Learning Across the ELC

Wattle Room 

Pretend play is a vital part of a child's growth, providing them with the opportunity to explore, learn, and develop in a fun and meaningful way. It enhances their imagination and creativity when they take on different roles, and to create fun scenarios. 

Wattle children have been engaged in a tea party and mud kitchen experience which extends on our inquiry learning ‘Language of welcome', in a fun and enriching way for children to practice a variety of life skills while having a good time. Children have brought lots of experience and knowledge from their daily life, when they shared ideas and opinions. They have demonstrated their sharing and turn taking skills, while using their words and waiting nicely. This experience also helped children develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination when children were setting up the tea party, pouring drinks, and serving food. It also provides a chance for children to connect and communicate with each other in a daily and familiar scenario. 

Mud kitchen is a favourite among our children, and it's not hard to see why. We noticed how purposeful and determined our children were and how they had a fantastic time engaging in this play. With an assortment of utensils, pots, muffin tins and natural resources to explore the mud with, they spent hours creating all sorts of imaginative mud pies and cakes. Some children used the muffin tins to make mini-mud cupcakes, while others were busy mixing mud potions. The possibilities were endless, and the children's creativity was truly impressive.

According to Steiner’s theories, providing children with real life tasks can give them a sense of belonging and connectedness with the world. Connecting with nature is always enjoyable and important for children’s growth and development. 

Learning Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners

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

Key indicator: Children practice and imagine relationships and experiences in their daily lives through pretend or symbolic play.

The Wattle Team

Banksia Room 

Exploring Our Identity

In our Banksia Blue group, we have been exploring the inquiry of ‘Belonging’ and ‘The Language of Welcome’, encouraging children to take pride in their identity. As valued members of the community, it is important for children to feel recognised and appreciated for who they are. To support this, Ms. De Alwis invited the children to do a special sign-in activity, to acknowledge their presence each day by identifying their images or names. The children eagerly searched for their names and experimented with writing. This simple yet meaningful activity not only nurtured a sense of belonging but also enhanced the children’s confidence in self-expression.

We have also been exploring the meaning of Welcome and the importance of respecting diverse cultures and identities. When the children wondered how to say ‘Hello’ in different languages to welcome others, we read the book, ‘Hello’ by Tony Flowers to learn about the most frequently spoken languages in Australia. Following this, we invited members of our ELC/School community into our classroom to share the children's learning about welcoming others. The children were delighted to welcome our library teacher, Mrs. Kirk, and Miss Helen from the ELC into the Banksia classroom.

Dolly and Emma- “We can say ‘Hello’ and ‘Niina Marni’ to Miss Kirk.”

Aliraza and Olivia- “We say ‘Yiasou’ to Miss Helen.” 

Belonging as a group

Over the past few weeks, Ms. Carr has introduced board games and action songs to the Banksia Gold children to foster a strong sense of Belonging, aligning with our year-long inquiry. These collaborative activities help develop essential skills such as memory, turn-taking, sharing, numeracy, oral language, and positive social interactions. Through these experiences, children have built strong connections with their peers while enjoying teamwork, supporting one another, and feeling a genuine sense of welcome and inclusion in our group.

The Banksia Team                                                                  

Learning in Preschool

This week our Preschool children went on excursions to the South Australian Museum over two days. The Museum provides a space that celebrates cultures, animals, art and artefacts. A space where everyone is welcome and everything belongs with significant meaning. It was a great connection to our inquiry 'Belonging Nurtures Authentic Connections' and our current focus The Language Of Welcome. Artefacts were classified and grouped in exhibits like families. Each floor is curated in a way that children could engage in their own discovery, exploring curiosities with all their senses through storytelling, making real world connections. 

We channelled this excursion experience to promote wonder and investigation, as well as challenge children's thinking. We loved watching children make connections with our learning at Preschool, like noticing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags on the front door. They got so excited when they found a real head dress from the island nations, just like on the Torres Strait Island flag. They were curious about how some of the Indigenous baskets, weapons and jewellery items were constructed, thinking about materials we could use back at Preschool. 

Children interested in creative arts at Preschool were learning about Islander culture through masks, clothing and head dresses. They were investigating colour and shape in art pieces, jewellery and all of the shimmering mineral rocks displayed as a rainbow of colour. Walking through the ocean displays, they were finding animals on the biodiversity level, and the giant whales, sharks and dinosaur skeletons on the ground floor were hugely popular, especially seeing how many teeth the sharks had. 

The sensory experience of the ice wall was a great way to feel the temperature in Antarctica and cool us down. Each child had opportunities to draw things that fascinated them and engage in some mapping too, standing on one leg when they found the flamingo and searching for the big red kangaroo. There were so many questions, and we could see children taking ownership of their own learning. Going on a bus ride was also a highlight for most children; they noticed the Loreto Crest on the bus, and they even spotted the Aboriginal flag painted on the Tandanya building as we drove past. 

All of the children were kind and respectful to our bus driver Mr Harkness and shared some of their museum highlights with him on the drive back to Preschool.

The Preschool Team