Outdoor Challenge day 2

What a perfect day for the park! Our second day was just as fun as our first. Coach Don from Youth 1st Lacrosse joined us again for a lesson with our older children this morning.

Today our k's and 1's went exploring in the park and visited the geese and ducks at the pond.

They also discovered and picked different berries in the forest which the staff used to play a color match scavenger hunt later in the day.

To top off the day we had a few nature based art projects that stemmed from some park finds. We found and made our own Winnipeg Rocks rocks and created some beautiful works of art using leaves, twigs and berries.

Outdoor Challenge day 1

As you might expect by now, our kick off to the 2018 Outdoor Challenge was a huge success. Some of our veteran children picked up right where they left off last year, building forts, climbing trees and playing the ever popular manhunt.

Our kinders were treated to a game of Lacrosse thanks to Coach Don from Youth 1st Lacrosse.

A few of our groups explored the park and with the help of our talented team of educators, some great emergent curriculum ideas were implemented such as finding sticks to build boats that were tested down at the docks and making family trees.

We finished off the core part of our day with a juice break and a cool down after a fun day in the sun. Can't wait for day two!

BEES!

Our afternoon Kinders have been showing a real interest in bugs and nature.  In keeping with our healthy planet discussion, we thought what better way to combine our ideas than to talk about bees.  

We brought in Marg Smith from Marg's Honey who is beekeeper in Manitoba.  She talked to the children all about bees, honey and how the bees help to pollinate the other plants to help them grow. 

 After exploring Marg's bee museum, the children finished off their presentation with a chance to try different types of honey from around the world and vote for their favorite. 
(Mine was the second one)

Earth Day 2018

Sunday April 22, 2018 was Earth Day so we decided to use our most recent Inservice Day as an opportunity to talk the the children about caring for our planet and teaching them how they can help.

The Kinders were sent on a nature scavenger hunt to bring back all of the beautiful things that they could find in nature.  Without harming any living things, the children came back with bags filled with pinecones, leaves, grass, feathers and all kind of other wonderful treasures.  They imprinted their findings into clay as a keepsake. 

The older children had a discussion about all of the different things that are impacting the health of our planet right now.  Afterwards they each created their own mini Earth.  

 Finally the Kinders ended their day with a clean water experiment.  Taking polluted water from the lake, we demonstrated for the kinders the long process that goes into cleaning water to make it drinkable.  (Don't worry, we didn't drink it) 

We wil continue to work with the children to find ways that we can help in our community to keep our planet healthy.