Forest Room Term 3 Newsletter

Written By Bronwyn

Hello Families,

Wow well what a term that was! No one could have imagined what unfolded this term let alone what we still face in 2020. I have to say as a community at Haven and within our local suburbs that I am so proud how we have all stuck together, done the right thing and fought this virus. 

This pandemic has affected every single one of us in a variety of ways and I do hope that you are all well, surviving and looking forward to coming back for hopefully a normal (ish) Term 4.

Please know that we appreciate every single kind, word, message, photo or video that has been sent during this time and we are so grateful to have amazing families and children within the Forest Room and Haven Early Learning. 

As always know we are always here for families to provide support, advice, feedback and comfort please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything.

Remote Learning

Well the whole remote learning experience was definitely a new, interesting and challenging task, but as a leader I couldn’t be prouder of what we as a team put out and achieved. We hope that you enjoyed our remote learning program and that your children found it engaging, interesting and resourceful. 

 

Our Zoom group times were a highlight of each our weeks and it was so lovely to see the children’s faces each week. We were ecstatic to see them all singing along, dancing and contributing each week. 

 

Our Remote Learning program was as followed:

Week One- At home activity ideas and resources (including Red Nose Day)

Week Two- Science Week

Week Three- Art and Crafts 

Week Four and Five- Literacy and Numeracy (Including Father Days and R U OK Day)

Week Six -Dance, Movement and Exercise 

Week Seven- All About me

 

If you would like any of the remote leaning content or have some feedback from this this. Please let us know

Group Times

This term our group times have continued the focus topic of emotions .

Last term the children learnt all about the individual emotions, how they look on our bodies, how they feel within and the different things that can make us feel certain emotions. This term the children leant all about how our emotions come together and how we can recognize, express and manage our emotions as a whole.

The Colour Monster

The colour monster is a beautiful story that explains to children their different emotions and how our emotions don’t work well when they are all mixed up. The colour monster represents emotions as different colours being: Angry-red, Happy- yellow, Calm- green, Sad-Blue and Love- Pink.  The colour monster goes through sorting all of our emotions into their coloured jars and navigating out way through each emotion at a time.

The Perfect Square 

The perfect square is a beautiful story that encompasses themes of the days of the week and emotions. This story goes through explaining that perfect isn’t always best and there is so many amazing things can be achieved even when you might be feeling ‘crumpled’ and ‘torn’ 

This story the square begins as a perfect square who has 4 equal sides and is perfectly happy. However, as the days go on something new happens to the square, such as:

  • Monday was cut into holes but made himself into a fountain
  • Tuesday was torn into scraps but turned into a garden
  • Wednesday shredded into strips but made a park

Then by Sunday the square is perfectly square again however doesn’t like it and then turns into a window to view all the beautiful things, showing that there is always something that can be achieved and taken from situations- It is ok for things not to go ok.

 

Further Stories encompassing emotions

  • The Feelings Book
  • The little mouse who lost her squeak

Auslan Signing

As im sure you are aware this term our focus for our Auslan signing has been the songs 

  • Der Glumph
  • You are my sunshine

The children took to these songs so quickly and they have been huge success with all the children singing along as a group and also signing the key words in Auslan. If you haven't already put these songs on for your children and get them to teach you, they will melt your heart and light up any day. Our new focus songs for term 4 will be You've got a friend in me and Miss Polly had a Dolly.

 

https://open.spotify.com/track/3i7hDz7dB3E1eZRnxG5Hwb?si=Zxo5A1R1Q526awm8kz4o5w

Home Corner Play

A big theme this term has been imaginative dramatic play with the home corner being transformed into different play scenes. This has included:

 

Car Play

Transforming our home corner into a car exploration area the children were all interested in seeing how they could create different tracks, ramps , roads and of course drive all the cars around with one another.  This area was great to introduce children into bring loose parts in their play in the form of the cardboard rolls, logs, rocks etc  Loose parts gives children the freedom to create by their own rules and design encouraging complete open minded experience, creativity and imagination.

Baby Doll Play

Creating a complete area all about baby dolls it was amazing to see how all children quickly doted over the baby dolls and wanted to see how they could best take care of them. In this area we had everything from mums, dad, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, babies and pets. The children loved feeding the babies, giving them ‘medicine’, changing their nappies and putting them to sleep. Playing with baby dolls helps children to build empathy and compassion and allows children to explore roles in play.

Ice Cream Shop

Whenever we set up some type of restaurant, shop or kitchen the children’s imaginations come to life and we the children come together to create and collaborate. Setting up an ice cream shop the children loved creating many ice cream flavor combinations and selling them off to their peers.

Home corner play and dramatic play is so valuable to children’s learning. This area is hugely important in developing children’s imagination and creativity in acting out different roles and scripts coming from their ideas and the opinions from their peers. This play area also allows children to build their communication and vocabulary and incorporate problem solving and negotiating skills with one another.

Art Corner and Events

This Term the children have been busy created many masterpieces in the art corner this has included

Pyjama Week - The term started off with a bang with children welcome to wear their cosy, warm pyjamas each day.

Big Green Monsters- a favourite story for all children. With the huge interest in this story we got the children to make their own monsters adding in feature such as  the scraggly purple hair, sharp white teeth and big red eyes.

 

Emotion Face Cookies- Learning all about emotions in our groups time we had some fun incorporating this into Little Chefs with Lainie. What fun the children had making faces on biscuits with lollies.

 

Science Week- Oh what fun we had in science week doing a new experiment each day. This was included in our remote learning with many children also loving these experiments at home.

Iso projects - During lockdown we have the Forest and Field rooms together with the goal of providing children with group experiences and creating different art pieces. This included Finger paintings, Jeans and Genes day,Red nose day, Stamp paintings, Mosaic flowers and  ice cream paintings.

Spring Artwork- Celebrating a new season the children have been engaged in multiple spring theme artwork. This has included cherry blossom paintings and drawings, easel paintings and sunflower drawings.