The Happy Hoppers had a lovely week watching their teachers entertain them with all sorts of different experiments. 

The Hoppers did an exciting M &M experiment, it was about watching the colours moving to the middle of the plate. 

Our second experiment was a bouncy egg experiment. You place an egg in a glass and cover it with vinegar. The vinegar will eat the shell away only leaving the inside of the egg which becomes like a rubber ball. The Hoppers loved feeling the ball and even tried to bounce it. 

The third experiment of the week was a raincloud experiment. You take a jar fill it with water then cover it with shaving foam then add a few drops of blue food colouring and then watch the rain fall. 

Then we did a Rainbow paper experiment and a dancing rice experiment. This was an amazing week full of magic and excitement doing all these different experiments. 

We also had a lot of fun free painting all sorts of interesting pictures it is so lovely to see how these little people’s art and paintings develop throughout the year. 

Another activity we concentrated on this week was our cutting skills. Please let your little Hopper practise lots of cutting at home.  

Yoga was a little different… we played TETRIS! 

This game engages several cognitive skills such as memory, matching and pattern recognition. It also promotes problem solving and thinking patterns. The aim of the game is to fit all the pieces in to fill up the board. It was a super fun activity, and everyone worked nicely together as a team. 

Please note there are still a number of clothing, shoes, blankets, bottles etc that are not labelled so please make an extra big effort to label ALL your child’s belongings.  

Next week’s theme is: Occupations and people who help us 

Have a wonderful weekend. See you all on Monday.  

We’ve had a blast!

Last week we spoke all about occupations and what the Hoppers want to be when they grow up. We had lots of discussions about all the different kinds of occupations and what kinds of jobs their moms and dads do!

With it being a short week and practicing for sports day, we made this week a more practical one with lots of role-play activities. After our discussion, we told our Hoppers to go play but they must pretend to be what they want to be when they grow up. This was so cute, we have a few hairdressers, some doctors, some Chefs, A mommy, and even some superheroes in our class. J

For our second activity, we investigated a couple of X-rays on the light table and learnt about what an x-ray is, “a picture of our bones”.

We put our Hopper’s fine motor, spatial perception, and eye-hand coordination skills to the test this week with a threading activity! To create our letter of the week, we gave our children two paper bones to make an ‘x’ for their X-rays. We punched nine holes around their x-rays and our children had to thread blue wool in and out. Threading is quite a tricky activity but our kiddies did so well! We will keep practicing this skill.

For cooking this week, Chef Thembi took the Hoppers on a tour of the kitchen. They learnt about kitchen safety precautions and hygiene, how to use the gas oven and stove, how the chefs dish up and pack their snack and lunch onto the trollies, and all the different kinds of kitchen utensils and their uses. For the tour, the kiddies got to dress up in an apron, this was super exciting for them!

On Friday, for Show and Tell, we had a dress-up day of what our Hoppers want to be when they grow up.  They looked so adorable! We also did a practice round for our sports day, we are so sad we didn’t get to do it but it will now take place on the 20 May. Please save the date!

This week was Science and Experiments, this theme was such a hit with the Hoppers. The amount of interest, curiosity, and questions that came from the Happy Hoppers was awesome to see and hear. This week we have not done any art activities, as it is a very practical theme. We hope that the Hoppers went home with some experiment knowledge to share with you.

We did the following experiments in class: 

1. Rubber Egg
2. Colour rainbow
3. Ice cream in a bag
4. Dancing Rice
5. Lemon Volcano
6. Rain cloud in a jar
7. Fire works in a jar
8. Magic Milk

Rubber Egg

For this experiment you need a raw egg and a cup of vinegar. The shell of an egg is made up of primarily calcium carbonate. If you soak an egg in vinegar you start a chemical reaction that dissolves the calcium carbonate shell. The acetic acid reacts with the calcium carbonate in the eggshell and releases carbon dioxide gas that you see as bubbles on the shell. Leave the egg for 24 hours and you have a “naked egg”. It is squishy and can bounce, but be careful not to bounce too hard as it will pop. When our “naked egg” was ready, each Hopper got a turn to feel the difference between a regular raw egg and our egg after the experiment to compare the hard shell and the membrane shell. At the end of the experiment, we popped the egg to show the kiddies how thin the membrane was.

Colour Rainbow

For this experiment we got 2 cups of water. We placed folded tissue paper from cup to cup after we had coloured the ends of the tissue in different colours. As the tissue bridged over the cups, the colour water soaks into the tissue and hops over the bridge creating a beautiful rainbow.

Ice cream in a bag

The children’s favourite experiment was the ice cream in the bag experient, it tasted so delicios too. We added cream,sugar and milk into one bag and in another bag we added ice and course salt. We then added the cream and milk mixture bag to the ice bag and shook it around like crazy until we had ice cream. The was so fun to do, the Hoppers had a turn in shaking and feeling how cold the ice got from the salt.

Dancing Rice

this experiment did not exactly go according to plan, which was not a bad thing because it taught the children that sometimes not all experiments work out and that is exactly why we try out experiments!

The intention was to add bicarb, water, vinegar and a tablespoon of raw rice together. As the chemicals react, it starts to fizz and causes the rice to “dance”. This would be a cool experiment to try at home with your Hopper! If it works out, let us know!

Lemon Volcano

We cut the top part of the lemon and added green food colouring to the lemon. We then added bicarb to the lemon and stuck a knife in to get the juice out. The chemical reaction caused the lemon to fizz like lava running down a volcano! The Hoppers loved this experiment.

Fireworks in a jar

This experiment also didn’t go so well, next time we will try the gel food colouring. We filled a jar with water. We then poured some oil and food colouring into a little bowl and added food colouring. We then added the oil mixture to the jar. The colours were meant to go into the water and look like fireworks but it all just seemed to mix and we ended up with just one colour and no fireworks.

Rain cloud in a jar

This experiment worked well. We filled a jar with water. We made a cloud on top of the water with shaving cream. We then put some green food colouring on top of the cloud, the food colouring seeped through the shaving cream and it looked like rain coming from a cloud,  this was very cool to see.

Magic Milk

This experiment was one of our favourites. We put some milk into a shallow bowl and added 3 different colours of food colouring to the milk. I dipped my finger into the dishwashing liquid and touched the milk, the colours moved and made mesmerizing patterns in the milk. So much fun and very pretty to see.

The Hoppers had their last FunFit Sports session with Coach Dave, they all had a fun lesson with him and said their goodbyes, We will miss coach Dave but we are looking forward to meeting our new Coach that will be taking over in term 2.

What I fun and exciting week it has been.  Have a lovely weekend, and maybe try out some of our experiments or even new ones, if you do please share with us on our group. 

Our theme next week is Autumn, Birds Migration and Easter.

Have a safe and lovely weekend!

Our Hoppers!

This theme was such a hit with the Hoppers. The amount of interest, curiosity and questions that came from the Happy Hoppers was awesome to see and to hear. We didn’t do any art activities this week as this is a very practical theme. We hope that the Hoppers went home with some experiment knowledge to share with you!

 We did the following experiments in class:

1. Rubber Egg
2. Colour Hopping
3. Skittle Patterns
4. Dancing Rice
5. Lemon Volcano
6. Static Electricity

 Rubber Egg

For this experiment you need a raw egg and a cup of vinegar. The shell of an egg is made up of primarily calcium carbonate. If you soak an egg in vinegar you start a chemical reaction that dissolves the calcium carbonate shell. The acetic acid reacts with the calcium carbonate in the eggshell and releases carbon dioxide gas that you see as bubbles on the shell. Leave the egg for 24 hours and you have a “naked egg”. It is squishy and can bounce, but be careful not to bounce too hard as it will pop. When our “naked egg” was ready, each Hopper got a turn to feel the difference between a regular raw egg and our egg after the experiment to compare the hard shell and the membrane shell. At the end of the experiment, we popped the egg to show the kiddies how thin the membrane was.

Colour Hopping

For this experiment we got 4 cups of water and added green, pink, blue and orange food colouring. We placed folded tissue paper from cup to cup. As the tissue bridged over the cups, the colour water soaks into the tissue and hops over the bridge.

 Skittle Patterns

The children’s favourite experiment was the skittles experiment! We placed skittles in a circle on a plate, made up of different patterns. We then added warm water to the plate and once the water had touched the skittles the colour from the skittles started to move out into a pattern towards the center! This was a very pretty experiment.

 Dancing Rice

This experiment did not exactly go according to plan, which was not a bad thing because it taught the children that sometimes not all experiments work out and that is exactly why we try out experiments!

The intension was to add bicarb, water, vinegar and a table spoon of raw rice together. As the chemicals react, it starts to fizz and causes the rice to “dance”. This would be a cool experiment to try at home with your Hopper! If it works out, let us know!

 Lemon Volcano

 We cut a lemon in half and added pink food colouring to one half and blue to the other. We then added bicarb and a few drops of vinegar to the lemon. The chemical reaction caused the lemon to fizz like lava running down a volcano!

 Static Electricity

 We blew up a few balloons and rubbed them against everyone’s hair to show them how the static electricity makes their hair stand up! You can just imagine the giggle reaction we got from this!

Our theme next week is: Autumn, Birds Migration and Easter.

 Have a safe and lovely weekend!

Work, Fun & Play!

Play is the highest form of research! (Albert Einstein)