Making honey ice cream!

Our children were so excited about this day-Making honey ice cream!!!

Honey Ice Cream recipe

• Frozen bananas (cut into pieces)
• Honey 
• Some water 

Children participated in making the ice cream by putting the bananas, honey and some water in the blender. We also did some counting of how many cups and spoons that we will need, this was a great way to incorporate a little maths session into what we are doing. 

As we used the frozen banana, it made ice cream like texture when we finished blending. They thought it was very loud when the blender was on. Some children covered their ears with their hands! 

Everyone enjoyed eating the honey banana ice cream. Yum, Yum! 

Learning about bees

In Week 9, we started exploring our knowledge about bees. Children shared what they knew about bees.

 Then, we started looking at how a queen bee lays an egg and how a pupa grows into an adult bee.

Children had a go at putting the images of stages of the bee's life cycle. There was quite a discussion about what comes before and after each image. If some children did not agree with someone's idea, they would share their reasons why until it makes sense to them.


As I have beehives at home, I brought some frames from the beehives, a smoker, and a bee suit to explore with the children. Prior to this, we discussed a lot about how bees make honey and children learnt this through dramatic play pretending being working bees, collecting nectar from flowers and storing it into the honey comb which was our cabinets.

 We even tasted honey off the frame! The first thing that children said after tasting was "Yummy!" When I asked how it tastes, some of them said "Sweet!"

I asked what we could make with the honey from the beehive, they gave me some ideas including honey cake, honey ice cream, and honey sandwiches!
We decided to make some honey ice cream!

Loose parts play in Room 2

This week, I have been seeing a lot of play that involves loose parts.

In our environment, loose parts include shells, stones, marbles, craft gems, feathers, wooden coasters, different sizes of boxes, pipes, and so on...

Our children use these materials to create and lead their play on their own or often collaborate with others. These materials can be used in such different  and creative ways by children.

                       Using marbles, small tiles, little buckets in conjunction with animals

 

Children choose their own materials to play, explore and create. It provides opportunities to share ideas and negotiate with each other. Children love to make stories using animals and loose parts. 

This spontaneous creation of a castle happened earlier this week.  The children kept coming back to this construction work almost every day. Each day, they made a different type of castle using a wide range of loose parts as you can see here. This encouraged the children to share their ideas in a respectful manner. How can we share our own ideas and work together? 

One of the things that these two really enjoy is using the loose parts in the family corner, putting all of the little tiles, marbles, and gems into the pot for cooking! But they are also able to take responsibility for their own learning when it comes to tidying up and sorting all the items out. 

With loose parts, the play is fluid and endless. They can be used in so many different ways and it is up to the children to decide how they use and explore them. Often, our children want to continue working on the play, so they like to put cones around their play so that they can come back to it. I feel that this is extremely important that we respect their play and that their play is not being disturbed. 

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a nice Easter break and is ready to be back to school! 

Happy Easter from Room 2! 

Our gateway and kōwhaiwhai

These are the room 2 Gateway with the kōwhaiwhai we made!