Kindergarten News
Marram:
This week we rounded up the incredible learning our children have undertaken all throughout Term 1 about Indigenous Australian history and culture. We have explored so many topics - from Indigenous musical instruments; language; art; stories; songs; flags; clothing; beliefs and customs; to this week learning about a food that Indigenous Australians have been cooking for thousands of years - damper! We had a go at making our own damper to share and enjoy! We learnt that traditionally, damper is made by crushing a variety of native seeds, and cooking the dough over an open fire. We don’t have access to either of those things, but happily, we do have flour and an oven at kindergarten, so we used those instead. The children each contributed to making our damper, practicing social-emotional skills such as sharing, following directions, and independence; physical skills such as fine motor and hand-eye coordination; cognitive skills such as literacy, numeracy and problem-solving; and language skills. The children were able to build upon the skills learnt when we cooked our own play dough, previously. But I’m sure the best bit was eating it! When the warm damper came out of the oven we spread it with raspberry jam and everyone had a taste!
We look forward to all of our friends for more amazing learning next week!
Theresa and Mardi
Budja:
It was a week of music, songs and games with our Budja class!
We started our week with instruments and singing, following actions as we tapped our claves and shook our egg shakers to some fun and stimulating songs. These moments support each child's ability to follow actions in time to the beat and rhythm of the music as well as in learning to operate in sequences and patterns.
We played group games, such as 'shoe soup', matching two shoes together and then using our Positive Education approaches of growth mindset and risk taking to ask our peers if the shows belonged to them. This was so much fun!
As the curiosity of the children begins to broaden, we have found beautiful moments of conceptual learning occurring in large and small groups. After the children questioned why it was so cold on Friday morning and the ideas and hypotheses they had as to the cause, we shared an app on the screen. This afforded the children the opportunity to observe how the sun shades part of the earth and shines on the other. This conceptual learning about night and day helped the children to understand how their knowledge that 'the sun is hot' creates heat during the daytime.
We are excited to see what this week will bring.
Al, Carol and Mardi.
Gawarn:
We had the most wonderful week of colour! We made our own puppets with some socks, google eyes and fabric paints. The children will decide if they would like to add extras as they envision their puppet character. This is a fantastic expression and communication tool to extend their ‘voice’, explore different identities and points of view and re-enact well know stories. There was some craft colour mixing with Cristina and we enjoyed learning the rainbow song in Auslan. We were able to utilise the big screen to look up some of the images around Holi and discuss that part of this celebration is the Festival of Colours. We sorted some coloured pom poms into the coloured containers and some of the children colluded to create a ‘colour explosion’ into the available bowl.
The home and city building is still of immense interest and they have been making bridges to connect these. They have been using the hard and soft blocks and it is beautiful to observe the symmetry in these designs. The team work and co-construction to conceive the idea and bring it to fruition enabled some great sharing of ‘a job well done’!
After creating the bridge we utilised the large rulers to see how far and long it was. This inspired some of the children to lay down to see if it was the same body length as themselves. We then decided to measure ourselves on a large sheet of paper and will see how tall we grow through the year.
Our caring for pets in our Vets area demonstrated some great awareness around empathy and expression of emotions. Other interests are the mechanics of our duplo vehicles as they pull apart, assemble, invent and construct. The playstixs on the light table are a little tricker, however, it is inspiring to see perseverance and being open to new challenges.
Have a super week!
Kelly-Anne, Amelia and Cristina
Wimbi and Dharug:
The children have noticed some of the construction workers are back! We began to hypothesise about what they might be doing, what would happen next and what they were looking forward to the most. These discussions open up some wonderful sharing of ideas and also the topic of safety. The children are very much looking forward to taking a big slide!
We have been colour sorting using pompoms with tongs. Grasping the pompom and then placing it in the corresponding colour container supports eye tracking and hand muscle strength, which are important for developing pre-reading and pre-writing skills.
Some beautiful moments in the vet area. The enthusiasm to dress up, concern for the pet’s welfare, writing out some notes on care and sharing accessories to look after our furry friends has been awesome. Wonderful ways to assist in self-regulation, develop empathy and prop up our shaping social and emotional skills.
We have started some Easter craft work and look forward to more and some Easter songs over the next few weeks.
Have a wonderful week!
Kelly-Anne, Amelia and Nicole.