Sun Room

Here we are at the end of Term 1.

The children have settled in so well to Sun Room life; making new friends, learning new skills, understanding new routines and taking on some exciting new challenges in regards to self help skills and independence.

This term was all about welcoming the children and discovering what they can do, who they are, how do they learn and what are their strengths and interests.

One of our group goals for this term was working on our self help skills.

Self help skills are the abilities that children gradually attain to give them more independence and essentially, a voice.

Some of the ways we support self help skills are through our activities/experiences, observing/watching their peers, role playing and interactions.

Children are unique individuals and all learn in their own way. It is by allowing them to try, to practice and to trust in them that allows the child a positive self identity and a safe place to try new things.

We will continue to support the learning of self help skills throughout the whole year. This is done in the following areas:-

dressing/undressing;
self feeding;
clearing dishes;
returning belongings to own bag;
placing water bottle on trolley;
packing up skills;
finding their own bed, locker, hat, etc; and
toileting (when ready)

One of our main focuses for this term in regards to our self help skills was our Sun Smart Program. Here we were not only teaching the children about the importance of being Sun Smart but also giving them the tools, time and knowledge to support this learning and the independence and responsibility to take part in it.

Below is a summary of our Sun Smart Program in Sun Room:

Since the beginning of the year we have involved the children in our Sun Smart program to help with their understanding and with supporting their self help skills - but what does that actually mean?

We talk about the weather, we involve the children in the sunscreen process and we talk about wearing hats outside.

Over the term we focused on our learning about being SunSmart, protecting our skin and eyes and having an understanding of why we need to put sunscreen on.

Having these conversations daily with children helps build on their awareness, knowledge and understanding of being SunSmart.

We also want to involve the children as much as possible. This in turn will support their self help skills, responsibility and confidence.

So how do we do this?

Each child has their own hat with their name and photo on it. We have hat hooks outside and the children are encouraged to find their hat and pop it on. Gentle reminders throughout the day are sometimes needed such as “where is your hat?” or “can you find your hat” and we are always there to help and support this.

With Sunscreen, we apply this to the children and as we do we talk about what we are doing and why. Once we have done this we add some more to the child’s skin and encourage them to go to the mirror and rub it all in. They are loving this added responsibility and trust and are just so proud of themselves when they have it all rubbed in and know they are ready for outside play.

To further help with our learning we are singing along to Jay Laga’aia’s song “You’ve gotta be SunSmart”. This is a fun, upbeat song that makes you want to dance and helps you remember to follow the five SunSmart steps - Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek and Slide.

We have a basket of props containing hats, sunglasses, shirts and sunscreen for the children to use which helps assist their learning.