Buddies ~ bulbs

This weeks theme at Buddies was bulbs. We started our session with our usual welcome song and the kids chose a few others of their favourites to sing. Then we did a little bulb role playing.

It was a lot of fun. One child was the winter gardener dressed up in a hat, scarf and mittens. They 'planted' another child curled up as a little bulb in the middle of the floor. The gardener covered the little bulb with earth (or a brown towel). Then we waited while the bulb slept through winter. The gardener noticed that the sun was beginning to shine and took off his winter woolies and replaced them with a sunhat.

At this point the little bulb began to sprout and grown and stretch throwing off the brown towel and emerging as a beautiful flower. The kids really enjoyed this activity and all had turns at being the gardener and the bulb.

I think that this little roleplay game helped paint a little picture in their heads for our next activity.
We put on our wellies and warm waterproofs and headed out into Zoe's fabulous garden.

Zoe showed us the large compost heap at the back of the garden and the kids helped dig some of it into the wheel barrow along with some soil from the ground.

We found some pretty juicy and amazing worms that the kids were very exctied about.

We brought the wheel barrows, little and large, to the front of the garden.
The kids mixed up the compost and soil,

and loaded it into pots.
Each pot got a bulb or two in them.

and put up high (away from Joa) until home time.

We came back inside for a snack of fruit and bread and then the kids headed off for a bit of free playtime while the mummies had a cuppa.

After clean up we gathered back in the living room (which has a pair of gorgeous curtains, really they are gorgeous, I should've got a picture of them...next time I promise) and Susan read this book....

She did it beautifully with props for the kids to act out the story as it went along. Of course it was a great success and the kids loved it.

We ended the session with our goodbye song and left with our little pots of bulbs ready to wait out the long winter until spring when the little shoots will appear.