Welcome to a new week in the Kindergarten class. It was lovely to have a nice sunny day after the colder weekend. We began our day outdoors where Reid, Marshall, Braxton and Mace made their own slide down the big green hill. Harper and Eva set up their dolls in a big line ready for their lesson which was about plants. Ellie found the big dinosaur table and was arranging them in big groups and acting out stories. Daniel was playing on the swings by the sandpit and had to practice for a while to get his balance.
After morning tea we gathered together read a new book that Mr Andrew brought about the solar system. We also watched another video about the planets and sang our planet song before getting into some paper mache activities. It was messy but also great fun and the children enjoyed getting stuck into the activity putting the paper strips over the polystyrene balls. We are almost finished and maybe after one more session tomorrow we will be ready to dry and then paint them. To complete the experience we went into google earth and zoomed right into Riversdale. We talked about where we live and such as streets and suburbs and went broader and broader out to cities, states, countries and then the earth. Understanding knowledge such as this helps strengthen children’s sense of identity and also develops spatial awareness skills and mind maps which are important for children to be able to locate things and know where they are.
Our outdoor games where spaced them such as meteor throwing games, star catching games and spaceship chasing games. The children love when the games have a theme and it helps their engagement and enjoyment levels and also can help them learn skills faster.
After lunch we set up some of our cleaning activities such as the window washing and table wiping. These were a big hit and hopefully the children will be able to naturally use these when needed such as after meal times. The sweeping was a little more difficult but it was great to see the children trying to develop these skills. We might extend this by getting the children to wash their dishes after meal times too so they can build those independence skills and become more autonomous. It also lets children know that they have a role in looking after the classroom environment as well.
In the afternoon we will try set up some more activities for looking after the environment like plant watering and sweeping. We are aiming to set up an outdoor environment where the children can contribute as much as possible and in the future we are going to set up a worm farm as well that food scraps can go into.
Thank you for reading our blog today, enjoy your day everyone!
Daniel practicing his counting skills
Watching our space videos
The children playing candlesticks
