I am counting down the days of my work as my kids are already on summer holidays as they finished for the next 11 weeks – yep 11 weeks holiday! And in just 19 days we will be spending over 4 of those weeks in Australia, I am getting excited!!! I will be finishing my work gig as it was a substitute position for the school year and next year I will be spending more time at my daughter’s school as it is her last year there and we will be moving back home to Australia, so it is going to be BIG!!

Last week was the culmination of our Bee Play for the Kinder class where the kids made their wings out of a coat hanger, tulle and sewed the lines/veins with black yarn. We attached them to their body like a backpack with a crossover back with elastic and put felt around the elastic and the joined coathanger to make it smooth. It was quite a fun little project to work with the kids – they all enjoyed the sewing part! I would have to say the tricky part was stapling the tulle onto the wire coathangers which took up a fair amount of time after school! The kids dyed their white t-shirts with our art teacher and later painted black stripes on them.

Here is the play on the chapel stage complete with a backdrop the kids painted – I was switching out the backdrop from the meadow to the hive and the sun was stuck on there when it stopped raining. It was a super fun production! There is a farmer in the hat and the beekeeper is somewhere on stage too.

 

I am enjoying the last few times I will be visiting the church at Ventana – it is just beautiful inside, the stained glass is spectacular.

The 1st-grade kids I work with were weaving with sticks to make these really cool art pieces with our super art teacher Jess. She has these really long yarn needles and the kids made a warp tension across the sticks and then weaved in some coloured yarn, I will have to try some of these over the summer holidays as I have yarn and we can go in search for some interesting sticks when we go for bike rides.

There was a lot of fun with yarn too with the Kinders and the kids played this game of throwing a yarn ball across the closing circle to make a star. Afterwards, they had to roll the yarn back up remembering who they had sent it too, tricky but it was super cool fun.

 

Thursday I went out with my friends for an early summer birthday to Amber India which was so good to catch up. We had some delicious cocktails and the dinner was tasty with okra and roti and many curries. We will catch up again after summer to share our summer adventure stories.

 

Summer is here on an off and I did an early Saturday ride and it was so beautiful and still, I captured Hangar 1 in reflection and saw some beautiful bunnies on the trail and here is my amazing dinner from Friday of okonomiyaki with fresh basil, tomatoes and salad – yummy!

I was so happy to see Saturday as it was time to get into my final draft of my last paper for University on Contemporary Perspectives of Learning and Development for Early Childhood. It was a reflection, an education philosophy with the idea of writing this for a potential employer about what educational approaches I am interested in. Of course, it is Reggio, PBL and Waldorf-Steiner – all hands on with a focus on community.

 

Finally, Saturday afternoon came, after a day of editing my paper I got out to the park to the ice cream social with the neighbourhood. The fire truck sprayed water on the crowd on a 33-degree day which was super cooling. While I was enjoying a nice vodka cocktail with my friends. The kids were getting painted by my friend Susan (who was also my ceramics teacher), she was kept super busy for her time there and Missy wanted a bobcat and it looks amazing.

Some good times are ahead this summer!!