Kindergarten News

Dickens Room

What a busy and productive week we have had at kinder this week. We started with Kinder photo's for our three year old class, this was an exciting event but they make for a busy day!  Please see the Seesaw message regarding how to sign up and access these photos. 

Friday was a wonderful session with our Wimbi class! The children were really curious about the instrument that was playing as they walked into the room, through a discussion we discovered that it was a 'didgeridoo'. This lead us to discuss First Nations concepts and engaged our Emergent curriculum, implementing a music group time with Claves and singing. 

The children loved the changes that we made to the program, the Doctors area was a huge hit, with a lot of sick 'patients' being 'fixed' and some amazing collaborative play being observed.. Unfortunately, some 'bad news' was shared with me, according to one 3 year old doctor, 'I have bad news Al! your dying, and there's nothing we can do!'.. Hmmm... I think I'll ask for a second opinion! 

Our Marram class has had a fantastic week! We have explored the concept of kindness and self regulation through the concept of 'Bucket filling'. This is a notion that every time we help or show kindness to another, we add to an invisible bucket of happiness/well being within ourselves and our peers. The opposite occurs when we 'dip' from a bucket, acting or communicating in ways that make others or ourselves upset. You may hear this language at home in the coming weeks and months, feel free to use it also.

Thursday we had our first session of Buddies, we visited the school library with a class of Grade Fours, shared a story and then sat and drew a picture of an elephant with a grade four student. This scaffolded leadership in the older student and extended our learning around drawing images through shapes as well as learning from more knowledgeable others. It was an incredible learning moment and a wonderful connection with our school community. 

We said goodbye to Tegan on Friday, Tegan has been a wonderful student from Swinburne and has added an incredible amount of learning and connection to each session over the past four weeks. We are blessed to have such passionate and dedicated staff within our school community! 

We are looking forward to a great week, just a reminder that Marram have their photo day on Thursday.

Al and Mardi

Moore Room

We had a wonderful week in the Moore room. We have really been enjoying exploring more sensory experiences – water beads and cotton sand. These allow for increased language development as they have been describing what they are touching, seeing, hypothesising and supports self-regulation.

We had an amazing first buddies session with some of our Grade 4 students from the school. We read the book ‘The Elephants’ Big Day Out and then partnered / buddied up to create our own drawing of an elephant. There was enough time to share some quiet reading and thank each other for a wonderful time together. This allows for our children to experience; links to a wider community, learn in a group context and supports an understanding that they are strong and capable individuals. We look forward to our next adventure with our buddies in June.

We have thoroughly enjoyed some erupting volcanoes in the sandpit allowing for some great discussions around cause and effect. We made some watermelon fans with Cristina which has also extended our discussions about healthy foods. Some great moves being observed through music and dance and the children are particularly enjoying ‘move and freeze’ and the ‘cha cha slide’.

Have a fantastic week.

Kelly-Anne, Treesje, Cristina, Julie, Carol and Anna