Dear Edgerley
Families,
Nicholas Y shared some interesting pictures and information about the Praying
Mantis for his Show and Tell this week. We discovered that they are located
in the warmer regions, particularly tropical rainforests. This generated a
lot of discussion about animals and different habitats. As many of the
Edgerley children regularly build their own habitats for animals in the block
corner, the children were asking if they could turn the restaurant home
corner into a jungle. We brainstormed what we would need to create our own
jungle:
birds, a palm tree and monkeys - Zara
a lion - Zali
a tiger, fish, trees and a river - Archie
vines - Caterina
tiny leaves and a cheetah - William L
ants - Nicholas Y
crocodiles - Nicholas V
As our jungle has evolved the children have enjoyed
playing amongst the wild tangles and webs of vegetation. The Edgerley explorers have made their
own binoculars and put their explorer boots on, discovering
varieties plants and animals. Although warm, there was lots of rain in the
jungle, so luckily they found lots of caves to seek protection in. Some
children enjoyed creating jungle animals out of clay, adding natural collage
materials. Archie made a whole family of crocodiles with ferocious spikes
on their backs. In yoga Miss C introduced the children to the cobra
pose. I wonder what other jungle animal poses there are?
Following on from our
wonderful Ned Kelly investigations and our understandings
that paintings can tell us a story, this week we read "Katie and
the Starry Night' by James Mayhew. In the story Katie leaps through the
frames of five famous paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and explores
them. This inspired the children to paint some of their own versions
of "Starry Night". They are very beautiful - please come and
have a look!
On Wednesday we
celebrated Harmony Day in the ELC. The whole centre gathered to share what
they had explored around the concept of harmony within their class. The
Edgerley children shared their giant mandala they created by working
as a team, and their smaller "pizza mandalas" they made by
joining segments of their friends mandalas to form one whole mandala.
There was lots of wonderful sharing taking place amongst the ELC
community.
Best wishes,
Emma, Mel and Cris
