Kindergarten News

Marram:

This week we continued our learning journey about Australian Indigenous culture and history, and combined it with another big area of interest – exploring different musical instruments. 

This week we introduced another instrument - wooden clapping sticks. We learnt about how clapping sticks are a traditional Australian Aboriginal instrument, and we practiced tapping the sticks together to create a rhythm that goes along with a song. It was wonderful to see the children enjoying making music alongside their peers. 

Another current interest in our group is maps! 

This week the children extended on this interest by working collaboratively to create a large-scale map of our kindergarten. It was fascinating to see our environment from the children’s perspective, and to see which elements of the classroom they included on the map. 

We discussed concepts such as size, shapes, distinguishing features, and distance between locations. The experience also provided children with the opportunity to work side-by-side and talk to each other about what they were drawing. Thank you for another fantastic week of learning at kindergarten!

Theresa and Mardi

Budja:

What a busy and fun filled learning week we had with the Budja class last week. 

Our focus around personal identity and similarities and differences led to many rich and vibrant moments :) 

We started our week discussing ourselves, this conversation opened the children's awareness and perspectives to see that while we are the same in many ways, there are differences that make each of us special and unique. This discussion extended on to creating a 'birthday calendar' where each child drew a self portrait on a slice of wood branch and we added their name and birthday. 

As part of the process, the children had to sand the wood and then help drill the hole for it to be hung. This extended the children's ability to take positive risks as well as develop growth mindsets in overcoming new or challenging tasks. 

We visited the garden for the first time this week, the children adored exploring the fruit trees and searching for insects also. This is a wonderful aspect of being a part of the MPRPSK community and the wider learning environments found within the school.   

Other parts of the week included building a 'disco rocket' and dancing for over half an hour! using the oranges on the kinder tree as a special rest time activity around senses, our Mandarin class with Cristina and lots of construction and creative experiences.

 We can't wait to see what this week will bring!  

Al, Carol and Mardi.  

Gawarn:

We have had some wonderful calming and relaxing group moments, with the children eagerly and enthusiastically engaging in yoga and a trip up to the school gardens. Yoga is exercise-driven fun that can help children develop muscle tone and co-ordination, body and spatial awareness, balance and concentration. 

It also supports children in being able to follow directions, enhances co-operation and team work and of course lots of fun, humour, happiness and satisfaction. Nature supports self-regulation and management of emotions, allows for and supports use of their senses whilst engaging in learning relationships.

We have continued with our self-portraits – adding some colour and words to support our identity as well as reading some books about feelings as we look at similarities and differences. 

There is much zest and joy in our outdoor environment and we love creating new obstacle courses and challenging ourselves. We also explored some shadows and will continue this – looking at the children’s prior knowledge and expanding on this.

Have a fabulous week!

Kelly-Anne, Amelia and Cristina

Wimbi and Dharug:

We are finding much delight and contentment in our environment and some repetitive experiences. These repetitive experiences allows for children to know what to expect and predict, strengthens the neural processors for learning, mastery and retention of knowledge as well as confidence to progress. Whilst they have been enjoying these experiences they are forging forward and attempting new skills – particularly with manipulative construction materials and imaginative play.

They are loving some music and movement and this helps the body and the mind work together – it also enhances development in language acquisition, meaning of words, memory, melody and rhythm.

We look forward to another wonderful week of learning.

Have a fantastic week!

Kelly-Anne, Amelia and Nicole.