3 -Year- Old Kindergarten

Wow, can you believe we are half way through the year already? Term 2 has flown by so quickly and what a jam packed Term it has been in the 3-Year-Old Kindergarten room!

Over Term Two we have participated in some wonderful programs led by the Forest room team that the children have responded positively to, including Danni's Weekly Cooking Program, Sikha's Science Program and the Literacy: Letter of the Week, which we are highlighting in this Terms newsletter.

Cooking Program with Danni

We kick started this Term off by making ANZAC biscuits and on Monday the 24th of April each child was provided the option to make Anzac biscuits in honour of the ANZAC's, we read the story "Lest We Forget" by Kerry Brown, and listened to 'The Last Post' (the bugle call that signifies the end of the day's activities) at Group Time, and we used these moments to discuss what the day meant and how families would send ANZAC biscuits over to the soldiers as well as why we spend the day as an act of remembrance.

In the month of May Danni worked with the children to make beautiful chocolate sprinkle cupcakes! Our cooking program is a huge hit, the children love being involved in creating yummy treats for them to enjoy! This cupcake experience has allowed the children to engage in a hands on activity that required their turn taking skills and listening skills to learn to follow a recipe with Danni before having the mixture baked in the kitchen (which our lovely window into the kitchen allows for the children to watch the process) before enjoying them at afternoon tea time. Watching the whole process from start to finish is such beneficial learning as the children start to develop their critical thinking skills and can see the cause and effect results that the different cooking processes have on basic ingredients.

We also acknowledged Beanies for Brain Cancer Awareness by encouraging the children and staff to wear a beanie and also by making our own beanie cookies with Danni. The children took turns adding the ingredients, mixing them, rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutter to create the beanie shape, before icing them and adding a sultana as a pom pom. 

For the month of June the children took a trip to Italy and made their very own mini pizzas with Danni. They took turns to put their favourite toppings on their own pizzas and made extra that we gave to Field room to enjoy! This cooking experience has been promoting so many conversations around what pizza they like to eat at home and toppings that they like such as mushrooms, pepperoni and fish! Our chefs did a fantastic job and really enjoyed their homemade pizzas at afternoon tea time!

Science with Sikha

Over Term Two the children participated in a range of enriching science experiments lead by our Science expert Sikha and these experiments were a big hit with the children!

We did the following experiments: 

• Sink and Float
• Making Lava Lamps
• Dancing Milk
• Orange fizz
• Volcanic Eruption
• Making sn

To give a snapshot into one of the experiments over week nine the children collaborated to create a volcano! On the Monday they created the volcano out of clay, Tuesday they were invited to take turns to paint the dried volcano and we spoke about the colours of a volcano and then from Wednesday onwards the volcano erupted! The children added food colouring, baking soda and vinegar to create the volcanic eruption and were amazed to see the lava spilling out of the volcano they had built! This was such a fun and fantastic process to follow and supported their critical thinking, hypothesising and imaginative skills further. Thanks Sikha for a wonderful term full of science!

Literacy: Letter of the Week

This Term also saw us start our letter of the week program. With many children starting to show an interest in letters and literacy we decided to create a program that supported letter recognition in a fun an engaging way and the children have been captivated each week while learning about the new letter.

To start out literacy program each day we sing the alphabet as well as a very catchy phonics song that supports the children to recognise the letters and learn the sounds that each letter makes. 

With the help of Elmo we then sing the letter of the week song that announces to the children what letter we will be looking at for the day before discussing words that begin with that letter. For example, for the letters A the children came up with the words: apple, avocado, ant, airplane, alligator and astronaut. 

To finish this group time we read a book that begins with our focus letter where the children were encouraged to listen for words that began with this letter. The children have been so engaged at this group time and we will continue going through the rest of the alphabet in Term 3!

It has been a fantastic Term full of learning and we look forward to Term Three!

The Forest room team: Kelly, Sikha, Kristyn, Danni and Demmi