If I only had a brain

Well, my last few days at Beechmont State School have been rather eventful. Last Friday we had our big 'Plant Out' day... where we took our class out for the whole day to plant trees and stuff. It was really fantastic. Before all the kids got their hand's dirty, we organised for a community "green thumb" to come and talk to the students about weeds; how to identify them and what harm they can do in a place like Beechmont. After that and a bit of lunch, we armed ourselves with shovels, picks and other potentially dangerous equipment and went about our planting spree...

I found out quickly that not all the kids were completely familiar with the tree-planting process....

"No, Harrison, you need to keep the roots on the plant when you plant it"

"Ah, Eve, you actually need to take the plant out of the pot..."

"Um, Tess, you can stop digging now. It's ok, the Beaconsfield miners are safe.... no, Tess, I mean it! Stop digging!"

In the end, we got there though.... about 100 plants planted in less than two hours. It was fantastic to see the kids get out of the classroom and do something worthwhile. It will be a great feeling for them when they come back here in 5 or 10 years time and be able to say "I planted that tree".

After our tree planting adventures, the rest of the day was spent painting and doing some science investigations at the park we were at. We had brought along watercolour paints... so the kids went off and let their 'naturalistic' sides take over. It is such a beautiful spot here at Beechmont... it is not very difficult to find a nice landscape to paint. Sometimes I don't think these kids know how lucky they are! The popular spot was a view overlooking Numinbah Valley - it was a perfect day and looked amazing... and if you looked more to the east, you could just see some of the apartment buildings at the Gold Coast!

As if that wasn't exciting enough, Beechmont had a "Book Parade" on Tuesday morning. The idea was that everyone (children... AND teachers) were to come dressed up as their favourite book character. I had a hard time choosing mine, as most of my favourite book characters would not be easy to 'dress up' as. So, in the end, I decided to go as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz... for the only reason in that I already had the costume at home! It was great fun... some of the kids' costumes were great... they had gone to so much effort! I was one of three teachers who had to judge the winners as well... and only one student from each grade. It was quite difficult, but I don't think there were any tears, which was a relief!


It has been raining up here lots the past few days... and of course (as it is Beechmont) it has been really cold. I thought winter was pretty much over...?? Anyhoo, the rain is awesome.... it was strange being woken up by rain on the roof the other night!

Ciao!