The children at Little Diggers are showing off lots of their talents this week using their imagination, making their own choices, exploring their artistic ability and using their fine motor skills combined to make a beautiful mural outside.

This was a great learning experience in self-expression and they all had a great sense of achievement when it was finished...or is it?

Using their cognitive talents (thinking) they also produced a mural for the Walgett Show and were very proud to come fourth.

They were, asked, "what would we do if we had no water?" and some of the answers included, "we, wouldn't have a bubble bath", "we would die" and "we would have to get the rain to give us more".

These ideas were incorporated into the mural with their hand and footprints making fish and birds and landscape.

This is displayed in the Sunshine Room so make sure you see it.

The children are also very quick at picking up on the Makaton sign language, which we are learning. Even the subtle differences between man and goat - which is a clenched hand moving away from the chin - the "goat" gesture moves away further.

The Sparkles children have also shown an interest in doing physics and gravity. This was observed when they were pushing a pebble through a hole and watching it fall and watching objects sliding off a slope. They showed interest in finding out how things worked so we extended this by giving them boxes, balls and tubes to roll balls through (or fill them up and let them go). They loved this, laughing and having great fun exploring the concepts.

We welcome three new children to the Sparkles Room, Bradley Watt, Riley Harrison and Martin Krasny and it's lovely to have Bridgette McKellar back in Lightning Ridge with us again.

Marianne and

the Little Diggers team