Sun Room Newsletter Term 4

By Ann-Maree

We are just about to complete Term 4, the end of year is fast approaching and we can finally say good bye to 2020! What a challenging year this has been for all of us. But I think we have come out of 2020 with an appreciation of just how good life can be and how important family and friends are to us.

We have had an amazing year. Our Sun Room children have grown and learnt so much. In Sun Room, we tried to focus on a child centred approach. This offers our children the opportunity to make choices about what, how and who they want to play with. We, as Educators would then try and foster children’s growth and development by building on children’s interests, needs and strengths within a safe and caring environment.

We said goodbye to Yumin and Michelle, and we wish them the best of luck for their futures. We welcomed Bethany who has so much to offer our Sun Room.

So it won’t be long until most of our Sun Room children head up to the amazing Forest Room! Wow! They are really growing up. And the good news is they will have the very lovely Nicole moving up with them. A familiar face makes such a difference during transition time and we want this adjustment to be a happy and enjoyable time for the children.

I’d like to take this opportunity on behalf of myself and all of our Sun Room Educators, to thank you for sharing this year with us. It has been absolutely wonderful being part of your child’s journey and getting to know you. We would also like to thank you for all your support, encouragement and kindness over this year.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!

WORKING ON OUR EMOTIONS ...

As you would know, this age group is capable of expressing some pretty big feelings. And this is great.. we want children to feel and we want them to always be able to let us know what they are feeling. But can we name that emotion, can we understand what we are feeling and how do we work through it together? So we set up an emotion board. We discussed “How do you feel today?”

We did this as a one person experience so the child could take their time and talk about the different feelings they could see on the face cards. They could also look at their face in the mirror and we made different facial expressions together... although most of them were pretty happy just to look at their own face!

We will continue this experience throughout the term and also continue to offer many play experiences that focus on their social and emotional wellbeing.

Play is a wonderful and natural way for children to learn and develop new skills. Through play children receive the chance to express their feelings and practice managing them.

Learning Outcome: 3.1

Children have a strong sense of wellbeing.

SENSORY PLAY...

Sensory play is a huge interest of the Sun Room children and we have tried to explore many different mediums. Sensory play supports language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills and social interactions. And another huge benefit is that it is so much fun!

We have explored water beads, play dough, sand dough, kinetic sand, cotton sand, water play, rice play, snow play, stones, slime, beads, seeds and grains, the list goes on.... I think the absolute favourite was our ice play experiences which we will continue to offer over Summer.

Learning Outcome:4

Children are confident and involved learners.

BOOK WEEK....

We celebrated book week in October this year. The children had a lovely time dressing up as characters from their favourite stories.

We felt it was important to participate in book week as it provides new experiences, improves communication and concentration and just a general love an appreciation of books and sharing stories.

We focused on the books “ The Very Hungry Caterpillar“, “Elmer the Elephant” and “The Rainbow Fish”

Learning Outcome:5

Children are effective communicators.

SUNSMART...

As the weather is warming up and the UV is above 3, we are right into hats and sunscreen so what an awesome opportunity to discuss why we do this .

We learnt the words Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek and Slide and talked about what these words mean to us. We loved Jay Laga’aia’s song “You’ve gotta be SunSmart “

Learning Outcome:3.2

Children take increasing responsibility for their own health and physical wellbeing.

COLOUR RECOGNITION...

Generally, children learn to identify colours by 18 months. By the time they are 3, they can name many colours.

So, let’s extend on this learning. Let’s have some fun experiences that focus on learning what colour is that? We first focused on the colours blue, red, yellow and green. We had a matching experience where you chose a coloured stone and placed it into the matching coloured bowl.

Over the past month we have had a sensory tray focused on our “Colour of the Week” This has been very beneficial to the children’s learning and as it is a one person experience it is very calming and relaxing.

Learning Outcome: 4.1

Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity.

PLAY DOUGH...

Children just absolutely adore play dough and our Sun Room children have loved exploring and using their imagination to make wonderful creations over this term.

We have been using our play dough experience as an extension of what we have been focusing on. For example, throughout Book Week, we worked on the stories of Elmer the Elephant and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We made a sunflower representation experience. For Halloween it was can you make a friendly spider? And to extend on our learning about The Melbourne Cup we added horses and natural materials to our play dough experience.

All these different set ups added to the children’s learning and development in a soothing, calming and creative way.

Play dough is a fun way of easing tension, releasing extra energy, improving focus and concentration.

Learning Outcome:4.3

Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another.

WATER PLAY...

Throughout this term the children in Sun Room have shown a real interest in water play.

We have been exploring and extending on this interest through many different types of water play experiences.

These have included washing our dolls, washing our large sea creatures, painting the fence with water and our water sorting tubs. Water play offers so many learning opportunities for children. It helps with hand eye coordination, math and science concepts, and it enhances social skills encouraging both cooperation and turn taking opportunities.

Water play is an open ended experience, which allows children to have fun, make discoveries and explore outcomes.

Learning Outcome:2

Children are connected with and contribute to their world

NAIDOC WEEK..

“Always was, Always will be”

I feel we celebrated NAIDOC Week with respect and an open approach to learning new things and embracing this culture. All the experiences we set up to help extend the children’s learning were a great success and we were amazed that by the end of the week, several of the children were able to tell us what the colours of the Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Flags represented.

Our focus songs Inanay and Taba Naba were very much embraced by the children and we will be adding these songs several times a week after we do our Acknowledgment of Country. I think it would be wonderful to embed this into our everyday practice.

The Yarning Circle we did outside was probably the highlight of the week. It was a beautiful moment where we sat outside together and sang, talked and read stories.

Our hope is to incorporate more of this outdoor learning into our program.

Learning Outcome: 2.1

Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation.

THE PARK!!

So our most ambitious, amazing and super rewarding experience of the year would have to be our first visit to the park. We talked about it for weeks. We planned it thoroughly and practiced walking around our outdoor area with the children holding onto the ring rope.

Practice makes perfect and then we were ready for the big day! I’m pretty sure the Educators were more excited than the children. And we had the absolute best time...we danced, did sport, read stories, chased bubbles and calmed down with some yoga. We were so so proud of our Sun Room children. This experience was so valuable for us. It instilled a sense of confidence in all of us. It promoted a feeling of joy and wonder. It enhanced the children’s independence, listening skills and helped them explore their environment with curiosity and a sense of adventure.

It was truly wonderful and we will definitely be continuing this outing.

Learning Outcomes:

Children have a strong sense of identity.
Children are connected with and contribute to their world.
Children have a strong sense of wellbeing.
Children are confident and involved learners.
Children are effective communicators.

CHRISTMAS

"The most wonderful time of the year!"

We have definitely been getting into the Christmas Spirit! We enjoyed painting Christmas Trees and Santa Sacks; we made beautiful gum-leaf wreaths; We loved decorating our tree together and exploring our Christmas Sensory Tub and all our playdough experiences . . . "Can you make a Reindeer?" "Can you decorate your Christmas Tree?"

We have loved learning our Christmas Song "Jingle Bells" and we enjoyed the stories "There was an old lady who swallowed a star!"

- P. Crumble, Louis Shea

and "We're going on an Elf Chase"

- Martha Mumford, Laura Hughes