A NEW WEEK! Welcome Kindergarten families and friends our Monday blog.
Miss Danna and Miss TJ welcomed back our friends this morning after ANZAC weekend were we saw lots of creative ways of celebrating and remembering the occasion. “Old habits die hard” – it was amusing to see how many of the children went towards their old classroom this morning, there will a little bit of adjusting I’m sure. Despite the adjusting the children have been enjoying exploring the new environment which has some great features like a cosy reading corner, lots of natural materials and plenty of beautiful cultural artworks. Ellie has already made the home corner her own, setting up the baby high chair and cooking meals for all of the babies.
After our yummy morning tea we headed inside for today’s activities which began with some colour experimenting with water and oil. We used water droppers to place coloured droplets on top of the oil and discussed how water and oil don’t mix which is why we got the colourful water droplets on top of the layer of oil on the tray. We learnt a big word today which was “hydrophobic” meaning unable to mix with water. The children noticed some interesting properties about the oil, Reid said it made everything more slippery which is why we use oil for cooking so food doesn’t stick to pans. Mace noticed that the water could still mix together but not the oil.
We also did some more practice writing our names which we do daily but we are trying to find more creative ways to do this. We played eye spy and tried to find our names on the daily roll and then around the classroom in different places. We wrote them with whiteboard pens, pastels and then used the magnetic letters. Using names is a great way to introduce children to the alphabet and the different sounds each letter makes. I challenged each of the children to find someone who had the same starting letter as their own name by sounding it out. Ellie and Eva matched, Mace and Mariah matched, Astrid and Andrew matched and Reid matched Ryan from the Pre-Kindy next door.
For our sport and movement time today we played some of children’s favourite games including “The Crocodile game”, “Animal Feeding” and “Candlesticks” (also called stuck in the mud). As we have been practicing the games and repeating them over the weeks I am slowly letting the children take more control of the games to see if they can run it themselves. I have been impressed by the leadership of Astrid and Eva as they have ensured the rules are being followed and everyone is getting a fair turn.
We are hoping to be able to display our programming out front for parents and families to have their input as well because we would love your feedback on what you would like your children to be learning or what you would like to see happening in the classrooms.