Reddam Early Learning School Newsletter Lindfield Vol 22 Issue 22

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL LINDFIELD NEWSLETTER August 5th 2022

Principal’s Message

By Christine Irwin

Dear Parents, We have been blessed with some beautiful days of late, so the children have been able to enjoy the sunshine but alas as I write this the rain is beginning to fall. When will it stop, we ask!

As the children and educators become engrossed in their new investigations for the term it has been interesting to observe the children engaged in their learning, manipulating new materials, and discovering new concepts.

You may have noticed some changes to our environments with the addition of resources and soft furnishings. Many of the children are enjoying imaginative play and have taken to using their social skills in the new dramatic play learning areas with the addition of new kitchens, cooking, and homeware utensils.

Self-help skills and empathy are developmental skills that are enhanced as they utilise these spaces in which they have to negotiate, share and co-operate to cook meals, and cakes, serve tea, feed babies, wash up, sell groceries, or shop for their family.

It is important that these learning areas are provided during the early years so children are provided the time and experience in strengthening the skills that they observe at home and in their daily lives.

Providing functional items including brooms, rakes, real pots and pans and kitchen items extends children’s knowledge of how to function in their society and home life. Dramatic play is also an experience that promotes pre-maths and pre-literacy skills for example pretending they are in a grocery store and organising the food or taking an order at a restaurant and writing it down as a waiter would.

As noted in the Good to know network- April 2019 “Dramatic play is when children take on a role or character of someone other than themselves. In this type of play, children act out real-world situations that they have seen in real life, on television, or heard in a storybook.

Dramatic, or pretend, play supports social-emotional, language and cognitive development by providing opportunities for children to practice important skills with peers. When children engage in dramatic play as a group, it requires them to cooperate and negotiate roles. This gives children the opportunity to share ideas, solve problems together and build conflict resolution skills. “And by recreating some of the life experiences they actually face, they learn how to cope with any fears and worries that may accompany these experiences...They also develop the skills they need to cooperate with their peers (and) learn to control their impulses.”

Reference—Early Childhood News

Principal’s Message Continued...

By Mrs Kath Boyd

So please take time to discuss these play spaces with the children and what they have discovered and imagined to be at school today. You may be lucky to be served a pretend cup of tea.

I am forward to chatting with you all soon, Christine Irwin Principal

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Stage 1R

By Heather Gaskall

‘The Beauty of the World lies in the Diversity of its People’ by Unknown Hello and Welcome to our beautiful families and our first newsletter for Term 3. This term Stage 1R is looking at the ‘World Around Us.’ This opens the door to an amazing opportunity for us all to learn about ourselves and where we come from and what makes up our heritage. During this time we will also delve not only into the cultures and traditions but also flora and fauna of the countries we will be investigating. I look forward to expanding our knowledge of this wonderful country we live in and also learning about our close neighbours.

So for our first week we decided to explore China and its many delightful customs and traditions. During the week we gave the children the opportunity to explore some of the foods of China. The children were provided with tools and playdough to make their own dumplings. They soon delighted in manipulating their playdough into yummy dumplings. Their little fingers rolled and poked the dough until it was really to go into the steamer baskets. We also visited a noodle restaurant in our room which invoked the children’s curiosity and interest to pick up the noodles using chopsticks. The children took up the challenge and enjoyed manipulating the chopsticks. While some of them were just happy to grasp the noodles with their hands while feeling the texture.

Naturally a visit to China’s cultures would not be complete without a chance to observe the pandas. Our provocation table invited the children to explore the pandas’ habitat with imaginative play. The giant pandas are a treasure of China and usually live in bamboo forests. Mulch, rocks and green leaves were used to symbolise the pandas habitat and the children plunged their hands in and attempted to feed the leaves to the pandas.

We even had a visit from a Chinese Dragon which is a colourful symbol of the Chinese New Year. The children were able to investigate the Dragon up close, touching and feeling the various parts. Some of our little ones even tried it on, which delighted the others in the class.

Next week we are extending our tour by looking at New Zealand, my country of birth. I am very much looking forward to introducing the children to some of my beloved memories of Aotearoa.

Wishing all our families a wonderful weekend, Heather, Doris, Jenny and Jaycel

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Stage 1E

By Charity Acera

“Kindness is like snow, it beautifies everything it touches.” (Kahlil Gibran) A warm welcome to all our lovely Reddam families for another fun and exciting term learning about ‘Earth and the Four Seasons’. This term we will focus on the natural environment and the different seasons our Earth experiences. We have observed our children to have keen interest in nature play and just being in a natural environment cooking mulch, watering plants, and just enjoying the flowers in our garden. This has prompted us to create an opportunity to encourage children to show respect, care and appreciation to the natural world and become aware of how this can impact their own physical health and well-being.

Our first week was full of exploration and discovery as the children developed an awareness of human activity on environments and the interdependence of living things. This focus will focus on the concepts of ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’ to encourage children to become active contributors to their world.

We started the first week of Term 3 exploring Winter, which invited the children to understand more about the current weather they are experiencing. Discovering knowledge about the current season will also help the children to understand the changes in their environment and the appropriate clothing and accessories that they need to wear to protect themselves. This was extended by reading books that focused on the beauty of winter, which included illustrations of characters wearing winter clothes, lively friendships, the plight of animals during winter and the danger of slippery frosted ice. Children were fascinated by each story, which also aimed to foster their early literacy skills and develop their empathy skills towards their friends.

In order to focus on the children’s sensory skills and invite them to extend upon their imagination, a variety of sensory trays were prepared which focused on the season of Winter. It has been a delight to see the 1E children exploring their symbolic and imaginative skills through these displays. Sensory trays can support children's language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and communication skills.

Our creative experience this week invited the children to use blue and white paints and recycled bottles to make snowflake stamps. The bottom of the bottle created the shape of the snowflake, which developed our children’s imagination and symbolic thinking. They also identified the colours and practised their fine motor skills when holding the bottle to make the stamps. Overall, they took turns and engaged beautifully in their creative learning.

This term’s aim is to let the children connect with the world they live in and we hope to continue to give them a sense of awareness of themselves including an understanding of all the changes which occur in their surroundings.

Thank you all for taking the time to read and enjoy this week’s school’s experiences both in the classroom and online learning!

Charity,Rowel, Resie, and May

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Stage 2R

By Sara Haddadi

“Dinosaurs may be extinct from the face of the planet, but they are alive and well in our imaginations.” (Steve Miller) The fun and interesting topic of Dinosaurs invites children to develop their dispositions for learning. During their time, the dinosaurs were magnificent and therefore it is almost impossible not to be curious about them. We began Term 3 intending to know more about these fascinating creatures and extend upon the children’s interests. We believe these incredible creatures spark children’s imagination and curiosity, and they offer endless learning opportunities. Our provocation for Term 3 is called 'What Can I Be?' and Week 1 focused on Palaeontologists and Dinosaurs.

Throughout the week a variety of sensory experiences encouraged the children of 2R to engage in 'Dino Play,' which can foster key developmental skills including confidence in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths). The children created a variety of their own prehistoric landscapes in different settings which provided tactile and sensory stimulation and encouraged creativity. Their favourite experience was the frozen dino eggs sensory experience that invited the children to experiment with different materials to melt icy Dino Eggs. This engaged their problem-solving skills to assist the baby dinosaurs' hatch from the eggs. Art of the week involved our artists creating spatula dinosaurs.

The class was particularly amazed by Ankylosaurus’ clubbed tail by observing an amazing experiment. The teachers created a clubbed tail out of playdough and straw and used it to knock over a tower and the children were encouraged to compare a normal tail and a clubbed tail that Ankylosaurus had to protect themselves from predators.

We hope that our investigations of these incredible creatures increase the children’s knowledge about how species come to be, disappear, adapt, and survive. Interest in dinosaurs also helps children understand the earth's timeline and appreciate those amazing things that existed long before they did and the children connect to the timeless human endeavour to understand what life was like before us.

They will learn how to explore the unknown, which encourages them to imagine a world very different from their own. So, learning about dinosaurs is a great way to spark and encourage our little ones' imagination.

When they are imagining, they are practising their critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills and as a result, their mind opens up to lots of new possibilities!

2R Team

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Stage 2E

By Mia Doan

“Cooking is just as creative a and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talents - science, mathematics, energy, history experience” (Julia Child) Welcome all to the first week of Term 3. The main focus of this term is ‘When I grow up, I will be…’ This openended focus allows the children to investigate and explore various occupations that they have seen, admired in our communities and would like to become in the future. Throughout Term 2, the children have expressed their various interests in role/imaginative play and dramatic/pretend play in which they pretend to be firefighters, zoo keepers, doctors, builders, chefs, bakers and many more. When engaged in these types of play, the children build up their oral language skills, logical orders, observation skills, confidence and self-identity as they negotiate and explain the roles to their peers and teachers.

In this first week of Term 3, we explored a wide range of hospitality professionals including baristas, chefs, bakers, etc. Often, 2E children have shared and re-created their previous experiences of having babyccino with Mum and Dad or pretending to make healthy smoothies and juices in the kitchen corner. 2E children were invited to multiple sensory learning experiences that fosters the children’s fine motor skills, early mathematic knowledge (measurment) and helps the development of their sense of smell as well as their sense of touch and sight. The children were offered a tray filled with pungent coffee beans and tools which allowed them to transfer the beans from one cup to another, they also were invited to use a spoon to pour the beans into a jar. They joined in a high tea party in which they can observe the change of colour and smell while dipping the tea bags into water.

Our excellent bakers also experimented with different types of flours, oats, corn kennels, water and sprinkle to make a perfect batch. While measuring and mixing, they observed and sensed that the mixture became harder and heavier. To extend on this fun experiment, 2E children were invited to cook or bake with natural ingredients sand and mud. These opportunities inspires children to feel a connection to nature and develop an appreciation for the environment. The open-ended resource enhanced the children’s creativity and imagination as they can cook multiple dish from sand, chocolate cake, rice, noodle, pasta, cupcake and so much more.

In the group-time, we read various interesting storyies. One of our favourite were Would you like a Banana? by Yasmeen Ismail. A grumpy Gorilla doesn't like bananas?! This Gorilla said "NO!" to bananas every time he was offered one. However, after having a tiny bite, he loved it and kept asking for another one. The children adored the story as they listened attentively and commented along, “I like bananas,” Jasper. “Bananas are yummy and sweet,” Joshua. “It’s (banana) yellow and I had it before,” Hamish. This story illustrated the reality of our classroom. At lunch, our friends often refuse to try new food/ fruit/veggies/sauce. However, the teachers always encourage our friends to have a little taste or a simple lick. After all, they enjoyed it and asked for more. We also paid our gratitude towards Mums and Dads who provided us with yummy meals, also Miss Jasmine who takes care of us at school.

At the art table, the children were invited to create their beautiful tea bag artworks. The children were invited to drag the tea bag along the paper to create a colourful explosion tied in with a fruity smelling tea bag. The children smelt the teabags and then dipped them into the water and watched the colour of the water change.

This is a creative way of teaching how to be resourceful and also about reusing products for a secondary use to avoid wastage.

Have an amazing weekend Mia, Xanthe, Shandie, Chloe. Jing, and Alisha

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Stage 3R

By Grace Nolan

“In play the child always behaves above his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.”- Lev Vygotsky, developmental psychologist.

This week we began our term provocation 'Socio-Dramatic Play: Life Through the Lens of Make Believe'. Socio-Dramatic play is pretend play in which a child recreates events or situations they have seen or experienced. Socio-dramatic play is an integral component of children's social, emotional and cognitive development. In this style of play, children take on roles in which they follow rules of social convention as well as practise emotional regulation skills and conflict resolution which assists children in early schooling years into adulthood. The 3R team have chosen this provocation based off of the children's observed interest in taking on character roles and pretend play. We look forward to seeing where the children’s interests and needs drive this provocation.

The children began this term’s learning ‘At The Campsite’. Our play experiences were centred around camping activities such as pitching a tent, roasting marshmallows and fishing. The children discussed their experiences of camping in our morning meetings as Miss Carina asked the children "Have you been camping before?" They answered: Lindsay- “Yes. I have a barbecue outside and I go with daddy and mummy to camping.”

Michael- “I went camping in Daddy’s tent.”

Amelia- “I go camping and I buy a pack of marshmallows from the shop.”

Natalie- “I love barbeque.”

Harry- “I haven’t been camping.”

In our differentiated learning groups our little friends constructed fishing rods from yarn and long sticks and embraced the rain as they fished in the puddles of the sand pit where they caught “a big rainbow fish!” (Sarah).

The children also expanded their camping dramatic play as they worked together to pitch a tent and build a campfire with cellophane and blocks. The children giggled as they roasted 'marshmallows' made from pom poms around the fire. Sebastien told the group a scary story in which, "a big scary monster eats my marshmallow!"

Next week our learning will be ‘In The Kitchen’ Carina, Jenny and Margret.

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Stage 3R

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Stage 3E

By Deb Walsh

‘The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn’- Maria Montessori Welcome back to Term 3, this Term we will be focusing on ‘ A strong sense of identity’. A positive sense of identity is crucial to the development of self-esteem and confidence in all children. When children feel a sense of belonging and sense of pride in their families, their peers, and their communities, they can be emotionally strong, self-assured, and able to deal with challenges and difficulties. This creates an important foundation for their learning and development.

We now have a dress up stand for the children to explore various dress ups for the children to express their interest in dramatic play / pretend play .

This week the children were offered various opportunities and learning experiences that promote Literacy and Numeracy to continue to enhance their understanding about Numbers and Letters of the Alphabet. These learning experiences have added birds seeds as a sensory experience as well. Also a wooden board with numbers and seashells was offered for the children to identify the numbers that correspond on the board .

Our creative experiences this week the children were offered to draw a portrait of themselves through the mirror, expressing their creativity and their interpretation of what they can see in the mirror. The children also did an experiment with the salt and food colouring and PVA glue and saw how the salt absorbs the water and creates a textured watercolour.

Our group time we sat in a circle and everyone held a rock while they were communicating how they were feeling today and everyone took turns and expressed their feelingsand also introduced themselves and identified their friends names. Our topic this week was about Emotions. We can feel happy, sad , angry and many more emotions and that is ok.

Our books this week, we read books from Trace Moroney which are about ‘ When I’m feeling Happy’ and various other emotions and then the children were asked ‘What makes them Happy, Sad, Angry’ and the children were able to identify the emotion.

Next week we are going to continue with ‘Me, Myself and I’ We hope you have a lovely weekend Natalie, Kai & Laura

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Stage 4R

By Veronika Roth

“Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.” (Thomas Berry) We are so excited to begin our provocation for Term 3, Being - Exploring Our Earth. We will be exploring the land, oceans, animals, weather and the history of our planet, as well as incorporating some sustainable practices that we can implement to care for the Earth.

This week our learning experiences included manipulating blue and green plasticine and stones to represent the Earth, using pipettes and coloured water to melt frozen leaves and flowers, and the children constructed trees out of wooden branches and leaves. We also categorised land and ocean animals into groups, discussing the environments they live in. The children discovered that some ocean animals live in colder waters at each pole, while others live in deeper waters and near the shorelines. Some land animals live in dry deserts, while others live high up in trees in the rainforest. Natural gemstones and seashells were also provided for the children to observe with magnifying glasses and to manipulate in their hands.

Our first story of the week was called Thank You Earth by April Pulley Sayre. This book was a ‘thank you letter’ to our planet, filled with beautiful photographs of our land, sky, oceans, seasons and animals. We discussed how important it is to keep our Earth blue and green, and to be sustainable so it remains this way for future generations.

Our provocation led to the class exploring the layers of the Earth. We filled a glass box with coloured sand, bark and soil so we could see each distinct layer. Yellow sand was used for the core, then we used red sand for the outer core. Bark represented the mantle and we topped it off with soil for the crust and surface. On top of the surface, we placed trees, animals, stones and the ocean, to represent all of the things that exist on our Earth. Our planet is so fascinating!

It was lovely to see how the children have transferred and adapted their knowledge from what they have learned about our Earth through our learning experiences. Next week we will travel back in time to hundreds of millions of years ago and find out what existed on our planet.

Miss Rebecca, Miss Jenny, Miss Ling and Miss Jaycle

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Stage 4E

By Lauren Hall

“Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Welcome to Term 3 and our provocation The Wonderful World of S.T.E.A.M. What does S.T.E.A.M stand for?

S – Science, T – Technology, E – Engineering, A – Art, and M – Maths.

Each week the children will explore a different concept, starting with The Solar System. Extending on our Term 2 provocation Exploring Our Planet, we will start to investigate what else is out there in the universe.

Throughout the term the children will be encouraged to experiment, ask questions, hypothesise, and make conclusions during our weekly provocations led by the children’s interests.

Our stories of the week featured astronauts and their mission to outer space. The Darkest Dark by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, recalled the moment he was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the first moon landing in 1969. We also read Rocket Mole by Matt Carr, about an underground mole called ‘Armstrong’ who travelled solo to the Moon and back. Our storybooks lead to discussions about how rockets often lose parts or break away during their mission because they aren't needed anymore. We then learnt that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is in the process of building rockets that can be recycled to save millions of dollars. Instead of the parts breaking away and becoming space trash, the rockets will leave Earth intact and be programmed to return in a similar condition. Amazing!

During our morning learning sessions, the children engaged with a variety of space-themed experiences.

Discovery trays were filled with astronaut figurines, kinetic sand to mould and manipulate, purple sand was used to pour and scoop, and playdough was provided to cut into stars. The children were also invited to construct their own Solar Systems using felt planets and stars, they replicated star constellations using small stickers and joined them together with pencil lines, and our Solar System puzzles were very popular. On the mat the children also had fun connecting colourful shapes together to make space probes and satellites.

During the week we watched several short documentaries about the Solar System.

We learned that…

• Our Solar System is 1 of 500 in the universe and is located within the Milky Way. • The Sun is a giant star and the largest star in our Solar System.

• Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are ‘Terrestrial Planets,’ which means they are smaller, have solid surfaces and have no or few moons.

• Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are ‘Jovian Planets,’ which means they are larger, have lots of moons, are gas giants and have no solid surface.

• It's believed that there used to be life on Mars because evidence proves there was water on the planet 3.7 billion years ago. There is still some ice on Mars today in the form of a polar cap.

Inspired by the Solar System, the children created their own interpretations when constructing their artwork.

Coloured paper, glitter, tape, foil and cellophane was used to create the planets, rockets and stars on a dark background, and each artwork looked different and unique. Next week our space adventures will continue as the children investigate each individual planet more in-depth and they will construct their own alien characters and collaborative art projects.

Thank you for a fabulous start to the term and we look forward to seeing where our provocation leads us.

Lauren and Priya

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Drama

By Xanthe Wills

Welcome back to drama, term 3. We continued on with our Treasure Map adventure!

This week we focused on the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty and used our problem solving skills to help Miss Wish with her washing line.

We began by revising the map and talking through each of the stages we had passed so far. Last time, the bees in the forest heard a scream and a crack from the wall down the way. We decided to go and investigate! We found Humpty Dumpty and sang the popular nursery rhyme. When Humpty fell off the wall, he scattered into pieces and we helped him by putting the puzzle back together. The children took turns to choose a puzzle piece and place it in the correct position. When the puzzle was complete, Humpty told us why he fell: he saw all the clothes fall off Miss Wish’s washing line!

In Stage 1, the children each had a go of holding Humpty on their knees as we sang the popular nursery rhyme. The children made Humpty fall on cue! This caused a lot of giggles amongst our Stage 1 friends. Stage 1 had a visit from a bird friend, Lory the Lorikeet. We used our listening skills to hear the bird call before Lory came out to play.

Stage 1 are getting very confident in drama now and almost everyone is keen to join in!

In Stage 2-4 we decided to go and have a look at Miss Wish’s washing line. Humpty was right! Miss Wish’s socks had all fallen off her line. We helped her by pegging the socks back on the line. In Stage 2, the children practised squeezing the pegs onto the socks.

Stage 3 and 4 pegged the socks onto a washing line.

Once all the socks were hung, Miss Wish told us that her socks fell off because of a big gust of warm wind. Miss Wish had seen some fire coming from the cave in the mountains.

Stage 4 had a guess of what it could be! We will have to find out next week!

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