Happy Friday everyone
What a fun morning we have had in the Kindergarten this morning with lots of wonderful play happening in the room. The children are all very excited to find out who is taking home “Hungry Jacks” the classroom teddy to look after this weekend. They will find out that it is going to be Hamilton this week. Hamilton has been doing such great work in the room, being a great friend and a wonderful helper. Well done Hamilton ,we look forward to seeing what Hamilton and Hungry Jacks gets up to this weekend. When it is your child’s turn to take Hungry Jacks home, we would love it if you can document their weekend together through photo’s and writing a small story about what they have done this weekend. This can then either be brought in or if you are unable to print this at home you could send it through to our email. Then on your child’s first day back for the week they will return Hungry Jacks and at our morning group time they will share with us this story and any other fun things they did together.
After group time this morning the children were all very excited for our dancing and movement class happy feet. I was so proud of the children today as they sustained interest and were all willing to give every thing a go. In the beginning we started off by stretching our bodies so we were all warm for our dancing. Then we got and danced to a variety of different songs showing great rhythm. After we had finished our dancing we then moved on to some balance and coordination activities. Firstly the children needed step from one dot to another stretching their legs for some of our friends this was really easy as they have long legs, to make it a little harder the children then needed to step onto one dot and then hop. Once the children had all had a turn at jumping with two feet together onto each dot before practicing our weaving in and out of the dots. Great work today friends.
After all that exercise the children were ready to engage in their morning activities. The children were very interested in the bug discovery area that was set up on the tables for the children to explore. They had lots of questions about the bugs “Are they real bugs”, “Where did they come from?” and asking all the different names of the bugs. The children seemed to love exploring with the magnifying glasses as they got a closer look at each of them. As the children were very interested in this, for next week the children will have the opportunity to revisit this once again. I will add some fact cards about different types of bugs and insects for the children to learn some fun facts about. I will also encourage the children to think of some questions about bugs and insects they may have and we can work out how to find the answers to these questions. This morning Sage also commented that he wanted to learn about whales, we will delve into this further as well thinking of some questions that they would like answered. If you have any books or pictures at home with information about bugs and insects it would be great if you could bring them in for us to share.
The children have been showing an interest in exploring letters. Today we continued to explore individual letter formations and those that have special meaning to them, this time using play dough. Here the children had the opportunity to explore literacy as they used the play dough letter cutters, and used the letter cards that we had been using during the week as a guide to experiment with making letters. Today the children showed an interest in making the letters using the play dough cutters. The children are getting a lot more confident in being able to identify the letters that make up their names. It was great to hear the children recognising the letters that their friends names started with. I wonder how we could further explore letters next week.
Yesterday during our afternoon discussion the children had commented that they wanted to do building with the cups and making bridges again. I have really enjoyed watching the children as they have been actively engaging in this experience over the week and today was no different. It was great to see the children actively using their problem solving skills, and persevering with challenges using the skills that they have been learning over the week. Next week we will continue to explore construction, we will look at constructing using match sticks, kebab sticks, and play dough, This will provide the children with the opportunity to experiment with a different medium and use their problem solving skills whilst they persist with difficulty.
Puzzles continue to be an interest in the room, today the children had the opportunity to explore with the shape picture puzzle. This was a great opportunity for the children to explore and identify a variety of shapes.
Child initiated experiences that evolved this morning included expressing their creativity and imagination through drawing and painting on the art easels, Dress ups, reading books, home corner play and racing the small cars.
Don’t forget about our open day tomorrow form 10am till 1pm, there is going to be so many fun things for you to do and we would love to see you all there.
Have a great weekend
Miss Emma and Miss Sarah