A Wonderful Fairy Party

 Thanks to the senior girls who went to a lot of work to create a fairy party, the Foundation Class girls had a wonderful time yesterday. The hall was beautifully decorated and each class 

had their own table to sit at.

The girls enjoyed fairy bread, fruit kebabs and lovely cupcakes.

A lovely touch was when the Senior fairies presented each girl with a little wand to take home.

Our Purple Mufti Day!

Here we all are dressed up for our purple mufti day. Don't we look great?

 We each brought a gold coin along to school to donate to Epilepsy NZ. To find out more about this organization you can visit: www.epilepsy.org.nz

A Beautiful Morning on Mt St John.

What a lovely time we had on Mt St John yesterday morning! The weather was just perfect, and as always there was lots of fun to be had and there were lots of new discoveries to be made. 

It's always fun to run in the wide open space.

Joyce found some pretty pink flowers.

We played the 'Three Little Pigs' (Mrs Bayes and Eloise were the big bad wolves!)

Lutie, Sophie and Anika discovered an unusual plant. "We could look it up on Youtube!" offered Lutie :)

We enjoyed climbing the trees.

Anika showed great determination when lifting this large stick up the hill to add to the 'hut' that the girls were building.

Mt St John is a great place for nurturing friendships.

Luca and Eloise went on an adventure through the long wet grass!

When it was time for our picnic, we set the girls the challenge of taking responsibility for this themselves! This included setting up the mat, giving out the hand wipes, giving out the cups and pouring each other water.

Kate was in charge of handing out the biscuits!

It seemed that folding up the mat at the end of the picnic was the greatest challenge!

Ooops! That doesn't look right. (The girls got there in the end!)

Patterns of sound.

This morning while we were outside, I observed Joyce engaging with our large pieces of bamboo. She was tapping several of them together, and seemed to enjoy listening to the different sounds that she was creating. Noticing that Joyce was having difficulty exploring the bamboo and its sound 'fully' due to the size of it, I made a suggestion. I offered that Joyce might like to go inside and bring some of our wooden sticks from our music box, out into the garden.

Joyce thought that this was a great idea, and together we went and retrieved the wooden sticks.

It wasn't long before our garden was ringing with wonderful music created by Joyce, drumming on the bamboo. Karsimar, Eloise and Isobella also took a keen interest in this experience.

As you can see in the videos, the girls seemed to enjoy the contrast in sounds that they were able to create. They carefully compared the different sounds as they struck different surfaces. Drumming on the bamboo sounded different to drumming on the stones, or on the tree stump.

Eloise pointed out the difference in playing hard which made a loud sound and playing softly, creating a much quieter sound.

The girls were all fantastic at creating and keeping a beat. We talked about how creating music is often about making "patterns of sound" which was an idea that seemed to really resonate with the girls. 

Here are some short videos of the girls busily exploring:

"A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence." 

- Leopold Stokowski

The Great Easter Egg Hunt.

On Thursday we had a wonderful 'Happy Easter school day' and the TWO Easter Egg hunts we had were lots of fun. Our first one was on Mt St John and the girls were very impressed that Easter Bunny knew that they would be up on the mountain. We also found Easter Eggs in the classroom when we came back, so we think the Easter Bunny spoilt us!

 For some of us it was a bit of a challenge to find an egg.

The Easter Bunny did such an excellent job of hiding the eggs, I needed a lot of help to find one.