Banksia Group Term 3, 2023

Welcome back to term 3. 

During term 2 we decided to increase buddy time to twice a week as the children were requesting that we do it more. Sometimes the children choose their own activity and other times the whole group does the same activity, such as Lego, puzzles etc. Buddy time promotes and supports children to extend their friendship and connections with their peers, builds language and listening, compromising and turn taking, flexibility, and confidence. There is always some support and guidance from teachers to negotiate what or where buddies might play together. 

We are looking forward to an incursion this term with Dream puppets. Dream puppets are wonderful and often inspires the children to make their own puppets. We usually follow on with puppet making and lots of impromptu puppet shows. http://www.dreampuppets.com.au

We have a lot of sensory play and fine motor play in the room as always. We had clay available all term and the children continually explored this and their modelling and use of it became more sophisticated as the term progressed. It is important to give children time to re visit activities and experiences so they can further develop their skills, confidence, and experience. We also offered a variety of tools, resources, and loose parts with the clay as provocation for ideas as the weeks progressed. 

The other project the children worked on during term 2 was the community seed library. They decorated seed packets, harvested seeds, and put them into the packets, then made and decorated a sign for the seeds to share with the kinder community. Both project activities promoted fine motor skills, imagination, persistence, risk taking – trying something new, literacy and writing, community, creativity, and sensory play. 

We continue to offer cooking activities into term 3, which the children enjoy being involved in and it often leads to a progressive eating / café style activity as they enjoy the social part of eating and set up a few tables to eat at. As part of the cooking activity, they often need to put in an order with a paper plate or brown paper bag with their name and or drawing on (when having toast, sandwiches, pancakes, or chips).

Some independence skills to practice at home are – getting dressed and undressed, putting on shoes, packing their bag, opening, and closing containers in lunch box, managing the toilet independently and asking for help (this is one of the most important skills of all). Independence is an important way to build self-identity, self-esteem, and confidence in children. 

We are always chatting about kindness and how we use our hands and bodies at kinder however will have some extra focus on this with some stories and more discussions as the children’s play has become more cooperative and collaborative, we have also found we are increasingly needing to talk about body boundaries and being kind. 

Play move improve have some great free resources on their website. Including how to promote independence for pre-schoolers, and fine motor activities. 

https://www.playmoveimprove.com.au/pages/play-move-improve-free-downloads

Thanks Kirsty, Rex, and Amy