Risk taking & Improvising in Fiordland

Wednesday 16th October 2013

Today, Gabrialla pushed herself out of her comfort zone to climb to the end of the rotten log. She persevered until she reached her goal, not giving up even though it was a little bit scary.










Gabrialla's Story:
"I was having fun playing on the log.  John helped, he putted his hand here so I could push up on my tummy.  I started from there, all the way up to there. I putted my foot there and I holded onto the log. I feeled real good and I had fun."

It was Will's first day at Nature Discovery and he had a fantastic time making new discoveries.


Will's Story:
"I discovered this slide and I discovered the seesaw and the Nut (Gnuff) house.  The slide is made of dirt and grass.  It was on the bank.  I shared the slide with my friends.  It feeled like bumpy and dirty and it was good cos I discovered it myself."

Great improvisation Will!!!!

Lily made an umbrella to keep of the few spots of rain with materials that she found on the ground.



Lily's Story:
"One big leaf and one little stick, broken a little bit and put it in the leaf. I put my finger through it and holded it over my head, it was a umbrella."

Lily has an amazing imagination.  When we had story time inside the Gnuff house, Lily kept us all entralled with her stories.  Here are her stories that she told us - shortened versions that she retold the next day at Kindergarten.

Lily's Stories:
"I was in the Gnuff House and I told us a story.
The man was walking down the street and saw a car.  He said "hello".  He said "Arrgh, you are a alien." Then the man hopped in the car and the Alien drove away.  That was it.
And I did another story. It's called Butterfly field. The butterflies flying around the field.  The people don't know that the butterflies are flying around the field. And then next they catched one butterfly and then another butterfly and then one butterfly was left and finally they caught it in the jar with the others.  That's it - it's finished."

Another great day of discovery, improvising and imagination was had by all.

Puddle Jumping

After a bit of rain during the week there was an awesome puddle at the rotten log for us to explore.  We measured it to see how deep it was, the children did this by using sticks.  Once we had worked out how deep it was, the highest it got was to our knees which was very exciting, puddle jumping was on the agenda.  We all had fun walking and running through the puddle.  Jake even ended up going for a swim much to his surprise!  After we were all worn out from laughter we went to explore roly poly hill where of course we all had to roll.  This brought back childhood memories for me but I don't remember getting that real dizzy head spinning feeling like I did today.  After rolling I found a nice little cubby to rest in.  It wasn't long before I was joined by some friends and over a hot chocolate and chocolate chippie biscuits (these were made out of leaves and pine cones) we had the most amazing conversations.  After all this fun it was back to shed to sit around a cozy fire pop popcorn and have lunch together.  What a wonderful way to finish a truly magical day.

Spring is in the air

Working together took on a whole new meaning for the children at Nature Discovery today.  Everybody loves a good swing and today was no different except this swing would only work if everyone pitched in to help.  One child sat on the swing and the others had to hold the rope and pull so that the swing went up in the air.  There was a lot of laughter and a few times the swing ended up on the ground causing everyone to laugh.  The awesome part was everyone having a go and helping each other.

It was also the second day of Spring and the children took delight in noticing the new growth on the trees, this stirred up memories for the children about the crab apples growing.  We can't wait to see the flowers when they come and the count down of days has already started.  We also discovered a big rabbit hole, Dylan had fun exploring it a unique way.

Fiordland Spider Webs

Monday 5th August 2013

It was a vey foggy day today.

Amongst a small cluster of small trees, we could see a small patch of orange so we decided to investigate what it was.

We discovered that a tree had been cut down very recently. We could see many circles starting from the centre going out to the edge of the tree stump. I told the children that you could tell how old the tree is by counting the circles. We counted all the circles and decided that this tree must have been 16 years old.

Sam: “When you count the lines you can tell how long the tree has been around for.”


Stefan: “We saw the tree cut down. We count the circles because we want to.”

Malachey: " “We found a tree cutting down and it was 16 years old because we counted the lines.”

The children started exploring amongst the other clusters of trees for anything that would be interesting. 

The most amazing things we discovered were that there were hundreds of spider webs in the trees and bushes.  They were really amazing and so big!!  Because of the damp fog they were all glistening in the light.  They looked truely beautiful.

Here is Dylan studying the spider web, trying to find where the spider is hiding.

Sam : “We just wanted to have a look at spiders webs and there were so many spider webs on the trees that I couldn’t belive it.”

Stefan: “The spider webs are on the tree cos the spiders made the spider webs.  We found a trampoline web cos it looks like a trampoline.”

Malachey: "We found spider webs, they were in the trees because they live in Nature Discovery. There were no spiders because they hide in the woods of the trees."

 I asked Sam how he thought the spiders made the webs and this is Sam’s theory:

Sam: “They were kinda like a circle and round like a trampoline. I think they have a little bit of thread inside them.  I think they just troll it out.  I think in their belly buttons.  Spider webs need to be sticky so spiders can catch and flies and eat the flies.”

We took many photos of the spider webs, don’t they look amazing?

"Sunday" came to film us at Nature Discovery

On the last Wednesday of term the documentary programme "Sunday" came to visit and film us at Nature  Discovery.  Here are some photos of the day and the link to the progrmme.   Their focus was on the lack of risk-taking by children of today and the adverse affects this may have on their development.
It was great to have nature discovery endorsed by such highly respected people.  We have been very humbled by the phone calls, emails and comments on facebook  congratulating us on our programme.

thank you Sunday team

http://tvnz.co.nz/sunday-news/raising-generation-cotton-wool-kids-video-5520779

Planting Native Trees in Fiordland

Wednesday 1st July

 The Southland District Council have allocated an area near the shed in Ivon Wilson Park, where is can plant native trees and plants.

They provided us with a number of plants to plant on the day of our Nature Discovery Book Launch in early June.

Since then we have planted 5 more plants which had self seeded in one of the Teacher's garden.

Today was Daniel's last Nature Discovery day so he brought along a tree to plant as a farewell gift.

His Mum, Gillian, said that he spent a long time at the Garden Nursery choosing which plant to buy. He chose one that had some berries on so the birds would have something to eat.


We found a spot to plant it with Daniel digging the hole.  He had many willing helpers, all the children were excited about planting "Daniel's Tree".


 Libby said, "We planted a tree for Daniel cos he is going to School."

Stefan said, "We dug a hole to plant a tree."

Wade said, "John moved the roots around so it can grow."


The children collected some moss to put around the base of the tree to keep it moist and not dry out.  They also arranged 2 or 3 rocks around the tree so that we wouldn't forget where Daniel's tree was planted.


Later on in the morning, we found a small round wooden disc to write Daniel's name and the date on.  With help from his Mum, he tied it onto his tree.

Just look how proud he is!!!!!!!!

Feeding the birds in Fiordland

Wednesday 26th June & Monday 1st July

At Kindergaren we feed the birds with the left over bread crusts from lunch.  Some of the children thought that perhaps we should also feed the birds at Nature Discovery so we decided to make some bird feeders for them.


We made 2 different types of feeders.  Gabrialla mixed the Wild Bird Seed and fat together and put it into a plastic net bag with help from her Mum.



Gabrialla's Story: "I mixed seed and something in a bowl. I put it in a plastic bag, it had little holes.  It smelled YUK!!!  We wanted to feed the birds because we love feeding the birds."





Neve and Jake made their bird feeders putting Peanut Butter and seeds on pinecones.


Neve's Story: "We did bird feeding by buttering the pine cones.  We rolled the pine cones in the seed. We make them because the birds were hungry.  We put them on the tree because they were hungry."

After spreading Peanut Butter over the pine cones, we rolled them in the wild bird seed mix until they were completely covered.





Jake's Story:
"We made a pine cone food for the birds cos it is winter.  The babies will die because they are hungry."

We hung the pinecones on one of the trees behind the shed where it was a little quieter.  We went for a short walk and checked the tree when we came back to see if the birds had found their food.
But we didn't see any birds.  I suggested that we get the Monday Nature Discovery children to check the bird feeders on Monday.

Monday 1st July

We checked the bird feeders that the Wednesday children had hung in the tree but all we found was string hanging from the branches and the net bag with the seeds and fat in it.  When we searched on the ground we found the pine cones but all the seeds were gone and there were only small traces of Peanut Butter on them.

We decided that we should make some more but this time we would use smaller pine cones so hopefully they wouldn't fall off the tree.

We still had seeds and Peanut Butter left over from last Wednesday but Sam had also brought along some Peanut butter and seeds from home for bird feeders.


We decided that it would be easier to tie the string on the cones before spreading on the Peanut Butter.  We set to work, it was like a production line.

Libby said, "We made bird feeders for the birds to eat when they get hungry.  We put string on so it can hang in the tree.  We put Peanut Butter on with a knife."

Wade said, " We made bird feeders, we put seeds on because the birds can eat it."

Libby said, "Cos that's what birds like."

Wade said, "We feed them cos the other seeds have got off the tree."

We were all happy that the birds at Nature Discovery would not be hungry now and we will check them next time to see if they need more.