Kindergarten
Curious and Engaged Children!
The Kindergarten is full of curious and engaged children who see the wonder and excitement in all things new! These 3 and 4 year olds bring their questions and interests to all experiences. We have begun exploring our unit around community, identity and belonging by building the children’s awareness of who they are and how we explore our world.
This unit is about building awareness of our own individuality and then how that contributes to our awareness of nurturing our Kindergarten community. Understanding that ‘our own individual identity supports our group identity’ allows us to consider how we are connected, what our similarities and differences are, and how we can work together to create and to build knowledge, skills and understanding and value others and our own contributions.
Through sharing experiences and exploring our world children engage and wonder: How can we make the water flow in the sand pit? How can we set up our imaginary shop using rocks as products? What do pirates do? Can I build a structure to my design? Can I make something with these boxes? How does it work? Constant inquiries and opportunities help to imagine spaces, worlds and experiences beyond our immediate environment.
Through these child led and teacher scaffolded experiences we are building understandings, developing skills (social skills, research skills, self-management skills, thinking skills and communication skills) that can be used in different ways and contexts. Embedded in these experiences are opportunities to build knowledge. How can we measure this creation (counting and informal measurement)? How can we find the treasure using a map (early literacy and spatial relations)? How are we the same and different in our families (comparing and analysing)? How can we express ourselves in French (oral communication and language skills)? What can we learn from books (early literacy and research)?
Children are engaged and empowered learners. We delight in the connections they make from their prior experiences and knowledge, to new ones and we nurture this process with questions and conversations.
The Kindergarten children have arrived! Their excitement and interest are building to explore not only their own Kindergarten community, but to expand beyond into the Preshil community and we look forward to seeing this growth through their eyes!
Lara Ronalds, Poppy Woodhouse
& Courtney Booth
Kindergarten Teachers
lara.Ronalds@preshil.vic.edu.au