Kindergarten
The children on Rob's new platform
This term, the team in the Kindergarten will be exploring the Transdisciplinary Theme, ‘How We Organise Ourselves’; an inquiry into the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities; the structure and function of organizations; societal decision-making; economic activities and their impact on humankind and the environment. Our central idea is Systems Have Functions and our lines of inquiry include: how living things belong to environments that meet their needs and how trade and currency are used.
The line of inquiry exploring how living things belong to environments that meet their needs will be supported in the Kindergarten room through experiences and provocations in our program and through a PlayWorld. A Conceptual PlayWorld is where children and teachers establish a shared imaginative space for play, inspired by a story or work of literature.
The children get to know the central characters, and develop a strong empathy with them through reading, listening, questioning, and imagining. From this strong base, the children, and teachers adopt characters from the story, or their real life experience, and begin to play together as play partners. We will use the book Sophie Scott Goes South by Alison Lester to provoke the children’s interest in adventure, Antarctica and science. We plan to make and create our own Antarctic ships to enter and exit the PlayWorld. This is the place where educators transition with the children into an imaginary world where scientific concepts will be explored and we can embody our key learning through dramatic play.
So what will we be learning? Our learning intentions for the children include: recognising common features of animals, for example, head, legs and wings, describing the use of animal body parts for particular purposes, for example, moving and feeding, recognising that different living things live in different places, for example, land and water and articulating why. This learning will happen when the children develop empathy with some of the characters in the story and they will be required to assist the characters in solving a problem. For example an emperor or adelie penguin may find its way into the Kindergarten and the children will have to create a habitat to look after it until it can be returned to Antarctica.
In addition we hope to visit Sea Life Aquarium to encourage shared and sustained interest in our learning and develop curiosity and questions around living things and the environments they belong to. The learning in our PlayWorld does not stand alone and is connected to the activities and experiences of the broader Kindergarten program.
This learning area provides opportunities for children to engage with the natural world through a lens of deeper understanding about the unique interdependencies between living things and environments. We encourage families to support children to share their learning, and to explore connections between their experiences and observations at and outside of Kindergarten, such as in their gardens or local parks.
Poppy Woodhouse Talitha Crawford & Courtney Booth
Kindergarten Teachers
poppy.woodhouse@preshil.vic.edu.au