Glen Education Fern St 

Exploring A New Learning Environment 

Amelia Carter-Watson, Early Childhood Educator

The children expressed an interest in making our outdoor environment more colourful and vibrant. Together with the children we explored this idea and discussed the ways that we could make that happen. Ideas started flowing and we decided to decorate the trees outside with ribbons and shiny gems. The children discovered rainbows being reflected through the shiny gems on the tree and inquired on how that happens. We used this opportunity to extend the children’s learning further by talking about light and shadows, colours using light and different materials - a very STEM based approach. We see so much potential to have children learn through inquiry and STEM at our kindergarten using our environment and look forward to doing more of this over the year. 

The Educators at Glen Fern Street Kindergarten are expanding children's knowledge when they share ideas and knowledge with children through shared sustained thinking. By providing connections and continuity between learning experiences in different settings, Educators are making learning more meaningful and increase all children’s feelings of belonging. The children are beginning to develop understandings of themselves and their world through active, hands-on investigation. Our supportive active learning environment encourages all children’s engagement in learning, which can be recognised as deep concentration and complete focus on what captures their curiosity and interests.  The children have many ways of seeing the world and are developing different processes of learning and as Educators we are recognising that children are developing their own preferred learning styles and will continue to provide and encourage a learning environment that is flexible, open-ended, and positive to children's learning dispositions. (EYLF V2.0 Outcome 4- Children are confidant and involved learners)