Nesting season

The sound of over-protective birds has alerted us to a number of nests in the school grounds. Here you can just see the head of an adult magpie in a nest in the top of the Camphor Laurel on Playground "C".



And a return from school holidays has seen yet another nest established in the school grounds. The white faced herons have chosen the same site as last year in a Moreton Bay fig tree to establish a nest. Stay tuned for photos and updates.

Another nest was discovered to be not so secure when two Noisy Miner chicks were found on the footpath and given to the school office! Some quick thinking saw the chicks returned to their distressed parents in a makeshift nest. You can just see the miner chick peeking over the edge.



Most of us grew up being told that nests would be abandoned if humans touched them. In fact, the best thing you can do for a fallen chick, assuming it is not injured, is place it back in the tree because the parents are still eager to care for it.

Rescue can be as simple as placing an icecream container in the tree so the chicks can be out of harms way. If left on the ground the chicks could be eaten by cats. The container will need a few drainage holes and a secure position so that it doesn't blow down. The parents will resume feeding the chick.

Sadly, in the case of the Miner chicks the following night was ferociously windy and rainy and the babies were found the next morning on the ground again, persumably having died from exposure.

Colours of Spring

It might be technically winter but Spring is all around us in the ELA! Native plants are sporting gorgeous pinks and purples (Indigophora and Hardenbergia plants).











Rocket and broccoli have gone to flower, creating a very attractive garden for the bees.















Strawberry plants in the herb spiral are starting to produce fruit and the spinach looks more like an artwork than a vegetable!

Spuds galore

Keen eyes observed that the potato crop was ready for harvest. It wasn't just the wilting leaves that were the sign of ripeness. Potates seemed to be bursting out of the ground throughout the garden bed.











Word spread, and soon a bumper crop was harvested. The produce was stored in the cool dark interier of the school while a plan was hatched for a feast!



















Towards the end of term the spuds (parboiled by enthusiastic parents) were barbecued with olive oil and rosemary (from the herb spiral, of course).

Chef Peter cooked an enormous number of spuds while students and parents queued up for serve after serve of the delicious potatoes.

Grammar soup

Recent rain has seen the vegie garden and herb spiral produce some spectacular looking produce. And captured here, on a rare sunny afternoon, the garden is looking very tasty indeed.





With school holidays only days away it seemed a good opportunity to turn ripe vegetables into a learning experience.

After picking and washing the vegetables we took them back to the classroom for closer inspection. We talked about using fresh, organic vegetables with no processed ingredients. We also talked about safe methods for chopping the vegetables and how chopping smaller pieces would help speed up the cooking. Unfortunately our cooking technology was a Crock Pot that dates back to the 1970s and was not very speedy at all. But students were astonished that soup could be made in a classroom without all the usual trappings of a kitchen and this was an important lesson too.

So while the soup simmered away the class wrote a procedure for making vegetable soup.



Procedure

The method was as follows:
1. Soak the soup mix overnight.
2. Set up the cooking pot and add the soup mix.
3. Turn on the power.
4. Gather vegetables from the garden.
5. Prepare vegetables by washing, peeling and chopping.
6. Add prepared vegetables to the pot.
7. Carefully stir the soup then cover with a lid.
8. Cook till the vegetables are soft and then serve.

As we wrote the procedure we stopped to identify the verb in each procedure point. The word "carefully" was discovered to be an adverb so then we made soup-related sentences and worked out whether the describing words were adverbs or adjectives.

For example: "The soup is cooking slowly" and "We are writing on a dusty blackboard".



Despite insufficient cooking time and the need for an extra stock cube, the students declared that Grammar Soup was delicious.

Task 1: Follow the procedures to make your own soup.

Task 2: Find the verbs in the procedure list (above).
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Fungi Patch - June 2007

The cold weather has had an interesting effect on the fungi patch.
Here's an image of an emerging stinkhorn, most probably a Lantern Stinkhorn (Lysurus mokusin). The interesting thing is that while these usually emerge and perish in a day, this particular one has looked like this for three days!














Here is another that has stalled in its development:















I suspect the cold and rain has prevented their development so it will be interesting to see what today's glimmer of sunshine does.
Meanwhile, some Red stinkhorns Phallus rubicundus have appeared and deteriorated during the same period so I've deduced they prosper in a cooler temperature.

It looks like the stinky stuff has washed off in the rain. I doubt there were many flies about to assist with spreading the spores.














This last image is of a Phallus rubicundus that was emerging this morning.



The race is on between it and the Lantern stinkhorn... stay tuned.

Eco Learning Area

The Eco Learning Area (ELA) is a P&C initiative to change an abandoned area of the school grounds into an area for learning about nature and the environment. Several working bees and many additional volunteer hours by dedicated parents have seen a great transformation over recent months.



The ELA features an eco pond built by year 6 in 2006. The project for 2007 was to convert this pond into frog-friendly habitat.

Here is an early stage of herb spiral construction; hard yakka weeding the spiral and relocating a giant ironbark log; and its resting place as a seat by the eco-pond.


















The official opening of the ELA will happen in May but it has already been used for learning in a number of ways. On Harmony Day the herb spiral and vegie gardens were planted by students. There have been excursions from the classroom to the Fungi Patch.

And then there's the spontaneous learning that this area invites: on a recent working bee the young children were drawn to the eco pond as two boys from year 1 talked spontaneously about mosquito larvae.

Bushwalks

As an extension of enjoying nature at school we have invited parents and children on bushwalks in the nearby valley.

The inaugural Ferncourt bushwalk set out on 2 March and there are now five reliable witnesses (including one school principal) to attest that there is a wealth of bush within walking distance from the school. Walkers encountered mangrove swamps, fern-lined gullies and Angophora (Sydney Red Gum) forests. There were unique geological formations, all manner of spiders and for the bird watchers: pied cormorants, blue wrens and red-browed finches. The walk took 1.5 hours.

The second walk was intentionally shorter so that children could participate. And although the distance covered was greatly reduced, the walk nevertheless took two hours as the children stopped to examine every millipede, bug and fungus that appeared after recent rain. There was much shouting with enthusiasm at every new discovery so it was not the ideal day for locals to have a quiet moment with nature. But the walkers we encountered seemed very approving of youngsters getting involved.





















The children were fearless and agile climbers who braved the top of Nannygoat hill to enjoy the fabulous view.















A magnifying glass proved essential equipment for the studies that were undertaken!