Happy Thursday everybody. It was another nice sunny day at Riversdale Early Learning and there was lots of great fun and learning going on today in the Kindergarten class.
We started our day outdoors exploring some free play activities with toy frogs, lizards and snakes. The children were making their own little stories where the frogs and lizards were trying to escape the snakes. It is interesting that animal interactions seem to come fairly intuitively to the children and they knew which animals would be the prey. Despite this knowledge there were still lots of questions flying around and luckily Mr Andrew had his trusty friend Mr Google with him to find out some of the answers. We looked at the markings of the different frogs and snakes and found out what kind they were. One of them was a pyhton and Harper said that her Poppy has a pet python that she and Savannah can pat. A confusing concept for the children was the difference between poisonous and venomous. The frogs were poisonous because if YOU BITE THEM you will get sick but the snakes were venomous because if THEY BITE YOU, you will get sick.
Our planned activity for the day was to use some pictures as inspiration for practicing writing letters of the alphabet. Each child stuck 5 pictures in front of them and had to sound out the words to figure out the first letter. I was so proud when the children started working together to help each other figure out the letter. We used our big alphabet chart to find other pictures that had the same sound for example if their picture was a “car” they looked on the chart for other c words like “cake” or “carrot” so they could find the letter “C”. Mace showed great application to figure out all of the letters despite it being difficult.
Our sport and movement sessions were focused on a lot of catching and throwing games and at the end we had a sequence game where the children had to alternate between passing it under and over their bodies. The children had to read the sequence and do the opposite of the person in front of them. It is counterintuitive to do the opposite of someone because humans are such good copiers so this was an activity that really got the brain working while also being fun!
The children have been enjoying story time everyday when Miss Lyn comes in during the lunch break. They ask again and again for more stories. This interest in stories has translated to other areas of the children’s play such as creating their own puppet stories or using other toys to narrate and act out their own stories. These activities are great for fostering creativity and also providing the children opportunities to get involved and show some leadership. Providing children safe opportunities to speak with their friends helps develop confidence and conversational skills which are essential for forming strong relationships and allowing them to navigate problems on their own.
After lunch we had some quiet relaxing activities such as reading, puzzles and lego constructions. We had some music sessions as well while we waited for it to cool down outside a bit more. Once we return outside for some play we will complete some more of our Olympic events and medal presentations.
Hopefully you enjoyed our blog today. See you tomorrow and if not enjoy your weekends!
