Starting off with meat free monday, where we discussed the importance of a balanced and varied diet, to walk to school Wednesday. We were very impressed with the efforts of those who were able to walk or use another form of transport into school on Wednesday. During our carpet time discussion I was very impressed with the knowledge the children shared about electric cars!

With Environmental Awareness Week comes the return of our food waste collection. During our daily snack time, rather than putting our fruit waste into the bin, we have been collecting it together. Mrs Nelson, brought in some compost from her bin at home to show the children what will eventually happen to our fruit waste!

We have been lucky enough to have had a week of sunshine! Transition made the most of this by choosing to play outside in our garden. In the sand tray we have been making pies and in the wooden planter we have been discovering hidden dinosaurs! We have had glorious walks around the paddock. After visiting the chickens, we had a lovely play on the wooden climbing equipment. The children in Transition were able to demonstrate their incredible balancing and coordination. During our walk, we noticed a few ways in which Russell House takes care of our environment. We found a huge compost heap which is where the dead leaves and grass goes. Miss Mitchem also noticed our old sand tray being used in the chicken coop. This is an excellent example of how we can reuse materials.

As part of our mission to reduce, reuse and recycle, we have been exploring different ways to approach arts and crafts. A huge part of this is using recycled materials. Junk modelling is a well-loved activity across the Pre-Prep and in Transition it is no different. It allows the children to explore their creativity and experiment with different ways to connect materials. We have also tried our best to use recycled paper this week. Using old newspapers as our base, we explored mixing colours using watercolour paints. We also tried to identify our letter sounds in the print.

We are incredibly lucky to have such a knowledgeable teacher working with us in Transition. Mrs Nelson loves to work in her garden and observe the local nature that surrounds her. During our walk earlier in the week, we spent time listening to the sounds of nature around us. Much of this was the beautiful sound of bird song. We recognised that part of caring for our environment includes nature too. We will be making bird seed cakes for the birds next week.