Forest (3 Year Old Kindergarten) Curriculum

Emotional Regulation Curriculum in the Forest Room:

This whole term, we have been working on learning our emotions, discovering what makes us feel a certain way, looking at different 'clues', and supporting children in regulation techniques.

Emotions can be tricky to understand, regulate, and deal with when you aren't too sure what you are feeling. That's why within Forest Room, we will investigate different emotions week by week and understand how they can feel in our body, what can trigger these emotions, and ways we can deal with them. To start with this conversation, we identify simple emotions including happy, sad, angry, shocked, surprised, and scared.

Gradually, we built and started to identify the same emotions alongside using the Zones of Regulation with the help of a friend called 'Pinky', and one of our puppets, ‘Gail the Snail’.

Throughout the weeks, we had dived deep into the different zones, emotions, and brainstormed what makes us feel that way, how we could help ourselves, and made connections. The children love to share and have the opportunity to voice their ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and we share this with families in our weekly summary and on our wall.

To support children in identifying these feelings in themselves and others, we talk about ‘clues.’ These clues could include facial expressions and demeanour. However, at times no ‘clue’ may be present; however, we can always use our words and ask our peers, “Are you okay?”, putting our kindness hat on.

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.

Cooking with Ash:

Weeks 1 to 6 Recap

Wow! What an amazing six weeks of cooking we have had! It has been amazing to see the children so engaged each time we cook. They have lots of chances to try new food and explore different cooking techniques.

We have six more weeks of cooking that will be extended into the beginning of Term 3. Cooking each week will be completed on a different day, to give opportunities to all children to participate.

We have observed children trying new food within these experiences, which has carried over into our eating times (morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea). Children have been asking questions around food, including what is for lunch today, what the ingredients are inside (usually if there’s chicken in it), what it smells like, and the children love to guess the flavour of our muffins/ slices.

Mindfulness:

We have been exploring different ways to calm and regulate our bodies. At the moment, the children have been busy engaging in Yoga (with a Forest Family), Cosmic Kids yoga, calming doodling, and pinwheel breathing. 

Regulating a child's body is crucial for their overall development and well-being. It's about managing energy levels, emotions, and behavior, which allows children to focus, learn, and interact positively with others.