Farmer Phil for allowing us to visit the Piggery. The part that the children most enjoyed was feeding broccoli to the pigs, sorting sizes from the biggest to the weeniest baby piglet, sampling the delicious bananas and calling to the Dorper sheep with their funny coats of wool. Along the drive back from Anson bay, we ticked off our checklists when we saw other farm animals along the roadside like geese, cows and calves, feral hens and roosters. We also stopped to sing happy birthday to the stable horses for their birthdays on the 1st of August. Thanks to Island eggs for their generous donation to the pre-schoolers. We put the eggs to good use during our cooking activities and studying the lifecycle of the chicken.

Back at preschool we continued on with the farm theme by making a scarecrow for our garden and mini scarecrows for our scrapbooks, writing farm inspired words and sentences, having a horse race using dice.

Using the purple cabbage from the garden, we amazed the children with an alkaline/acid science experiment which magically changed the colour of the purple juice. Details of this experiment are on our blog. The children have requested repeat performances many times since.

We enjoyed the warmer weather early in august and got to eat alfresco while enjoying the visiting rugby teams at Kingston. It was fun to cheer on Norfolk Island’s own Creaky ol’ convicts with broad arrow flags and face paint as many of our Daddies were playing in the games. This inspired us to have some off field running races to run as fast as our dads.

A big Thankyou to Kay from Norfolk Island Fitness + Health for donating some old gym equipment, we have certainly put them to good use from healthy obstacle courses for increasing our gross motor skills to becoming part of our imaginative play. Thanks again for your kindness in thinking of us.

Our next big theme that spanned over 2 weeks was ‘Space’. This gave us a chance to use lots of wonderful Montessori equipment to study the universe. We loved studying the galaxies on the ipad using starwalk and getting a closer look at satellites, planets, and types of stars. We even taught our parents about the phases of the moon and the lifecycle of a star. Our many art projects included drawing rockets, using chalk to draw the planets and shadows, making books on the order of planets and making our own name rainbow rockets. The biggest hit of the theme was when we were donated some large bottles and an idea from Ms Sarah Jenkins. We then took a trip to the hardware and newsagency to convert these bottles superfast jet packs complete with flames. These made us run very fast indeed and encouraged us to count down from 10-1 then zero. The children were great at taking turns and sharing the packs with friends. They understood how special they are when we made them ourselves.

Another favourite art recipe which will be available on our blog is for ‘moon sand’, a trough of this fine motor experience was very popular for the entire 2 weeks especially when we added alien eyes and moon dust on the second week. Thanks to one of our parents for bringing in ‘moon ice’ for another experience.

During space week we had an almighty excursion to Norfolk Island Central school for their book week celebrations. The Minischoolers all joined in the occasion by dressing up as well and were delighted to be asked to parade on the veranda stage with the rest of the school. We had pirates and cowboys, the cat and the hat and spot the dog. Even our very own teachers dressed as Mary Poppins and Fancy Nancy.

On this day there was a book fair in the library where the community were encouraged to donate $5 towards a book and receive a book plate inside the book containing the name of the donation, many of our preschool families donated as did minischool itself. The hardest part was picking which 10 books to donate from the preschool with so many wonderful titles on offer.

We appreciate the school allowing us to continue to use the school library each Thursday morning for all of  our preschool children to learn healthy reading and borrowing skills.

After the book fair we continued our big excursion day out at the post office where the wonderful staff helped us buy the stamps for the letters we had prepared to send locally and overseas. We posted them ourselves and then got to go to the mail sorting room to sort our own letters. One of our children got a big surprise to find a parcel ticket in his own box.

The children pretended to be freighted off in a large box and then enjoyed Kath’s story of Postie Kate before getting stamped before home.

Thank you so much to the Norfolk Island Postal staff and to the N.I.C.S staff for making it such a memorable day.

Phew, could we fit anything else in August…Yes we did. We finished the month and the winter season off with a Russian festival called Maslenitsa.

This Russian festival celebrates the end of the winter season and provided us with the chance to learn the cultural side of where one of our Minischool families heritage is.

We learned about the Imperial flag, the famous cathedral buildings, made Russian caramels, learned how to count and the colours in Russian as well as the unique 33 letter alphabet. It made another wonderful entry into our preschool passport.

Thank you to Lydia for showing us all of your wonderful collection of Russian artefacts. We really loved the 10 tiny matryoshka stacking dolls and the Russian crepes & pancakes you made as well as the other taste tests you provided.

From our garden we made the freshest beetroot relish fresh picked and grated within 10 minutes, It doesn’t get any sweeter than that.

For More Information about Minischool educational preschool you can follow us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/minischoolpreschool

Or you can find more photos and recipes on our blog

http://norfolkislandpreschool.blogspot.com
Minischool runs for 50 weeks per year. We will break from 20th December to 6th January.

Preschool vacation care is available for any local or visiting 3-6 year olds during the school holidays.

Thank you for all of your community support over the past 8 months,

Cristina and Mandy

For more information Ph 55678

A trip to the Post Office

After our book week excursion we headed to the playground for lunch and a play.

that's my mums post box

We had written some letters to friends and family locally and overseas and we were going to the Norfolk Island Post office to post them ourselves.

The staff were fabulous especially Kath. We bought our own stamps 60 cents to go on an overseas letter and 15 cents locally. We were then taken to the back sorting rooms of the post office to cancel the stamps and sort into airmail and local. Each child got to place their own letter into their postbox ready to collect on the outside.

G checked his own mail and found he had a parcel collection certificate, this was as popular as a golden ticket to the chocolate factory. one receiving his HUGE parcel from the parcel room, each child wanted to have a hold to guesstimate its weight.

The children tested out a freight box to feel what it would be like as sea mail travelling by ship to Norfolk Island.

Kath read us a story about the adventures of Postie Kate.

After a stamp on the hand it was time to be picked up.
Thankyou to the staff (and to Mandy for volunteering your time).

Mandy has now set up a post office at preschool for us to continue sending letters to each other. This is helping us with name recognition (our own and others), writing, drawing and other fine motor skills.

Book Week 2013

 

 

 

 

Celebrating Book week with a character parade at Norfolk Island Central School.

This is the second year that book week celebrations were held at NICS. On Wednesday the 21^st of August the event was organised around a book fair by current librarian Suzanne Hardy.

The Book fair included a dedication ceremony to thank Trish Magri for her years of service as the school librarian. Books were available to donate to the library for $5 per book. These donated books come complete with a bookplate inside the book stating the name of the child donating and 'Thaenks f’ acklan Mrs Magri'.

With the whole school assembled on the lawn next to the library, the primary classes began their parade across the library ‘randa.

We were all entertained by the range of costumes resembling each child's favourite book character. Popular costumes included characters from Enid Blyton’s the faraway tree, Zac Power, superheroes, witches, Alice in wonderland and fairytale characters.

The K-6 teachers also got in on the act amusing all of us by dressing and acting as their favourite literary characters.

The teachers costumes included little red riding hood, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, the Mad Hatter, The Gangster Granny, The wicked witch of the west and Billy the punk.

The Minischool pre-schoolers came to the book fair dressed up as well, so were invited onto the stage to show off their costumes. All were brave walking across the stage in front of the entire school. The Preschoolers costumes included Spot the dog, Cowgirl Jessie and Sherriff Woody, dragons, Pirates and the Cat in the Hat. Their teachers were Mary Poppins and Fancy Nancy.

There are still good quality books available to donate to the library. Just pop $5 into an envelope with your name to the front office at the Norfolk Island Central school.

new logo

Just playing around with a new logo.

what do we think of this one?

Space theme

Welcome to space week where we travel around the universe discovering our solar system around us.

Here is a sneak preview of our jet packs we just made.

I am so proud of the kids for making, caring for and sharing these jet packs with their friends.

For instructions, you can Google make your own jet packs from soft drink bottles.

Thanks to Sarah J for bringing us the bottles.

 Next we made 'moon sand'.

I saw many recipe variations, some using sand and others using flour.

I made up our own one as we went. 4 cups of plain flour, 3 cups of cornflour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of baby oil.
mix together.
It smells and feels very luxurious and velvety.
Each time the children had a break from the moon sand trough I added another surprise element such as glitter or some goggly alien eyes.

We also made moon pop rocks today with white chocolate, marshmellows & rice bubbles topped with edible glitter...yum.

It is only day 3 and we have also created 2 types of rockets to help us draw and write and some lovely chalk planet sketches.
So much fun.