Reddam ELS Lindfield Newsletter Vol 23 Issue 1

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL

3rd February 2023

Throughout January, our team have been enjoying working to get to know their new classes, orientating the children into their new routines and environments. Our focus during this time has been to get to know the children by interacting with and noting their interests, development, and emerging skills.

We as a team base our educational program on the children's individual developmental needs by providing learning environments that promote choice with open-ended experiences planned around their interests and developing skills whilst extending their pre-reading, prewriting, and pre-mathematics. This period of observation of the children will serve as the platform on which we begin the years learning program.

We are inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach and this we incorporate into our everyday Practice.

The Reggio Emilia Philosophy , refers to the “100 Languages” which explores and highlights the fact that children learn in many different ways, and how it is important to offer multiple opportunities for children to show what they know. This may be through reading, writing, creating a sculpture, painting, or climbing. Having various ways to create and construct offers children multiple ways to learn.

Responding to children’s interests helps bring authentic engagement and exploration to life. Project work fosters in-depth studies that the children and teacher(s) are living and learning alongside each other. Listening well, leading with questions, and exploring using experience, materials, hands-on learning, and integrating content areas all create opportunities to learn in deeply integrated ways throughout the day.

In Reggio Emilia, “The Environment as the Third Teacher” is an idea that allows us to think critically about how we are setting up the environment so that all children can learn.”Edutopia .org Reggio Emilia approach. We as a team strive every day to provide the environment for the children in our care to learn the way that suits them in learning spaces that offer open-ended resources to spur their creativity and curiosity.

Principal’s Message Continued...

By Chrsitine Irwin

We look forward to the year ahead and I encourage you to chat with our team of educators as well as keeping up to date on the Tapestry App to read over the posts where our team documents observations that make the learning visible to all. We look forward to seeing our parents at the parent information evening held from the 6th to 9 the of February from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm. This is a child-free event so please make alternative arrangements for care for your children on the night.

Date for parent info evening are as follows:

Monday 6th February - Stage 4

Tuesday 7th February – Stage 1

Wishing everyone a safe and happy weekend. We look forward to Term 1 commencing next week.

Christine Irwin, Principal

By Heather Gaskall

Welcome our dear families of 1R to the first newsletter of the year. The children and teachers have spent the January holiday time getting to know each other and developing strong bonds. We have been settling our new additions into the routines of the stage 1R room. So far everyone has been having a great time and making those all important connections with their teachers. The children have also been starting to evolve wonderful relationships with each other. Those not as mobile as others are starting to move around with speed, they don’t want to miss out! We look forward to all the interesting things that will occur over the year.

During the last couple of weeks we have been observing the children’s interests in the various experiences we have offered them. There has been a lot of water play on those warm days and even some sprinkling with the hose, much to the delight of those getting wet. But the children have shown us a keen interest in cars and various vehicles, therefore we have decided that our focus for the term will be ‘Transport’.

Over the term we will investigate cars, trucks, construction vehicles and trains to name a few. This investigation will include looking into the way these vehicles move, the sounds they make and introducing movement vocabulary. We will also be using these vehicles in many sensory textures like sand, water, mulch and dirt. We will even use the vehicles to creativity create our artworks.

We look forward to seeing everyone at our parent information night on Tuesday 7th at 6.30pm. This evening is all about providing you with information, meeting the stage 1R team and giving you the opportunity to ask questions. Please remember this is a child free night , thank you.

Heather, Carina and Jing

Stage 1R:

Stage 1R:

By Charity Acera

Welcome to 1E in 2023!

We have had a wonderful start to the year, playing together and getting to know each other. The children have settled well into their new classroom and are already developing strong relationships with us and their peers. We are looking forward to the rest of the year! Over the past few weeks the children have been showing a strong interest in cars and vehicles. So this term we will be exploring transport!

Our focus book this week was ‘We All Go Travelling By’ by Sheena Roberts. It is a song book so we enjoyed singing along together. We saw lots of different vehicles such as a yellow school bus, a fast orange car and a long blue train. Each vehicle has its own noise and actions so we enjoyed making each noise, 'beep beep beep' for the bus, 'brmm brmmm brmmm' for the truck and 'neeeeooooww' for the airplane. The children thoroughly enjoyed this story and requested it many times throughout the week.

This week we explored our creativity by painting with cars! We rolled the tyres in paint and drove the cars across the table to create tyre tracks. The children enjoyed pushing the cars around the table and watching the tracks they made.

In the sandpit the children used the diggers to move the sand around and as they did so we made the noise of the engine. A water tray was set up with boats in our outdoor environment for the children to explore. They enjoyed splashing the water and watching the boats float around. Thanks for learning with us!

Hazel, May and Resie

Stage 1E:

Stage 1E:

Stage 2R

Dear beautiful families, Happy New Year!

We hope you have had a great holiday season with your loved ones.

By Sara Haddadi

We would like to welcome each and everyone to 2R. We look forward to a fun-filled year, with lots of memories to share with you. It is our goal in the Stage 2R room to provide your child with a warm, loving and nurturing environment which will allow your child to grow, learn and discover.

We will endeavor to provide a care routine for your child that will be similar to what they experience at home to ensure they feel safe and secure whilst in our care. Therefore, one of our goals is to establish a strong bond and communication lines with you and your child. The information you provide to us, including the little things, will help us give your child the best care that you desire.

Stage 2R:

Stage 2R:

By Mia Doan

Welcome to 2E family! Each and every 2E educator believes that a genuine, respectful relationship between children, educators, families and friends is the cornerstone for belonging and learning. Despite a long holiday, 2E children have been coping well with their new changes, new environments and new educators. They are able to regulate their emotions and calm down by joining in provocation activities, exploring indoor or outdoor environments, watching trains, looking for birds and listening to bird calls in our campus.

Young children are able to restore and recollect information and prior experiences to connect with new learning. In the first few week, our focus was about Our Holidays which aimed to get to know each child and appreciate the cultural diversity in holiday celebrations. 2E children were thrilled when they saw their holiday photos which were sent by their parents. They started to communicate verbally and non-verbally and shared their holiday stories in a few words or simple sentences. Having the holiday discussion strongly enhanced 2E children’s sense of belonging, security and trust as they began to initiate conversations and build up their confidence in the new classroom environment.

We also seized the opportunity to discuss about Our Families and Lunar New Year Celebration. This focus was a great interwoven talking point between families and cultures to our young children. We explored the concept of families, what it means to be a friend and noted the differences and similarities we all share. We also moved from exploring the family in a gradually expanding scope to our culture in Australia, and respectfully shared the heritage of families with international backgrounds.

Traditional and intergenerational cuisines are an expression of cultural identity. We flew to China and participated in a cooking session in which we made the sophisticated dumplings. Lately, we landed in Vietnam to taste Summer Rice Paper Rolls. Cooking with 2E children not only enhances their healthy eating habits and stimulates their senses and appetite but also guides them to appreciate cultural diversity.

We are beyond happy to welcome you all to Term 1 2023 provocation - This is Us. We will focus on providing a welcoming, secure and safe learning environment for all the children in 2E. This provocation provides children opportunities to develop a strong sense of belonging to the groups and recognise the diverse connections between people, nature and the wider world. They will be invited to participate in experiences that allow them to share their interests and learn about and from others’.

Have a lovely weekend,

“Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.” (Brene Brown)

Mia, Xanthe, Chloe, Shandie and Alisha

Stage 2E:

Stage 2E:

Stage 3R

By Grace Nolan

“If you trust play, you will not have to control your child’s development as much. Play will raise the child in ways you can never imagine.” ~ Vince Gowmon

Welcome to another great start to the year! The past few weeks have been settling the children into their new learning environment and building trusting and positive relationships with not only the children but families too.

As we watch on, we can see the children have prominent interests in dinosaurs, the natural environment and obstacle courses. Our philosophy values children’s voices and interests as the main segway for children to learn. The 3R team have therefore been focusing on these interests to extend, create curiosity and explore different concepts and skills.

Our Term 1 provocation will be ‘All About Me’ which allows children to follow their own interests whilst also creating a connection with their class, peers, teachers and wider community. Our goal for the children will be to explore aspects of their interests and link it to their microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem (Bronfrenbrenner, 1979).

Another goal for the children and classroom will be to foster independence through selfhelp skills. As children jump from 2-3 year old developmental milestones to the 3-5 year developmental milestones, it is important to recognise and encourage responsibility for themselves and others. This may be in the form of allowing children to dress themselves, setting the table, helping to put laundry away or using adaptive self-soothing techniques.

We look forward to continuing to get to know our children and their families over the coming year. Have a lovely weekend everyone

Miss Grace, Miss Jenny and Miss Charity

Stage 3R:

Stage 3R:

By Natalie Horstman

“Play is the work of the child” -

Maria Montessori

Welcome to Term 1! During the month of January, the children have started to explore and investigate with a wide range of materials and resources through play. They have started their enquiry into dinosaurs, painting, dancing and navigating themselves through their indoor and outdoor learning environments. The children have enjoyed listening attentively during group discussions and morning meetings where they are able to share their thoughts and ideas. They have enjoyed using the “Five L’s of Listening” to remind each other of how to sit on the mat and listen to their teachers. The children have started to build upon their pre-literacy skills by practising to sign into the room each morning and find their bag tag for their locker. This has allowed the children to develop their autonomy and independence, as they are able to confidently look after their belongings and take ownership of their learning and emerging interests.

The children have engaged in different table activities where they have been able to manipulate different materials together to suit their own interests and needs, roll and pull apart playdough and build and construct objects using blocks and mobilo. During outside play, the children have taken an interest in exploring their natural environments where they have been able to collect sticks, make campfires, walk across logs and manipulate leaves and sticks together to create new resources from.

This leads us into our exploration for Term 1, which is all about using our senses to explore the world surrounding us and being able to become confident, curious and enthusiastic learners! This will encourage the children to become active participants, become caring towards others and the environment and begin to show empathy and care towards others.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend, Laura,

Natalie & Kai

Stage 3E:

Stage 3E:

Stage 4R

By Amy Cunningham

Hello lovely families and welcome to the first newsletter of 2023. We’ve had a wonderful start to the new year at Reddam with the children in 4R confidently tackling the challenges that accompany transitioning into a new classroom with new peers and new teachers. It’s been a real delight getting to know each member of our class, having meaningful discussions about the things they value and enjoy the most. It’s also been lovely to see the children utilising and developing their social skills to build on existing friendships and make connections with new friends too. Over the past three weeks, we’ve provided various learning experiences and resources for the children to explore, interact with, and discuss. Through our observations and conversations with the children, we’ve been able to discover many of their likes, dislikes and focused interests. As we move forward throughout the term, we will continue to draw on these interests to create an educational programme which is best suited to the children in 4R.

So far in 4R we’ve had the most amazing time exploring the outside world. Digging for bugs and searching for cicada shells, cooking imaginary stews, curries and soups, creating wonderful role plays and making music, tackling obstacle courses and running races. All of these playful experiences have been strengthening the children’s crucial physical motor skills as well as their social and cognitive development.

A lot of our friends in 4R showed great interest in finding out more about Lunar New Year and all the different celebrations that are associated with the spring festival. We read stories and watched videos of activities such as Lion and Dragon dances, drumming and preparing special foods to be eaten for the New Year. We were so lucky to have Miss Rebecca teach us how to make dumplings and be able to eat them for afternoon tea. The children did a fabulous job using their fine motor skills to chop, fill, fold and pinch their dumplings, and the finished product looked incredible! (Although maybe they didn’t taste as good as they look!) We read stories about how Chinese New Year originated and learnt about the monster, Nian, who would terrorise the villages on the evening of the new moon. We discovered that Nian was scared of loud noises and the colour red, hence why loud drumming, fireworks and red lanterns are so prominent throughout the festive period. It was beautiful to see the children create their own drums in the garden using pots and pans from the mud kitchen and then add in some role play as they chased their friends away with the loud noise!

What an immensely rich first couple of weeks it has been! Moving forward, our provocation will continue to explore various activities and traditions from around the world which resonate with the children’s interest. We are super excited to see what we will discover next!

Amy, Callum and Margaret

Stage 4R:

Stage 4R:

Stage 4E

By Lauren Hall

A very warm welcome to the children and their families in 4E! The teachers have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the children over the first three weeks and developing a warm and trusting rapport with them. Our classroom was set up with a variety of provocations to cater for many interests the children may have including ocean animals, dinosaurs, construction, painting, small world play, dramatic play, sensory and manipulation experiences. After observing how the children interacted with each other, how they played and what they gravitated towards, the children demonstrated a keen interest in nature. This interest then developed into a fascination in minibeasts.

We started by investigating all types of insects and critters that inhabit our garden environments. The children were particularly interested in ladybugs and butterflies so we began our inquiry and learnt that to be classed as an insect, one must have six legs, antennae and wings. Our story book The BadTempered Ladybird by Eric Carlé, taught us that ladybugs are important in protecting our plants and flowers as they eat tiny pest insects called “aphids.” The children were also surprised at how many changes the ladybug goes through during the course of its life-cycle, starting off as an egg, developing into larvae, a pupa and then into the ladybug we recognised.

The interest then moved onto butterflies, where the children demonstrated their knowledge and understanding of how caterpillars morph into such colourful creatures. Like the ladybug, the caterpillar goes through many changes and the children started to recognise that insect babies look very different when they first hatch, compared to what they grow into. Our story Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson followed a baby monkey on his search for his mum with the help of a butterfly. After much frustration, the monkey said, 'My mum looks like me..." to which the butterfly replied, "You never told me she looked like you. How would I know, my babies don't look like me." Our second story, The Butterfly Bouquet by Nicola Davies included lots of facts about butterflies including, butterflies taste with their feet when they land, and they lay eggs on their favourite leaves they like to eat. Some brightly coloured butterflies are poisonous, and butterflies help to pollinate flowers just like bees do, they just don't make any honey. In the atelier, the children were invited to create their own butterfly prints and were pleasantly surprised at how the paint had changed when they revealed their butterfly pattern

During our third week together, our class continued to explore their new interest in frogs. At our manipulation table, the children used sieves to scoop tadpole eggs (jelly beads) and role the frogs in their lily pad pond. Green playdough was also provided for the children to roll, flatten and shape into frogs using a frog learnt how frogs are born as tadpole eggs or "frogspawn" in ponds. The tadpole then hatches and eventually grows gills so it can breathe underwater, forms front and back legs, its tail shortens and eventually it resembles a frog. Frogs are classed as amphibians because they inhabit the water and the land. Frogs also experience many changes just like the ladybug and butterfly do. What an incredible journey we have started together. We look forward to seeing where the children’s interests take us this term.

"A child, more than anyone else, is a spontaneous observer of nature"

Maria Montessori

Lauren, Rowel and Rebecca