Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to FUN-tastic Friday! During early outside playtime, Pre-Kindy friends continued their fascination with water play. Harvey was walking around with a magnetised fishing rod in his hand, so Miss Donna extended upon his interest by setting up lots of magnetised sea animals and providing lots more magnetised fishing rods for other friends to join in on the play. Very soon, Harley, Ivy, Oli, Maia, William and Kaylee joined in on the action. For each sea animal “caught” on the end of a rod, the children were asked to name what it was and what colour/s it was. All our friends were able to correctly name the sea animals. Oli also caught some magnetised fish with letters on them and was very curious about what each letter was. He kept asking “what is this?”. Miss Donna sounded out the letter and then provided an example of an animal starting with that letter.
The developmental benefits attributed to this type of play include, but are not limited to:
- Allowing children to build skills and abilities including hand/eye coordination, patience and persistence, motor control, strength and dexterity
- Developing colour recognition skills and sea animal recognition skills
Harley and Jamal also made time for some large muscle/gross motor play – Jamal chose to pedal around on a shiny red trike, whilst Harley pushed around one of the big yellow dump trucks.
We would also like to wish our friend Ivy a very happy third birthday for tomorrow, and are SO thankful that she brought in yummy cupcakes for us all to share. We all sang a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday to you”, and gave three great big claps. We truly hope you have a lovely birthday weekend Ivy ..and thank you to Oli and Ivy for spontaneously “cleaning up” after the birthday get together…what wonderful helping skills you are developing! 🙂
Once indoors, we had a grouptime chat about Poinciana trees, their leaves, their flowers, and their very interesting seed pods. It was explained to the children that the seed pods are legumes (like beans) and that when they are small, they are green, but as they get older, they turn brown and hard. Harley was every interested in shaking the brown seed pod as all the seeds were rattling around. We all got to give the seed pod a great big shake! We then discussed how the shape of the seed pod was a bit similar to an Aboriginal boomerang.
Funky Feet dance class with Miss Jeni this morning was also very well received, with Maia, Ellie and Oli all having enough confidence to perform a solo dance for us all. So much fancy footwork and hip shaking – well done! We also all learned a new dance routine to the “Flintstones” tune and EVERYONE gave it their best. Through music and movement, children develop creativity and expression, refine listening skills, and improve their balance, rhythm and coordination, just to mention a few benefits! This aligns with the Early Years Learning Framework – Learning Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing, both emotionally and socially, and they also take greater responsibility for their own health and physical wellbeing.
  
Following on from learning about Poinciana trees and their very unusual seed pods, we then painted our pods with cotton buds and various acrylic paint colours. Harley, Ivy, Kaylee, Jamal, Harvey, William and Maia in particular were very focused on this and made lots of beautiful designs in a variety of colours. When fully dry, we will hang them from the big blue net in our room.
Until next week everyone, please take care and have a wonderful weekend!.
Much love, Miss Donna and Miss Livia xxxx