Early Learning

Koalas

The Koalas are off to a flying start as they return to Kinder for Term 4.

Their focus has been on shared play and learning with others, demonstrating that their social skills are progressing through associative modes of play to more complex cooperative play.

Children are re-telling favourite stories to one another with books, inventing games in the Home Corner, and taking turns with board games in group play. It's exciting to see how far they have come during their first year of Kinder!

Engaging with letters and sight words has also been a strong interest among the Koala children this week. Nora and Luna made invitations, writing down lots of familiar letters and symbols to represent the words: "Come to my house for icy poles!". Lots of children have been matching letter tiles to word cards to form words. Billie formed some more words, like "about", from his memory of sight words.

Another way we have been enjoying words is with fun rhyming books. One of our favourite authors among our group is Antonia Pesenti. Her books Rhyme Hungry and Rhyme Cordial give us all lots of laughs. In other rhyming stories, children have been guessing what might happen next just by thinking of a possible rhyming word!

The VEYLD Framework Outcome 5, Children are Effective Communicators, promotes children's recognition of symbols and sentence structure as a powerful method of communication. Text is understood and appreciated for the patterns in sounds, rhymes and humour within context. We develop reciprocal communication skills while sharing a board game with friends, or being parents for the dolls in the Home Corner.

Communication by listening, reciprocating, writing and rhyming has been so much fun.

Sian Duggan

Koala Group Educator