​To continue with our many discussions surrounding farms, farm animals and where food comes from, today the Preschoolers headed to the Canberra Show where we saw lots of different animals, fruit and vegetables and learned a little bit about looking after sheep and cows. When we got to the show grounds the first thing we saw were some beautiful horses that were being prepared for competition by getting cleaned and brushed. Henry pointed out that the horses have special shoes on their feet like we did so that their hooves didn’t get dirty. We continued walking around and ran into our police friend Kenny Koala who let us sit on a special motor bike and jet ski before he gave us a book mark and sticker. After we said good bye to Kenny we found ourselves in the farm yard nursery where we pat a grey hound puppy, looked at some goats, donkeys, lamas, chickens, ponies and geese. After the farm nursery we explored some science experiments with Fizzics Education. We were able to experiment with balancing things on our fingers, looked at different magnets and some air pressure rockets. Finally, it was lunch time! We found a lovely spot in the shade with the perfect view of lawn mower races and a special motor bike show. After lunch we headed towards the sheep and cows. Henry was brave enough to have a try and sheering a sheep and got to keep some of the fluffy wool he sheared off the sheep. We were all brave enough to have a try at milking the dairy cow and look at the milk that came out of the teat. Before it was time to head back to Cubby, we had just enough time to watch the tiny teacup pigs race around a special course which we thought was amazing!
We all had such an amazing day at the show and learned so much about different animals and what goes into looking after them so that we can use their produce for different things. It has sparked more conversations about what other uses the produce can be used for and we will look into these questions over the coming weeks.

Today we closed the doors at Cubby and all adventured to Floriade to enjoy the sunshine and flowers! All of the children walked with educators the 2km to Commonwealth park before having a yummy picnic morning tea. After morning tea we broke into our rooms and went exploring.
The Preschoolers quickly found the Little Sprouts area where Lids 4 Kids were set up. They helped to sort out lots of lids so that they can be melted down and turned into chairs and other toys. They then had the opportunity to listen to Binion the recycling bin and learn more about the ways we can recycle. 
The Toddlers found a cool cubby house to explore amongst all of the flowers where they spent hours playing chasing games and hiding amongst the flowers. They even found a fountain with lots of water flowing through it in the middle of a garden bed. 
 The Nursery children also spent some time looking at different coloured bottle top lids and exploring the texture of some that had been melted down. After they finished in the Little Sprouts area they headed back to our base camp and explored the fresh green grass and listened to the sounds of the bands that were playing. 
When it was time for lunch we all came back together at base camp, ate lunch, some friends had a sleep and others went and listened to beautiful singing and did some dancing before we headed back to Cubby in time for afternoon tea. 
We all had such an amazing time being together as a whole center at Floriade!

Today the Preschoolers, the older Toddlers and a couple of mums and dads headed to the new physics building on campus to take part in a physics story time with best selling science author Chris Ferrie. During the Storytime we read the books "Where did we come from?", "There was a black hole that swallowed the universe", " 8 Little planets" and " Scientists, scientist what do you see?" 

The children loved being able to try new words, take part in a tug of war experiment that helped us to understand how force works and learn more about black holes and qorks. After story time we were lucky enough to take a photo with Chris and buy a couple of our favorite books from story time. 

We we are so grateful that we were invited to such a special event and we hope that we get invited to more events like this in the future! 

Upon the news of the Queens passing we found out that Parliament house was having a 96 cannon salute to remember her. We all headed down to the lake side to have the opportunity to hear them set off. Through this unique opportunity we had discussions about what some of the important things were that she did and how we have a new King. It was amazing to be part of this moment in history and we loved being able to go on an adventure at a different part of the day.

Today the Preschoolers headed down to the National Museum of Australia. Upon arrival we headed straight into Connections where we heard amazing music and looked at some beautiful artwork done by Australian Indigenous artists. Once we were finished we continued to explore the rest of the museum where we found the new discovery play space!

To recognize the importance of Pride month we headed out on a whole center adventure to Woden Library where we had the opportunity to meet a lady named Toni Kola. She read us lots of stories that help us to understand different types of families that are in our community. It was such an awesome afternoon and sparked lots of conversations about types of families. 

This week the Preschoolers and the Toddlers had the opportunity to visit Questacon in celebration of Science week!

The Preschoolers headed out on Wednesday and explored the power of wind! We experimented with using different angles to blow a beach ball up and through hoops at different heights. This turned out to be more difficult then we thought and it took lots of team work to be able to angle the blower correctly. A little further into our exploring we came across a space where we could build our own flying  devices using paper cups and other bits of recycled paper. After we had finished construction we moved over to a massive table with a fan inside it so we could test out our creations. As we let each of the planes go they flew all the way up to the roof! 
When we eventually made our way down to the last room we found a whole wall covered with pipes that had lots of wind going through them. We found some scarves and were able to push a flap open, put the scarves in and then watch them whizz around the pipes until they flew out the top for us to try and catch.
 
On Thursday it was time for the Toddlers to have some fun at Questacon! Although they headed there to mainly to explore Mini Q which explores water and pully systems there plans were altered as the children all had more of an interest in the robot that spoke to them as they arrived and then headed to find the natural environment room that explores earth quakes, lightning and how rainbows are made. We all loved being able to experience what an earthquake would feel like in the simulator. We discovered that we shook more when we were sitting down and we felt like wiggly jelly. 

This year Katharine and Jess had the opportunity to travel all the way to the Gold Coast to take part in a 3 day Bush Leader Course. During this training they received the confidence boost and knowledge we needed to help us create our own bush kindy program. They learnt different safety procedures, how to use different tools, tips to create policies and procedures and gave lots of ideas and perspectives for different types of experiences. 
During the time away they also were lucky enough to attend a session in an already established bush kindy program where they could observe how educators engaged with the  children, how the children responded to the space they were in and ask as many questions as they could think of. 
When they finally came back from training there were lots of ideas and knowledge to share with everyone and we were ready to take our next step in our bush kindy journey