Forest (3 Year Old Kindergarten) Curriculum

Hello 🤗

As we come to the end of Term 2, we reflect on a wonderful half of the year it has been together. We have been very busy in the Forest Room!

Take a look:

Cooking with Ash:

This term we had so much fun doing Cooking With Ash each week! We explored new foods, new textures and new methods of cooking, such as blenders, ice cream scoops and cookie cutters. We started off making banana cookies, explored how to make “healthy” choc cookies using brown sugar and whole-wheat flour, and blended some frozen mango pieces to make frozen yoghurt! Even though some of our friends didn’t like everything we made, we all gave it a try! It was great to see children trying new foods and discussing what they liked and didn’t like about the cooking process. To wrap up the Cooking With Ash experience, we will do two more sessions, including fruit smoothies and sushi bowls!

Please find a recipe below for one of the Forest Rooms favourite cooking experiences! *we doubled the recipe to make enough for all our friends*

Healthy Choc Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS

125g of butter

1/4 cup of brown sugar

1/2 tsp of vanilla extract

1 egg

3/4 whole wheat flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/4 tsp bi carb soda

1/3 cup chocolate chips

METHOD

Preheat your oven to 180c Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl.

Add the egg and vanilla and beat again.

Add in the flour, oats and bi carb soda and mix well.

Add in your chocolate chips.

Divide your mixture into around 10 equal sized balls.

Press them down into a cookie shape.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Allow to cool before moving them to a wire rack.

These can be stored in an airtight container for up to 4 days.

I hope you enjoy making these at home! We would over to see them if you do! 😊

Where is Galah?

Connecting with reconciliation week, we read the story 'Where is Galah?'. The Forest Room children responded well to this story and enjoyed searching for the Galah in the book.

What a better way to extended and incorporate the Forest Room children's, interest, ideas, voice, and drawings than to create our very own Galah.

Firstly, the children sat down at the table drawing their very own Galah. The children were also able to look through the book again to see if they could spot our friendly Galah on the page and get inspiration from the artist Sally.

Secondly, we all took a seat on the mat, alongside a very big piece of cardboard! Each child (if they wanted) had the opportunity to draw a piece of the Galah on the cardboard. We started with the feet drawn by Olivia W followed by the head at the top by Maggie.

Lastly, we decorated it! We used many different types of materials to create our Galah including, sequences, pom poms, feathers, sticks, glitter and some cut up ribbon.

Inquiry: Worm & more!

Welcome to Forest Room's new pet, it is a SNAIL! Oh and also six worms.

This all extended from our interest in worms, slugs, and moths on the 18th of May.

As soon as we went outside, the Forest Room children started to explore... and there it was... one worm, two worms, three worms!

The number of worms started to increase rapidly as everyone had their wormy goggles on and needed to find more! But wait... we then found something that was a little bit bigger than a worm, "it's a slug!!!" Mason and Olivia W voiced. So now the Forest Room children had their worm and slug goggles on. But wait... we found something new again, a moth! So many different animals in our yard.

On Thursday the 11th, we found a snail and 6 worms in our yard. What a better way than to keep it as our pet to continue to explore and learn all about Snails and worms.

We added soil into a clear container and each had a turn at putting them inside. We then discussed, "What do snails eat?"

Here are our answers:

Sid: Snail eats leaves

Layla: Meat

Zafira: Strawberries

Olivia W: Bugs, worms, and slugs

Aria: Leaves

Olivia F. Bugs

Dean: Worms, bugs

Elena: Banana

Harvey P: Apples

We then found out they eat:

Zucchini, sweet potato, carrots, mushrooms, cucumber and capsicum. They also love any leafy greens!

Off we went to Julia to collect some yummy food for our pets and now we wait, watch and learn!

Emotional regulation:

In the Forest Room we have been busy learning to identify emotions with the help of Zones of Regulation.

We have learnt and expanded our language in order to identify how we are feeling, the colours associated to the Zone and ways we can best support us to regulate.

We learnt:

Green= Happy

Blue= Sad, tired, sick

Yellow= Silly, excited

Red= Angry

The Forest Room children have been so excited to share and able to identify what makes them feel a certain way and how we can help. For example:

Happy (Green Zone):

"I feel happy when...."

Abhirami: Playing with my mum

Kai Ba: sharing the climbing frame

Oscar: playing with my best friends

Silly/ Excited (Yellow Zone):

"How can you help your feel calm?"

Aariv: Go in the sandpit

Dominic: Go on the climbing frame

Sid: Kick a footy

Olivia W: Run and drink some water

Matilda: Sleep

Using the Zones of Regulation as a framework, we aim to help children to:

• Recognise when they are in the different Zones

• Understanding you may feel multiple zones at once, and that is okay.

• Increase their emotional vocabulary so they can explain how they are feeling (how does your body feel when you're angry?)

• Recognise when other people are in different Zones and how we can help them.

• Understand why they are feeling in a particular zone.

• Develop problem-solving skills and resilience

• Identify a range of calming and alerting strategies that support them depending on each mood

Gardening with Sikha:

We are getting back into the gardening season with Sikha! The Forest Room children have been busy planting winter garden vegetables with the children. Including cauliflower, broccolini, radish, and beautiful flowers. We have also just planted native flowers to our Haven Garden and recently purchased some bottlebrush flower seeds!

Bring on Term 3!

From the Forest Room teachers, Lauren, Sikha, Ash, Laura, Makayla, Shivi and Ruby 😊💕