Fantastic Fridays

So why do I do Fantastic Fridays? What is it for and does it have any influence on the progress of students?

Spiral of Inquiry

 As a team, we felt the need to engage children in learning that was relevant to them specifically.  Students offer ideas of areas that they would like to participate in or learn more about. As a team, we then choose the most common 5 themes. Teachers also get to choose which area they would like to participate in according to their interest and strength.

Here we are learning about Bugs. Students chose which bugs they wanted to learn about. They listed what they wanted to learn about and after our learning we checked through our questions to see which we could now answer. Children were presented with real bugs which they found in and around the school.

                
                                                           
Here we were learning about ladybugs. We were fortunate to find the whole life-cycle on a bush.


Students werelearning about spiders, their websand how they catch their prey.

 
A variety of learning experiences presented to students.








The writing was fantastic. When students are presented with real situations and topics that they would like to learn about then the writing comes easily.

This term I chose to teach cooking. Children are provided with hands-on opportunities to make a variety of foods.

Making French Toast

Cleaning is a very important part of cooking.

Eating the French toast. Delicious!

Here this little girl is writing down the recipe and procedure to make French toast.

 Making spaghetti and meatballs

The children were taught how to use a sharp knife correctly so that they could chop up the onions.

Rolling our meatballs.

Cooking the meatballs.

Yum...everything is nearly done. The smells are awesome!

Watching and waiting...

                    Lunch time

 YUMMY!!

Washing up after cooking is all part of our learning.

The involvement and responses from children and family have been so positive. Imagine my delight when I received an email from one of the families showing what had been happening in their house this weekend.
Here are photos that were emailed to from a parent on one of my cooking students. This little girl has spent the weekend cooking for her family, using fresh healthy ingredients to create healthy balanced meals.
Parent response

The Spaghetti and meatballs also a favourite among other families.A father and son came to get the recipe as they were on cooking duty and the Father confessed to being a really poor cook. Their meal turned out a hit and there was even enough to share with the grandparents.

Our final session of Learning to Cook was about making bread. A very busy session! Each student made their own small bread. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any photos as I was too busy helping with the process of 25 little bakers creating 25 loaves of bread. What I can say is that they turned out beautifully and were enjoyed by all. Each bread was packaged to take home, along with the recipe. There was a lot of scientific investigation in the way yeast works. How it needs warmth, moisture and sugar to grow. Some students came back to me during the week to tell me that they had made bread for their families. Here are more photos emailed to me.