How wonderful....

In my own garden this week we have been fortunate to experience some great moments.

It has been sooooooo hot over the last few days. It was most surprising to have a stunning blue tongued lizard visit our garden yesterday on one of the hottest days (probably the hottest!) this summer. After a fabulous time observing this little guy, we released him back into the garden, hoping to spot him again sometime....

The famous blue tongue.....tricky to photograph. He was pretty quick!

Another visitor to our garden was this enormous stick insect (I think it is a Ctenomorpha Chronus). I researched  how to care for this beautiful and fascinating creature and my husband and I made a funky cage for her from an old drawer we found on one of our walks. She is most comfortable, having laid 21 eggs to date.....maybe more by tomorrow! I will be taking her to school this week to take up residence in my classroom. I'm sure the kids will love her as much as I do and I look forward to their research on this 17.5 cm long phasmid.

I think her presence may be a great starter for some art sessions too....

She was just "hanging around" on our guttering.....Here is an old drawer made into a great cage complete with a hinged door. Thanks Steve!!

These are her eggs. They may take 4 months or longer to hatch. How exciting!

Everything we do has a consequence...

Sadly our environment often is affected just by us being in it. This was evident at some of the beautiful beaches I visited at the Bellarine Peninsular in Victoria, these holidays. Thoughtless littering, while not nearly as bad as past years,  amazes and saddens me as to why people think it's ok...

Even fishing produces some problems......

I wonder what happened to the group of Little Penguins which had died on a beach we walked along. I was fascinated to see up close however, the beautiful blue feathers, tiny wings and amazing webbed feet of these gorgeous little creatures.

Nature's artwork.....

Just thought I'd share some of the beautiful artwork provided by Mother Nature, whose gallery I enjoyed down at the beach through my holidays......love the colours, textures, patterns, forms, contrasts, lines, etc.

We are all thinking of our fellow Australians in Queensland and New South Wales as they face dangers, tragedy and hardship from the floods.

Water Play is fun....and possible!

Readers from Australia will understand the demise of "water play opportunities" for children in many areas of Australia where strict water restrictions have changed the way we use water.
When we designed our Discovery Garden, the students included an area where they could play with water in their designs.
We included a hand pump which reuses water.

We also have many rainwater tanks which we use for watering our gardens, providing water for our toilets, chooks and guilt free water play. Students use the tanks with care as they have learnt to respect how scarce it is at times. Luckily we have had some great rainfalls this Summer so exploring and playing with water has been possible, within reason.

I must say that "yard duty" at our school is never an arduous task as most students are totally engaged in some interesting and fun activity of their own choosing, usually involving interacting with our natural environment in some way.
This particular day I came across a group of a very industrious team who had set up buckets, sand from the nearby sandpit, calling out to many customers to come and get a "tattoo"! The tattoo consisted of a design drawn onto their arm with a wet stick and dry sand sprinkled on top!!
 Very inventive.... I got one too!

Fun with the water pump...... A great co-operative activity!

Mud play is a popular activity in the Fairy Garden.

These were "delicious" mud balls!

Amazing blue eggs!!!

In a previous post from last year, I wrote about our gorgeous new chook which we think is an Araucana. Her eggs are a fabulous blue colour and created much interest (and surprise!) when she finally started to lay. It was interesting to compare our regular eggs (bantam eggs and from eggs from our Isa Brown chook) to our Araucan's. The kids talked about size, shape, texture and of course its amazing colour. 

It was a great learning opportunity for the kids and me. We discussed their understanding of what an egg is and why and how they are laid. There were many questions including what would it be like inside.

We also explored possible names for the colour of these beautiful eggs.

 

How would you describe the colour of these eggs?



The chook farmers for the week write the birthdate of each egg so that we can keep track of when they were laid.
They are used in our cooking program in Level 1 and 2.