Early Learning Centre

Happy Early Childhood Educators Day

Wednesday 7 September is the day that we celebrate all Early Childhood Educators.  I want to ‘shout out’ to all our amazing Early Learning Centre staff, who every single day care for, nurture and support the learning of all our little learners. Thank you to Gabbi, Katrina, Silvina, Jess and Bernie for all the work you do supporting, not only the learning and development of our early learners, but they also the valuable support you provide to me in my role.  Thank you.

Acts of Kindness

Our Piccino’s are becoming more and more aware of what it means to be kind. As with many ways of being, the concept can seem abstract until the children make the connection between that and their own behaviours.  Which is why we explicitly teach the children about kindness from the outset in Piccolo.  Here’s a sample of some of the thoughts about kindness from our Piccino’s.

Sybil – let others have a turn instead of having two turns

Will – help them if they are having trouble tying their hair ties

Elise – I can sit next to someone who looks confused

Charlie – if someone gets hurt, I can ask ‘are you okay’

Zoe – if somebody falls over and has a cut, I would tell the teachers to get a bandaid

And from our Piccolo’s 

Lucy – play together

Sophie – play with them all day and love each other

Hugo – play with them

You can see that as the children learn more about kindness their idea of how they can be kind develops.

Writing their name

For kindergarten aged children, writing is a really tricky skill. A child not only needs to be able to hold and use a pencil, they also, need to see and remember the letters correctly. Kindergarten aged children are also not expected to understand how our letter shapes match up with sounds to make words. This means, they aren’t really ‘writing’ their name, they are copying it like a picture! 

Whilst we love that children are motivated by writing their name and that some children are really good at it in kindergarten – we also want children to master the pre-writing shapes and patterns you can see below.

Pre-writing patterns are the basic shapes that make up the letters of the alphabet. We know that children who are really good at these shapes and patterns are more likely to be successful when they start learning to write at school.

It is really important that children build their pre-writing skills and hand strength before they start learning how to write letters and words. Below you can see how Huw has used the playdough to not only strengthen his hand muscles (rolling, squishing and pressing), but he has used the letter shapes to ‘write’ his name.  It doesn’t matter how your child makes their mark – the important thing is that they have an opportunity to do so every day.

Have a great week.

Frances O'Brien

Director Early Learning Centre