Room Updates
Didge you know that all rooms at Haven engage in an Acknowledgment of Country everyday? As a service we are committed to reconciliation and acknowledging the traditional owners of Bunurong land.
River and Sun use this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU8XvjhA8gw
Forest and Field say the acknowledgment as pictured.
River
The River room has been encouraging non-verbal communication to help children develop their communication skills and involvement within the room. This has included learning key word sign which is great for individuals who are developing their language and aims to support understanding and expression of language. Some hand gestures that have been learnt include "more, finished, thankyou, stop, go and wait'.
In the 0-2 year old age group their focus topic over Term 2 has been animals. This has included singing songs, making paper farm animals, sensory activities, puzzles, books and photos on display. A room favourite is definitely '5 little ducks' and 'old McDonald had a farm', while also spotting photos on their own family animals including dogs & cats.
Sun
For Sun Room this term our Inquiry Project coming from the children's interest has been Transport!
Our focus questions were “What are the different types of transport?” and “ What transport vehicles help us?
Some highlights of this topic have included:
-Joining Field Room's Police Incursion with the children being able to see a Police Car up close.
-Families sharing photos of their children's experience on different types of transport. We got cars, trains, planes, boats, gondola’s, tractor’s, motor bikes and lots more which gave a great basis for visual learning as we looked at the photos and engages in conversations around what we saw.
-We also added a different transport provocation of play each week to our indoor/outdoor curriculum which enhanced the children’s learning.
-Our Group Times included many transport songs such as “The Wheels on the Bus”, “Zoom Zoom, Zoom, we’re going to the moon” and “Nee Naw The Little Fire Engine”
-Art experiences included a police car pasting activity (by Maggie) and a collaborative art project with Issy where the children made rescue transport vehicles out of cardboard boxes. Of course, when they were completed all the children had a wonderful time driving them around outside.
-Lastly, we also explored Road Safety Week, focusing on crossing the road safely by using our walking feet, listening ears, looking eyes and holding hands. We practiced this as we went out of Haven and crossed the road with our Field Room friends. During this time we discovered the colours of the traffic lights and enjoyed songs including “Green says Stop!” where we learnt the Auslan signs for Stop, Go and Slow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEHBrmZxAf8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow1i916uYYU
Forest
Over the last couple of weeks, we have incorporated a self-help art station to encourage children to build, create, and extend their sense of agency. This shelf includes recyclable goods (loose parts, lids, bottles, boxes, and paper rolls), alongside sticky tape, masking tape, and glue to support new creations.
The children have already been very busy making their masterpieces, including; a car, a laptop, people, and a letterbox. During this, the children are also expanding on their knowledge of safety through the use of scissors and pulling the masking tape appropriately. We also continue to discuss how we can care for our items in Forest Room including, putting the lid on the glue stick and texters.
Following on from this growing interest, we will continue to implement different ways children can create meaning, for example, implementing a group project, an ongoing self-project (continually coming back to it to extend and create), and eventually a fun incursion with raw art.
We can’t wait to continue to see what the children create 😊
Field
The brain can be a complex subject and hard to understand, but not for the kinder children! But how did we teach you we ask? .. well we can give you a quick over view. Over the past 11 weeks in 4 year old Kinder we have been focusing heavily on emotional regulation. We have done this through the zones of regulation, which provides children with tools to think and talk about how they feeling on the inside, while sorting their emotions into 4 coloured zones, in which we all experience on a daily basis. The brain, well the amygdala is in charge of our feelings, so what better way then to teach the children all about this so they can be in control of processing emotions and emotional reactions. As a group we discussed strategies that support our amygdala to make its way back to the green zone (ready to learn, happy, calm) which is where we want to spend most of our day. To further support the children they all named and created amygdala's. The reason for this, is that it is hard enough to name our own emotions so what better way then to blame our amygdala (Alfie, Buddy, Sonny, Princess Gelato, Lolly - just to name a few). This further supported the children in feeling comfortable. Examples included "Buddy is in the blue zone - someone knocked my tower down". Here, children are simply naming an emotion not directly aimed at themselves or impacting their reactions helping to support them in processing what is happening/ how they are feeling. For a great book around emotions, check out 'Ups and Downs' By Karen Young.
