Minischool Vacation Care January 2016

Minischool Vacation Care ~ January 2016

These January holidays, we returned back to Minischool vacation care early on the 4th due to popular demand.

The past few weeks have been filled with picnics, races, painting, making movies and dances, dressing up, building, creating, fun and games and a few crazy times. Welcome back to all of our vacation care children and welcome to some new faces here on holiday and newly arrived on island.

 

At the same time as vacation care, we were very fortunate to be able to run 2 weeks of ballet and jazz dance classes for 3-13 year olds.

Visiting ballerinas Abbey and Lara Wilkinson had been working with their own teachers at Noosa Performing arts factory to choreograph and teach the younger set.

30+ children were signed up for the dancers who learned amazing strength, exercises and skills during the fortnight. We learned that dancing can be fun to dress up and move to music but also so much more.

There was a fantastic comradery formed between the classes as Abbey choreographed and taught  an incredible 6 classes and 6 dance pieces over the space of 2 weeks. These new found skills were displayed to a packed uniting church hall full of siblings, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbours.

It was an amazing effort showcasing a need for more creative arts classes on Norfolk Island.

Minischool Director and coordinator of the dance classes explained to the parents during the concert that we are very fortunate to sample many activities on Norfolk Island, but sporting team events and clubs can be a constant in the children’s lives here yet creative arts are fewer and further apart in time frames and choices than sporting choices. Abbey explained that the strength taught in Ballet is the basis for all types of skills, not just dance.

The program of the dance concert was as follows.

3+ Ballet~ Frozen classical piece

6+ Ballet ~ Beethoven 5 secrets

9+ Ballet~ Skrillex music

Contemporary Ballet solo by Lara Wilkinson

3+ Jazz group ~ Uptown Funk

6+ Jazz group~ Afro Circus

9+ Jazz group~ The nights

Contemporary Ballet solo to ‘Lost boy’ by Abbey Wilkinson

We hope to bring Abbey and Lara back for more summer workshops next year.

In the meantime, for anyone wanting ballet classes to continue throughout the year, please register your interest with Teresa Langusch on 57986

Can all 2016 preschool enrolment forms please be returned to determine your places, first in first served for the days of your choice.

The Preschool graduation afternoon tea party will be held at Minischool 4pm Wednesday 27^th of January. This will be followed by one of our favourite final events, the teacher/ student dinner out.

We farewell our 2014/2015 (even two from 2013) pre-schoolers and wish them all the very best as they transition to kindergarten. We know you are all ready and can’t wait to see you in uniform and when you pop back and see us.

what do we want to be when we grow up?

During our careers theme week, we talked about what we want to be when we grow up and what jobs we would love to do.

 

Fastelavn/ Halloween 2015

This week we are celebrating the Danish festival, Fastelavn (wrong time of year I know, but we are in the southern hemisphere!). Based on some very old traditions, it involves lots of dressing up, black cats, a barrel like a piñata, a decorated whipping branch, oranges and some boller buns to eat with a cute little rhyme to go with the yummy buns (similar to trick or treat). Lots of fun, especially dressing up and studying the atlas. I hope we did our 2 little Danish cherubs justice by celebrating their culture.... and of course Lego!!

 

The best bun dough recipe was found HERE

this was my first attempt at making Boller. The kids thought they were delicious!

The English translation on the right sounds like our version of Halloweens trick or treat.

 

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.

making things

PLAYDOUGH!

fresh playdough is awesome!
It is many things, it feels great, enhances fine and gross motor skills, great for hand eye coordination and the imagination, making it gives great skills such as measuring, pouring and mixing AND it has the added bonus of being a stress reliever (pop some into a balloon and you have an instant stress release ball as sold to office workers worldwide).

But the best part is that it is FUN!

SUPERHERO week

This week we learned that not all super heroes can be found in comics.

The most important superheroes are saving lives by being doctors and nurses or police and fire men and women.

There are lots of very important jobs that help people without a cape.

Though the super capes were fun and we loved flying around helping our friends.

 xox Super Small Cristina and Super Stretchy Mandy