Hello Kindergarten families and friends and welcome to our Tuesday blog. The centre is definitely getting a lot busier as we welcome back more friends. Slowly things are returning to normal which is great to see.
Today we started off our morning outdoors, the sandpit area seemed to be the most popular today with the children swinging on the monkeys bars, playing on the swings, digging deep holes and making food creations out of sand. Exploring different textures is important for children’s development as it helps them make sense of the natural
After our yummy morning tea we explored our first activity of the day which was a sieving activity where we had to find all the letters of the alphabet in the sand tub and then match them to the alphabet on the paper. We talked about how sieving works with different size holes and why we might need to sieve things like in baking, cooking or geology expeditions. The children loved this activity especially when they found the letters in their own name. Henry coincidently managed to pick out an “h” an “e” and a “y” on his first three turns. Making activities fun and enjoyable means the learning of the alphabet will be more effective as the children are motivated themselves to learn it.
We did some colouring of speech bubbles for our new classroom rules poster that the children contributed to themselves. The coloured out cut out the speech bubbles themselves and Mr Andrew wrote down what the children remembered about the class rules. When children are comfortable with routines and the expectations in the classroom in creates a platform for them to feel more comfortable and begin learning and developing skills.
We read our “Floor book” today which is a book that documents some of the activities we have been doing during the year. Reid and Eva helped stick in some pictures of the time we explored human anatomy and Reid wanted to revisit the experiment comparing a healthy and unhealthy heart. So we got some red coloured water and a clean funnel and dirty funnel and compared how the blood flowed through them. He remembered that exercise gets a healthy heart and too much junk food can cause an unhealthy heart. Repetition of concepts is key for learning but Reid obviously has a particular interest in this topic to be able to remember all the facts.
After lunch we had some puppet stories, construction activities and water play. These are opportunities for the children to work more collaboratively and express themselves how they like. It is often a time when the teachers hear the most interesting conversation and find out what the children are really interested in. Astrid has been enjoying counting money and playing shops with the money and cash register, Sonni and Reid often request water play. Harper and Eva mostly play with the home corner and baby dolls around this time and Braxton and Mace have fun with the construction materials.
Our afternoon is going to be filled with parachute games which will require lots of team work and cooperation. I am impressed with how close this group is becoming with each other and their desire to help each other with games.
Thank you for reading our blog today and see you again soon!
