Sun Room Term 2

Welcome

Hello to all our Sun room Families, 

Term two has come to a close, I must say it came around quicker than I expected. 

I hope that you have all been coping well and staying as safe as possible with the current COVID-19 situation. 

Let me begin this terms reflection by wishing all our children who have had birthdays between April and June a very happy birthday. Milan, Aaron & Abigail, Adam, Eli, Adele and Flossie. 

Learning outcome 1-Children feel safe secure and supported. 

Now let’s get into all our learning for this term.                                                                                          Yoga 

This term Nicole commenced our well being program with Yoga!  Nicole started with teaching the children very simple Yoga moves such as “down dog” & “table top”. As well as a number of calming breathing techniques. 

Doing Yoga provides enormous benefits. Such as physicality, enhancing balance & flexibility as well as strength, coordination and body

awareness. In addition to these benefits their concentration, sense of calmness and relaxation also improves. 

Leaning outcome 3- Children develop increasing responsibility for 

their own health and physical well being. 

Imaginative Play 

Our Sun room children have really been developing their ever-growing imaginations. They have been doing this through lots of avenues, one of the best ways to do this is through imaginative play. 

During this term the children really have been using the home corner in many different ways, our home office of phones, keyboards and a computer mouse has made its way from it’s own station to form part of home corner. The children set it up on the table, so they can do typing and answering of all the incoming phone calls. The typing on the key board is a really fun way for the children to develop their fine motor skills. 

During June we focused on construction and building. This proved to be a big hit with all the children. We set up a number of different experiences from sand play with digger trucks (sensory play), to a picture matching station to help the children work on their problem solving skills and even a race car track on one of our tables. 

We have a number of dads that work in the construction field and it was really nice to see the children using their imaginations.  It was great to watch some of them pretend to be their dads. We got a few comments from the dads saying how much they were loving our construction art display out the front of our room. 

Learning outcome 2- Children are empowered to make choices & problem solve. 

Learning outcome 4- Children follow and extend their own interests with enthusiasm.

Learning outcome 4- Children use play to investigated, imagine and explore ideas.

Developing Independence

Over this term we have been focusing on developing the children’s self-help skills. 

The ways in which we have been working on this is by getting the children to self-serve their meals.  This has mostly been focused on for lunch times.

We have also been doing our own dishes where the children rinse their bowls in warm soapy water. This has given the children a real sense of independence, and has now just become part of the lunch time routine. With the current growing pandemic we have also been making sure the children are understanding the importance of hand washing with warm water and soap not just rinsing them under water. 

Learning outcome 4 Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another. 

Outcome 2 Become socially responsible and show respect for the environment. 

Arts & Crafts 

Our children are really loving arts and crafts. These experiences enhance & scaffolds so many skills fine motor, hand-eye coordination and dexterity, creativity, imagination and self-expression. 

Over the past 12 weeks, we have created Anzac wreaths, engaged in painting rocks, created our own worlds for world environment day by using 

green & blue paint and created an underwater world. We have created many different types of arts according to the seasons like using leaves for Autumn and created a Winter collage. To end the term we focused on construction where the children created many different works of art such as wheel paintings & construction hard hats. 

Learning outcome 4- Manipulate objects and experiment with 

Cause and effect, trial and error and motion. 

Use play to investigate and explore new ideas. 

Exploring Science

Starting from the second half of this term we

incorporated STEAM this stands for 

Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Maths,

into our program to support children's cognitive development. Our main focus has been on learning colours through experiments and other extended activities. 

The experiments have taken place at least once every two weeks and supported by other experiences in between. We have tried these experiments on different days of the week in order to include all the children. We have also tried experiments in small groups or individually based on children's interests and developments.  Our children have actively participated in the "travelling rainbow" and "milk fireworks", which have inspired their interests and curiosity in exploring colour concepts. To extend their learning on colours we have also set up colour matching activities as well as coloured wooden blocks. While children are engaging in these activities, we can also assess their learning and adjust our program based on their progress.