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Making the most of autumn
Autumn is a beautiful time of year in Dunedin. We are surrounded by trees that display gorgeous colours, making the environment look just that much more beautiful. Here at BestStart Montessori the Gardens, we are lucky enough to have a wonderful, huge, old walnut tree. In summer it gives us lots of lovely, natural shade. In autumn it gives us and our families plenty of delicious, healthy kai in the form of walnuts. Our parents take these home and decorate afghan biscuits with them as well as using them in lots of other yummy baking.
As well as the walnuts falling from the tree, we also get all the brown and yellow leaves falling on the playground. An important part of a Montessori outside programme is gardening, so it's a good opportunity to practice raking up all the leaves to make our environment look tidy. Once all the leaves were in a big pile ... well, it was too good an opportunity to miss. We jumped in the pile of leaves and tossed them in the air, so it 'rained' leaves on us. What a photo op! Then the process of raking began all over again. What a way to spend a morning - working as a team to take care of our environment, then getting the fun of playing in the resulting pile.