It’s Tuesday today in the Kindergarten class which is one of our busier days so we had lots planned for the children to explore and enjoy. This morning in the playground there were lots of physical challenges set up such as obstacle courses, walking stilts and climbing games. The teachers have been impressed at the children’s developing physical skills and it is noticeable when we do our musical sessions or sport and movement sessions. The children are able to balance and move in different ways with great coordination. I was impressed with Harper, Kianni, Henry and Xavier today during our balancing games because even though it was difficult they kept trying and managed to do the challenges in the end.
We split the class today so that the children could have more of a chance to be hands on during our experiment. Being involved and being able to touch what they are learning about helps the children make more connections and absorb the information more effectively. Piaget called this “concrete learning”. So when we did our “sink or float” experiments everyone had a chance to predict what would happen before they dropped the item in. Miss Jess led discussions about why things sink or float and answered the many questions that the children had about the experiment. It is great to have opportunities to work in small groups and have hands on learning with the children.
The other group did some outdoor activities with Mr Andrew. The games included bean bag balancing, animal acting, cricket games and a catching game at the end called “here comes the tiger” which the children love. I have seen Astrid and Reid leading this game with other children in the playground showing great leadership qualities to organise everyone else and make sure the game flows nicely. Theo and Eva were very convincing with their interpretations of a tiger and a butterfly during the animal and the children managed to guess straight away.
Hopefully in the afternoon we are able to get outside again to play a larger game of cricket and release some more energy. If not we will fill our afternoon with some more music time, some big stories and perhaps some more videos about objects that sink or swim. We might even try and build our own boats to see if we can make something that can float on the water because Genevieve and Sonni were asking about how boats can float on water.
Thanks for joining us today and we will see you again soon.
Mr Andrew and Miss Jess
