Happy Monday everyone, welcome to another wonderful week in the Kindergarten. We hope you all had a wonderful weekend and it was great to see some of you at our open day on Saturday. Today we welcomed three new friends to the Kindergarten room Astrid, Memphis and Milan. It was great to see them settling so well into the Kindergarten environment and we loved seeing the existing children being so welcoming and inviting them into their play.
This week we will be continuing to strengthen and develop our self help skills, as we serve our meals, pack away our activities once we have finished with them, putting our belongings in our lockers, putting on our shoes and making decisions about our play. These are all great opportunities for the children for school readiness.
This morning we had a lock down drill which your children may talk to you about. We were so proud of the children how the responded and listened to the instructions as we found our perfect spot in the classroom to keep us safe if this situation ever arises, which we hope never does.
At group time this morning the children had the opportunity to share their news from the weekend it sounds like a lot of you had very busy weekends. The children had the opportunity to share what activities they wanted to do during their time at Kindergarten today, as well as learning a new song called bug n roll. Today our special helper to transition the children from group time was Levii. The children are really enjoying this responsibility of being the teacher and it is a great opportunity for the children to develop their leadership skills and develop their confidence.
As a new interest in bugs and insects is beginning to emerge the children today will have the opportunity to explore our bug and insect discovery table. Here they had the opportunity to explore the encased bugs using the magnifying glasses. Which we encouraged the children to talk about what they could see. As the children engaged in this experience today we encouraged them to share their prior knowledge and think about questions or things they would like to find out about bugs and insects. The children had the opportunity to explore and engage with literacy as they read the fact sheets that were on the table, to further build on their knowledge. We also talked to the children about bringing any books from home, photos of bugs and suggested they could go to the library to find some books about bugs and insects. These are some of the questions that emerged from the children’s discoveries today. “Do they dig hole?”, “If they are our pets do we have to feed them?”, “What do they eat?”, “What do they do?” By the children having the opportunity to inquire about what they would like to know, they are developing the skills for developing questions and deciphering between what is a question and what is a statement.
What bugs and insects can you make using the open-ended materials? To further explore the children’s emerging interest in bugs and insects, today the children had the opportunity to express their creativity and use their imagination as they created bugs and insects using a variety of open- ended materials. The children were encouraged to use the encased bugs for inspiration or to think of some insects and bugs they have seen before. Levii and Harper spent lots of time at this experience this morning creating a variety of different bugs and insects such as butterflies, beetles, and dragonflies. Tomorrow the children will have the opportunity to create bugs and insects this time having pictures to provide inspiration. We will encourage the children to suggest and set up the table with the materials they would like to create their bugs and insects with, whether this be drawing, painting or play dough.
Would you like to make a marble run? Today the children had the opportunity to explore construction in a different form, using their experience from making 3D pictures last week to create a marble run. As the children engaged in this experience here today it was great to see them continuing to use their problem solving skills, and persisting with difficulty.
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During the morning there was also some wonderful child initiated play emerging as the children made choices, and organised their materials for their play. This included the dress ups, dramatic play as the children played Mums and Dads, Astrid really enjoyed setting up the dolls house and as it was such a beautiful morning the children had the opportunity to choose between indoor and outdoor play. We are going to be looking at incorporating this into our program daily to provide more opportunities for the children and make the most of our wonderful outdoor space with all its wonderful challenges.
Today for lunch the children were very excited as it was Pizza day Miss Kerrie had gone the extra mile by putting the pizza into pizza boxes for the children, just like we do when we get it from the pizza shop. What a wonderful idea. It has been really great to see the children at meal times are being aware of how much food they are putting on their plates, being careful to only take a little bit initially and coming back from seconds if they would like some more once they have finished. We have been working really hard on encouraging the children to think about their peers when taking food, making sure their is enough left for the next person and being aware of portion sizes.
Don’t forget if your child is attending Prep next year at Oxenford State School they have a Prep fun day and information expo this Wednesday 7th August from 9-11 in the school hall. If you are available this would be a great opportunity for you to go along with your child. If you would like any further information please do not hesitate to ask.
We hope you have a great afternoon.
Miss Emma and Miss Sarah.