4-year-old Kindergarten

Term 2 has been full of so much learning with of course so much fun. The perfect balance ;) Let's have a look at what we got up to over the term!

Literacy

To support the children's literacy skills we explored 2 programs called Jolly Phonics and Cued Articulation. Jolly phonics focuses on beginning sounds and Cued Articulation is a set of hand cues for teaching the individual sounds in a word. The hand movements are logical – each hand movement represents one sound and the cue gives clues as to how and where the sound is produced. The children absolutely loved this program and often showed enthusiasm and concentration throughout it all term! They have blown us away with just how much they have learnt.

Emotional Regulation

The Zones of Regulation program is a fantastic resource for teaching children how to master the following skills:

Sensory regulation: The ability to learn how to manage and respond appropriately to sensory input from their environment.
Emotional Regulation: The ability to recognise body cues associated with different emotional levels and understand how others think and feel in response to our emotional state.
Executive functioning: The ability to have cognitive control over our behaviour. Our executive functioning skills include our ability to sustain attention, plan, problem solve and use positive self-talk. These skills are vital for building a positive foundation for the development of resilience skills.

Other programs we focused on to further support emotional regulation included:

Winnie – Class pet
How does your engine run? – social story that focuses on the coloured zones
How full is your bucket? – giving the children a visual into bucket filling and dipping. Allowing them to gain an understanding on making thumbs up choices and actions that have positive or negative consequences on our friends.
Tucker Turtle – taking time to stop, think and breathe!

Through all of these programs the children have learnt that sometimes we will feel a range of emotions but it is how we deal with it that really matters. But, no matter what they are feeling they are never alone.

Henny Penny

Henny Penny has been such an engaging learning opportunity. Over the past two weeks we have been lucky enough to have the Henny Penny Hatching Program at our Kinder. This program has brought so much excitement and joy for the children as they watched the eggs hatch and the chicks emerge from theirshells, all within our classroom! The children have learnt all about their life cycles as well as building their knowledge of getting them to think about other life cycles.

Uncle Greg Matthews and Reconcilation Week

Greg is a is a very proud Senior Aboriginal Elder of Tasmania’s Manegin People, of the North West Nation. He came out to visit the Kindergarten children and do some artwork with them. He explained the meaning of the artwork, together with Uncle Greg the children created a master piece in which we have displayed within our room. The children are so proud of their work! Extending from the beautiful meaning of our art work we have been reading the book ‘The rainbow Seprent’ by Dick Roughsey. This book explores the meaning of community and keeping peace. This book has allowed children to gain a deeper understanding around this and gain new knowledge around this years Reconciliation’s theme of ‘Be Brave, Make Change’.

Rowville Primary School excursions

Throughout term 2, we went on excursions to Rowville Primary School. Every fortnight we were lucky enough to be apart of the Foundation students Maths classes. Together all the children worked to further support their measurement skills. This has been such a wonderful experience for everyone involved and we cannot wait to continue our connection with Rowville Primary in the next two terms!