Autumn harvesting in Fiordland

Today at Nature Discovery we found autumn fruits to harvest, they were up the high track beside the climbing rocks. We ate the blackberries, and today we are going to make crab apple jelly at Kindergarten.

Martha said "I tasted everything - it was yummy. I got blackberry juice on my fingers. Mia got a blackberry face from eating them"

Lucy said "I collected 8 apples - some people got them of for me and some I picked myself."

Toni said "I picked blackberries they tasted like strawberries, I picked the crab apples.'

James Said "The blackberries tasted good, the bushes were prickly, I picked heaps of apples, I tasted one but it was it was a wee bit sour."

Riyanna said "I didn't like the blackberries."

Agustin said "We were picking the berries, and some apples, I got seven I think"

Fixing the Gnuff's House

We had been told that the Gnuff's house was damaged so we took some wire along with us to see if we could fix it. When we saw it, we found that one side of it had fallen down with the trees that had been thinned out. Today, we had two Dads (Tim & Andrew) helping us and they quickly set to work reliving their childhood escapades. The children helped pull the fallen house logs into a pile and some pruned the leaves off the fallen trees so that they could be used. Others decorated the existing sides with drawings. Here are a couple of stories from the children about happened.

James: "The Gnuff House is broken cos one log falled down on top of it. We fixed it. We fixed it with the strong wood. I helped pull the logs out. Hamish's Dad fixed it. He put the logs up. He put the roof on the logs."

Riyanna: "At the Gnuff house there is a rainbow. It's sunny. There is a bird, he's going to the rainbow. There are deer at the Gnuff house, they are making sure it's alright. The bird and the deer, they talk to the Gnuffs. The Gnuffs will be happy we fixed their house."

Making Leaf Dolls

Today we had a great idea that involved using lots of leafs. Sophie lay on the ground in the shape of a star fish and her friends piled leaves around her body. The end result was a beautiful leaf doll. After the individual ones we decided to make a row of leaf dolls so everyone lay down beside each other holding hands and feet to feet. We ended up with a row of leaf dolls and between each one to every ones surprise was a heart shape. What fun we had today!

The Gnuffs

The Gnuff Family

Grandpa, Grandma, Pa, Ma, Rimu, Rata, Baby Fern.

There has been magical happenings at Nature Discovery, Mrs Shaw wondered if it might be the Gnuffs. She had seen and heard of the Gnuffs before but this was a long time ago. This week when we arrived at the shed there was a note from the Gnuffs. The note welcomed us and then led us on a wonderful treasure hunt, the Gnuffs had left us many clues and taonga to find. During the morning we had a special visitor Mrs Shaw number 2, she remembered the Gnuffs also, and came to tell the story that she had heard from the birds of Fiordland about how they had seen the Gnuffs working their magic within Te Anau again.

The Woody Hollows

At Nature Discovery today we discovered a new area to play in. We have called it the Woody Hollows. Tallulah, her Mum and Caleb made a stone sculpture, Gabbie found a Moth that she looked after for a while then let go. The Woody Hollow had lots of trees, leaves and sticks for us to build and make things with. One of our parents from DOC taught the children how to look for shelter and make arrows to show adults where they are if the get lost. We have started playing a Search and Rescue game practicing these skills and of course our Nature Discovery call. We all enjoyed lighting the fire for the thermette and having our Milo right in the middle of the Woody Hollows, it was like camping.

Charcoal Drawings

October 13th

Today we used the old charcoal from our fire which we put in an ash can at the end of the day.  It was now cold and we wanted to see if we could draw pictures with it.  The pieces were various shapes and sizes.  Some pieces we could draw thin lines like using a pencil and other pieces we rubbed over the paper to create wider and lighter lines or areas.

Shelby used the thin small pieces to draw a helicopter.  We all had fun making patterns on our paper with the charcoal.

It was great to discover that we didn't need to bring pencils and crayons to Nature Discovery to be able to draw - we can just use charcoal instead.