The ENORMOUS crocodile

We have just read the awesome book "The enormous crocodile' by Roald Dahl and now were doing some extension activities based on the book.
Tui wrote a list of the characters and a brief book review:
The book 'The enormous crocodile' is about by Roald Dahl is about (you guessed it!) and Enormous Crocodile who decides that he wants to eat some yummy juicy children for his lunch!
He comes up with a 'secret plan and nasty tricks' to try and catch the children...but the other animals in the jungle have plans to stop him...
Characters:
The Enormous crocodile
The Notsobig crocodile
Muggle Wump the monkey
Humpy Rumpy the Hippopotamus
Trunky the Elephant
The Rolly Polly Bird

Blogger isn't working (can't post photo's) but when it does I will post the pics of the egg carton crocodiles we made and their lovely book work :)

FUN FRIDAY-Making our own paper

 

We've been wanting to try this for a while...ever since I received a cool hand made paper notebook in a trade! I bought a mesh splatter guard (for a frying pan) to spread and squish our paper pulp onto and it worked really well. WE hand ripped all the little bits of paper and soaked them for about an hour before giving them the full treatment in the blender! Good ol blender! The very same one I used to make Tui's baby food in is still going strong! Anyway...we got our pulp and spread it out onto the mesh and waalah! PAPER. We're still waiting for it to dry but it's looking good so far.
While we made the paper we talked about how the Egyptians made the first paper (Papyrus) and we talked about how they would have beaten the plant fibres (not nicely soak paper in a blender....joys of technology!)to turn it into a pulp. Naturally I took the opportunity to talk about recycling...sustainable resources etc! On Monday we're going to look at Hieroglyphic writing as well.
The boat trip was after our paper making!

 

School trip across the sea...

 

 

Free ferry rides

 

We were lucky enough to get a free return trip from Tauranga to the Mount today courtesy of the Tauranga Sandy Walkers group :) It was lots of fun and we saw heaps of big ships, tug boats and recreational boats on the trip. We checked out flags (on the cargo ships) and watched the port workers. On the way home Pearl asked what the name of one of the boats was ( Sea Prophet) and by the time we had hit the shore again she'd taught herself to spell the word "sea." Clever!!
As you can see from the pics my Mum and her husband Ross joined us for the trip.

 

 

 

Dad and the kids checked out this huge digger at the quarry. It was impressivley big! The fact that the steel was also hot (scrorcha day!) didn't stop them from doing a mad scramble to climb around inside (where it was cooler) and see what bits still moved.

Spiders nest

 

We found this spiders nest at the Te Puna Quarry...it was interesting to look at how the spider had pulled the leaves together to make it but I'll admit that I'm glad we didn't find Incy-Wincy too!

Bush music

 

One of my favourites.

 

The kids liked this one too and the following school day we wrote this poem (they wrote it I just acted as scribe!)

Funky Junk Man

I'm a funky Junk man
sitting in a tree
singing "I'm a funky junk man- look at me!"
When I walk my legs go clunk
Because they're made from on old steel bunk!
My heads a pot
which gets very hot
I've got bowling pin arms
which is good for playing drums!
I like to play cricket
and sit in a tree
singing "I'm a funky junk man- look at me!"

OK, so it's not a technically correct poem but it is cool!

Macca's any one?

 

One of the funky junk displays. This is all made from recycled materials, mostly heavy duty plastic containers like the packs oil comes in...

 

BINGO

 

We made our own bingo game from recycled calander pages...the kids have had lots of fun playing!

Jacob's mail plane

 

This is the pic that should also be below! You can see the missing Fokeer f27s photo if you 'beam up' the poster in the other photo.

 

This photo should be below where blogger has put a little x instead of a photo!

Beautiful Japanese girls!

 

Some of our creations

 

We couldn't hang the MILLIONS of Japanese origami "secret folders" that Pearl made!

Tui's colouring the paper for her Empress doll

 

 

We decided to learn a bit about Japan, we've been learning a lot about other countries lately! We made some origami creations (here's 2 of our visiting Flat Travellers as well) and the girls dressed up as beautiful Japanese woman- complete with chopsticks in their hair! Arn't they GEORGOUS!