Hello everyone,
Hope you’re having a thriving Thursday!
This morning during Kindergarten’s group time we went around the circle and welcomed one another in the traditional Yugambeh language. This was significant as it allows us to have respect for diversity and for the land in which we live on. For group time we then looked at and answered some questions of our ocean slideshow. As we have extended on with a bit of an ocean theme this week, Kindergarten friends each got to ask one question about anything related to the ocean that was then presented in the slideshow so that the children could get a visual and verbal answer to their questions. Finally we also completed our daily calendar and transitioned smoothly into morning tea time.
After re-energizing our bodies, Kindy class began their activities for the day. As an extension of our ocean theme, today we got to make our own boats out of our recycled materials. We created our own boats that could carry a load across the water without tipping over. This activity helped develop skills like cutting, gluing, taping, creativity, imagination, problem solving and a sense of pride and accomplishment. We loved making our own boats today and this little “experiment” was a success. Today we got to witness and observe what elements contributed to the floating or sinking of our boats and better understand the concept.
Today we also have tried to offer the children more opportunities to present their own work in the form of posters and presentations, and through this we have been focused on creating our own story books. We have continued to get to work on illustrating them and writing our stories. This activity has fostered skills like creativity, imagination, understanding the flow of a story, pencil grip, drawing and writing skills, and letter/number recognition. We have thoroughly enjoyed creating our very own stories this week and can’t wait to laminate and present them to everyone!
Alongside our enjoyment of some of our favorite classroom activities and games, Kindergarten then got to participate in their weekly ARAKAN lesson. Mr Daniel did lots of martial arts movements with the children today and we particularly practiced our striking on the strike pads; as well other fun games that incorporated our skills and strength!
Before lunch and rest time, we joined for a quick sports and movement session that involved some healthy competition games. The children were put in teams and got someone from each team to retrieve the ball and throw it into a goal. Once that went well we extended it with soccer dribbling and shooting. These games were great for increasing our catching and throwing skills, moving quickly, helped build a sense of competition, fair play and winning and losing games in a fun and safe environment.
During our lunch time today, Kindergarten 1 were awesome at self-serving their own food at tables today with a wide range of food to offer. We have had a positive lunch time experience doing this and they’re very capable and independent individuals 🙂
Thank you friends for a fantastic Thursday, we hope you have all enjoyed it as much as we have!
NOTE: The photos for the blog today are on display near our front door 🙂
Kind regards,
Mr Andrew and Miss Tatyana