Happy Monday 😊
Welcome back to some of our Pre Kindy friends who have returned! Ayla and Marlie were super keen to see their friends and were excited to explore the morning experience with the rest Pre Kindy. What a lovely morning we had cooking in the sandpit, transferring water from the water pump to the garden or sandpit and having conversations with each other while warming up in the sun. Our independent little ones showed off their self-help skills this morning washing up their plates after morning tea. They are really enjoying this responsibility and have been amazing at listening to the instructions when lining up and taking turns. It was then time to choose a story to quietly read on the mat while waiting for everyone to finish eating and may I say what an amazing class we have in Pre Kindy. They all sat beautifully together giving each other space and flicking through the pages while very engaged in their story. For group time we passed Mr Tortoise around the circle to introduce ourselves. As we are focusing on numeracy, this week our challenge is to practice counting to 15! Today we counted slowly all together while using our fingers to help us.
Today for activity time we tried an indoor/ outdoor set up where we left the sliding doors open for the children to freely choose if they wanted to play inside or outside on the veranda right outside the doors. Again, the children loved having their own choice and being independent to choose what they would like to do. Inside the children had a go at the shape and colour match card game, practicing some fine motor skills with the hole punch tools creating star and circle shapes in the paper, free drawing at the art table where the children were interested in writing letters especially the first letter of their name and role playing in the home corner and doll house set up. Today we also introduced the ‘Mindfulness Station’ which is basically an area for the children to relax/chill out and maybe even calm down if they are feeling upset and need help. We have started the station with sand hourglass timers and a lava drop bottle and some books to read such as a booklet called ‘When I get upset’. The table was busy today with the children mesmerised by the hourglasses and lava bottles. We would love to add more self-regulation experience for the children in this area to TOUCH such as stress balls and SEE such as more sensory bottles.
Outside we had the office set up with the keyboards, phones, note pads, pencils and dress ups where the children had conversations on the phone to each other and were enjoying writing with the pencil. They have loved the office play lately which has been encouraging the children to use their language and communicate back and forth with each other. Before lunch we had a lovely play in the sand pit, digging big holes and cooking at the sand kitchen.
Our indoor/ outdoor set up was a huge success! The children loved spreading out and moving around the experiences freely. I felt like the children were a lot calmer and settled having the choice.
Hope you had a lovely day,
Miss TJ x
