Welcome to beautiful Wednesday, we have had such a fun morning in the Kindergarten room.
After having our morning tea outside we ventured inside to the group mat to have our group time. Today we welcomed a new friend to the Kindergarten, his name is Elliot a big welcome to you and your family, I know the children will make you feel welcome. At group time this morning we sung our hello to the children of the world song and of course the bug n roll song which is the children’s favourite at the moment. Hamilton also requested we stand up so we could do the actions of the song. After singing our songs, I asked the children whether they would like to continue learning about Butterflies and Caterpillars or if they would like to learn about something else. Three of the children indicated that they would like to learn about Fire Flies. To start our enquiry I encouraged the children to think of some questions and then we would research and find the answers to these. The children came up with some great questions that later on we will find out the answers to these. Liam wants to find out “Do they blink at the night?”, Graysen wants to find out “What do Fireflies eat?”, Layla would like to find out “Do they walk?” and Elliot would like to know “What do they look like?” At our second group time before lunch the children would have the opportunity to see if we could find out the answers to these questions. Our friend Hamilton brought in a special book for us to read today called Big foot Bradley, what a wonderful story this was the children seemed to enjoy it. A big thank you to the children who have dressed up again today, we had some wonderful book week costumes, I look forward to seeing some more over the next two days. Wynter was very excited to tell us about her weekend with Hungry Jacks, she told us they went to the cricket together, read stories and played at home.
During our morning activity time this morning the children had a variety of experiences they could choose from or they could simply choose their own activities to engage and explore. One of the experiences that Miss Emma had planned today was creating bugs and insects using the play dough. It was great to see the children using their imagination and creativity as they manipulated the play dough into their desired insect, bug or a creation of their choice. Some of the creations the children came up with today were spiders, dinosaurs, butterflies, a squished slug and a jumping spider. I loved hearing the children talking to one another about what they were creating throughout.
As it is book week I thought it would be fun for the children to create their very own story, by using their imagination and creativity to draw a picture and retell the story to me. This experience was an opportunity for the children to explore the concept of story writing, creating a picture to tell a story, using their descriptive language to retell this story to me, be independent, strengthen their fine motor skills and use their decision making skills The children came up with some wonderful stories, here are some examples of what they came up with. Emily came up with two different stories. Emily’s story number one, “A monster with two heads. Captain underpants, he punched the monster and flew all around the world. And then fell on a planet and got eaten by monsters.” Emily’s story number two “It’s Mum, Dad and brother, steal the flower from the brother. The end. Elliott’s story “This is the sky, that’s the sun. The bad guys pet with a lead. The bad guys pet stealing the police man’s flower and he’s out of jail and he’s got the bad guys helper.” Layla’s story “This is Jaxon, me and Emily. They play soccer” and Wynter’s story “Bubble lots of bubbles and rainbow grass. The whole grass will go up into the sky and there’s a magic hook.”
Other experiences the children were involved with today included using pictures of butterflies as inspiration as they drew their own butterfly pictures. As the children engaged in this experience we talked about the different types of butterflies we could see, the colours and which ones were their favourites. The children enjoyed stretching the rubber bands as they attached them to the geo boards. There was also a lot of reading happening in the room both independently and in small groups. I lover seeing the children showing such an interest in reading.
After we had packed away for the morning, the children had the opportunity to turn into bug explorers as we went on a bug hunt outside. I had hidden pictures of different bugs outside for the children to find and then come back and match them to the bugs in the piece of paper. This was a great opportunity for us to talk about and identify the different bugs, explore language, and engage in role playing. The children had so much fun engaging in this experience, I think we will have to revisit this again tomorrow. After going on our bug hunt we came inside where we could continue our inquiry about fireflies, by watching a video about them. Aafter watching this video the children had the opportunity to share some of their new found information about fireflies. Wynter “They eat Caterpillars”, Elliot commented “They eat other ones”, Jaxon commented “They eat feet” Hamilton “They turn into firefly”, Wynter commented again “Fireflies they eat snakes” and Liam commented “Fireflies flash in the night.”
We are looking forward to playing some fun games together outside on this beautiful afternoon.
Miss Emma and Mr G