Dragon on the Hill

It has been a fairytale day. 

A young prince with shining eyes brought me a precious gift as I arrived this morning.

'It gets beautiful yellow flowers Lynne!' he said as he handed me a carefully wrapped parcel with green leaves sprouting out of the top.

In the twinkling of a magical eye the climbing frame rungs were transformed into a palm frond covered castle. Rows of coloured knitting began to fall from busy bamboo needles in a cascade of warm woollen loops. Tiny animals played in lilypilli trees down by the creek.

Then it was skip-counting at the entry to the classroom castle. 

'Skip-counting?' I asked. 

Buzz answered my riddle.

 

'It's when you skip numbers Lynne!'

And off we went, skip-counting by 2's, 5's, 10's....and then it got REALLY interesting...as some of us were able to skip count by 100's and then.....would you believe it from 6/7 year olds...1,000's!!!

At the desks a colour was carefully chosen from the rainbow array in the box and lightly 'layer-shaded' over the large piece of shiny paper placed on the desk.

Then it was time for the class 1 royal musicians.....

And so we began with clapping stick counting...to warm up the musician's nimble fingers. Easy at first..always remembering that every day we have AT LEAST 3 skill levels operating in the classroom castle. Stamping their feet in time with clapsticks and counting (no mean feat in itself) the musician's voices spoke out confidently, counting 

'30 up to 55 and back to 30', '0 - 20 and back to 0', '27 - 37 and back to 27, 

and for those musicians who DELIGHT in a mathematical challenge....'skip-counting by 5's starting at 25 and going to 75 then back to 25'.

The Queen then asked the musicians if they had any favourite ways of counting.

The musicians, talented and creative as they are already, came up with some wonder-filled ways of counting.....never before heard in the halls of the classroom castle.

One young knight, mathematically very inspired, came out the front and with a face filled with wonder said' If I count by 10's to 100 it's sort of the same as if I count by 100's to 1,000, isn't it Lynne?' 

I knew EXACTLY what he meant and asked him to take a piece of chalk and write firstly on the big blackboard, in a long column going down, 10-100, then next to that, in a column going down, 100-1,000. Which he did, as we continued with our counting.

Then out came the recorders. 

Echo playing, followed by '1,2,3 Who can it be?','Lucy Locket' and ''It's Raining it's Pouring'. 

Then a request from the queen....who would like to play with their group? with a friend?

And so, we imagined that we were the audience at the Opera House in Sydney enjoying a duet played by Aiyana and Angelina on recorder. An excellent performance for this first-time duet. Unfortunately some-what marred by several 'boos' from the audience.

The queen then spoke about 'good audience manners' and the performers recieved their due apologies from those children who ...well.....probably had never been to a concert at the Opera House before......

Then came the dragons..... falling off their chairs, giggling uncontrollably at things the queen found 'definitely NOT amusing', playing their recorders when the queen had asked for recorders on chins (a good tactic for ensuring quiet which some baby dragons seem unaware of), walking from their desks to the door trailing yards of crimson wool while surrepticiously hiding behind their back a pair of bamboo knitting needles and several rows of knitting (???).

And so the queen, in an amazing feat of shape-shifting, became HERSELF a dragon, until the baby dragons remembered............

Back on the lightly shaded page the queen asked the children to remember the flowers, leaves and tiny insects they had seen in the palace gardens the day before....and to scrub, flick or layer shade them onto the piece of paper. 

Which they did...even the baby dragons...having shape-shifted themselves back into children again.

And so the fairytale continued.....magical butterflies, beautiful leaves, amazingly petalled flowers, tiny black ants, waving windy grasses, smiling suns, magenta and purple layered birds, brown hovering eagles, pea plants waving up trellises, buzzing, happy bumble bees, subtle-hued rainbows, tiny dancing fairies, all came to life on the shining pages.

The queen then demonstrated how to find the symmetrical fold on a large piece of silver-flecked magenta light cardboard. Rules for using a glue stick were spoken of (despite this, several minutes later, one adventurous child tasted the glue and pronounced it 'alright' much to the queen's concern) and the children then stuck their magic gardens onto the cardboard and wrote their names on the inside of the magenta folder.

Recess

Art continued.......

Lunch

A stern talk by the queen on correct usage of hoops, following some knightly battles in the playgound with a hoop and several children, that ended in tears.

A choice: knitting, beeswax crayon drawing or resting under wraps, as the queen recounted the rest of the 'Lavender Slipper' story from yesterday, with lavender flowers from Farmer George's garden passed around for a press and a sniff. 

Four happy helpers from Dymphna's Class 6 and Harry (still in lieu of Georgia)  passed helpfully among the knitters as the story unfolded and the Little White Hen stitched lavender slippers for the baby foxes and told them stories which ensured that they would ALWAYS come back for more.

Which they did.