Banksia Group

Cooking

We recently made minestrone soup and the children were so proud and displayed a lovely sense of ownership and talked about what vegetable they had brought in, before chopping it up. So many of them, tried the soup and many ate a few bowls! We are often cooking and there are always some children keen to help. This promotes, community, turn taking, waiting, fine motor and gross motor skills, counting and measuring.  

Kindness and Bucket Filling

We read the ‘Filling a bucket’ story recently and we are always talking about kindness at kinder and how it looks, feels and how we show kindness to each other. Every day we are supporting children across incidental interactions as they happen and also with intentionally discussions as a group. The children have become very familiar with the language and identifying kindness from each other. We filled the bucket for the first time and celebrated by having a pjs and pancake party.

Mindfulness and relaxation sessions

The sessions with Kath have been a lovely experience for the children. Listening to theinstructions and taking part in the relaxation session. There were 3 sessions, each buildingon the previous. The last session incorporating the use of the instruments with the children.

Body safety

The body safety sessions this term went well and the children were engaged and showed an understanding about their body and how they are in charge of it. To support the children we continued within the program exploring emotions and talking about feelings and how we use our bodies at kinder and respecting other people’s space. The children met Gail the snail recently and have been getting to know her. She has been talking to them about feeling scared and what she can do when she does feel scared or worried. 

Gail the snail is used to explore and support social and emotional learning with the children. We will continue using Gail the snail with the kinder children. We have alsointroduced another puppet, Coco Koala which the children can use when they are sad orupset as a comfort.As the weather gets colder, we continue to play outside, so please pack weatherappropriate clothing and it’s a good time to check that the spare clothing in the bag still fitsand is weather appropriate.The parent chats have finished up for the term however I am always available for a chat,and we can make a time via phone, zoom or in person as needed. I have been checking in with families about what school children will be attending and we usually invite families to share that information if they would like too, in term 3 so people can make some connections and playdates if they want too.

Thanks,

 Kirsty, Amy and Marilyn