October Program

Rainbow project!

This month our group project experiences have circled around rainbows. This ongoing interest from the children began with ASL lessons with Miss Ann, learning the rainbow song. Since then we have offered many activities covering a variety of learning areas, discovering rainbows.

The children engaged in a science experiment with our new educator Bree. They used ice trays to create fizzing ice. They used colouring, water and bi carb soda. The children then waited patiently for them to freeze in the fridge and explored in recycled trays. They observed the reaction when using a spoon to add vinegar to the ice and watched them fizz! They also had meaningful discussions about mixing colours.

The children had opportunities to discover making rainbows with paint and sponges. They developed fine motor skills ad control during this experience.

Outside, we set up recycled egg cartons and coloured counters in an open ended play space. The children were able to create patterns and count the counters, recognising colours.

We extended this inside, with a colour sorting activity. The children are learning to self serve their fruit with tongs. The children practise these skills using tongs to transfer coloured counters onto the matching coloured circles at the table.

Diwali

Children transferred the interest in rainbow colours to Diwali experiences, as we learned about the Indian festival of light and colours. We had many group times, showing children pictures of the festival and traditions involved. Many of our Indian educators showed the children colourful cultural clothing, decorated hands with henna and rangoli artwork. The children had the opportunity to cook puris (like roti) with Harpreet and Anu. We enjoyed these for lunch!

The children had the opportunity to create rangoli art works with coloured sand which they made, investigating colours and patterns.

Children's week

This year, our children's week theme was 'Children have the right to be happy, healthy and safe'.

To explore and promote happiness in our program we offered one of the children's favourite things to do, face painting! We also offered lots of water play and community games outdoors. To explore being healthy, we had a special incursion from the 'circus'. The children were shown how to balance in different ways and engaged in circus themed games with materials such as colourful scarves and balls.

The children had the opportunity to make fruit skewers for afternoon tea, using fine motor skills to skewer small pieces of fruit. We enjoyed these for afternoon tea.

The children took a very big interest in dental health. This stems from some children in the room having visited the dentist for a check up recently. We set up an area with teeth brushing props. Families have been sending through photos of the children brushing their teeth at home to support strong connections between home and care.

Please keep sending these through via email :)

Coming up to the warmer months, many children are swimming at pools, beaches and lakes/ rivers when camping, so we explored water safety. We used a pretend swimming pool at group time to have meaningful discussions and role played. The children learned to say, "stop that's not safe" if they were to see a young person going into the water without an adult. We also watched some songs on the iPad from Kids Alive about water safety.

These songs are on Youtube if families are interested in extending these discussions at home.

Teddy bear picnic

Thank you to all the families and children ho attended the teddy ear picnic to farewell Bonnie, as she goes off to have her baby. Bonnie would like to add that she greatly appreciates all the gifts given to her.

We sang a special song with our teddy bears and enjoyed afternoon tea as a community.

Bonnie spent some time playing with the children.

Happy Halloween!

Many children dressed up in costumes to celebrate Halloween, we also had dress ups and face paint available for children who may have forgotten.

Children created 'witch's slime', as a sensory experience and added rainbow beads to it extending on our project.

They observed as the corn flour and water went from liquid to solid when it was played with.

Spiny leaf Insect babies

Our adult leaf insects have had many babies! The children have been showing curiosity and enthusiasm, watching the life cycle of the leaf insects. We have been transferring the babies to a separate enclosure to watch them grow.

ASL

Miss Ann continues to visit us on Thursdays to teach the children Australian sign language.

This week, we learned many words from the familiar story, 'The very hungry caterpillar' in signing.

Children have been doing a fantastic job at remembering singing from previous weeks.

We also learned some songs in singing such as, 'twinkle twinkle' and 'old McDonald'.

Thank you

Sophie, Bree, Anu

Pakenham YMCA ELC

Issue 1 · 08 Nov 2019

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