Reddam Early Learning School Newsletter Vol 22 Vol 15

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER Principal’s Message

27th May 2022

By Mrs Simone Cooke

“Art is a place for children to learn to trust their ideas, themselves and to explore what is possible” - MaryAnn F. Kohl Dear Parents, Here at Reddam we are committed to the holistic nature of learning, which recognises that all children are individuals and should be provided with a diverse range of opportunities to foster skills across all areas of development. Often artistic pursuits such as music, dramatic play and art are often greatly underestimated. Yet by providing children with opportunities for creative expression we build self-expression, confidence, and a belief in their own ideas.

Art is a part of each day at Reddam, whether it is visiting our beautiful art atelier to work on a project, modelling a sculpture from clay or experimenting with finger painting, bubble art, collage or creating a still life drawing or self-portraits, our children are encouraged to explore their creativity and delight in the joy of expressing themselves.

Through our Reggio Emilia approach to learning our children have the opportunity to use their own interests to guide their learning. This ensures that their voices are at the heart of the projects they undertake, this ranges from puppetry to pattern making, light and shadow play, print making or watercolour painting. This week in Stage 3 our children have been visiting Spain as part of their ‘Around the World” provocation and have been learning all about Pablo Picasso and have been inspired to create their own unique collages. Whilst in Stage 1 our babies have been enjoying the simple joy of discovering the texture of paint and have been doing their own creative colour mixing!

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Principal’s Message Continued…

It is important to remember that for children art is a process and not an end product.

Whilst as adults we love to admire a beautiful painting and may wish to guide our children towards an end result, it is important to remember that for children it is the act of doing which is most important. We do not want to limit children’s exploration, experimentation or discovery by instructing them on what they do, rather we want to provide them with the resources and inspiration to explore their own creativity, which is why offering them open ended opportunities to create is the best way to support their learning.

Working collaboratively with others is an important element of the Reggio approach to learning and group art works offer many benefits for our children, not just through turn 1st April 2022 taking and sharing but by communicating and pooling their knowledge and skills our children learn to work towards a common goal and learn to develop their own voice and perspective in relation to others.

Art has the capacity to relax and sooth children, inspire, create great joy and stimulate the imagination. Behind those little art works that you treasure so much is a wealth of learning that will last a life time.

“Every child is an artist.

The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

- Pablo Picasso REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER

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Stage 4R

By Ms Lauren Doughton

Playing in the Outdoors For children, play is learning. There is no better space for children to learn than the outdoors, and there is no better play resource than nature. One of the best lessons children can be taught in their early years is to play outdoors. Children innately reap great benefits as they grow connection and appreciation of the natural environment. In the structured, busy and technologically-advanced world we live in, the role of outdoor play that we experienced as children is unfortunately being forgotten.

Nature play is any activity that gets children active or thinking actively outdoors, with the end goal of building skills and ability to play without the need for adult control.

This can be in any setting, so long as it’s outdoors. It supports children being left to their own devices while caregivers supervise from a distance. Adults can also actively participate in nature play, however, through child-led play activities.

Over the week we focused on staying connected with each other as friends and staying connected with our families. Each child was paired up with another child; someone who they don’t usually play with and the main goal was for them to learn a bit about the other person while engaging in outdoor play.

As you are all aware the new outdoor playground opened this year and with such a large space for the children to run and explore it has created many opportunities for the children to improve their resilience, self-confidence, initiative, creativity and more. It encourages the joy of movement; it nurtures wild imaginations, experimentation, friendships, social connections and behaviour.skills. An area that was a big hit this week was the tough tray filled with water in the bark. The children were making homes for bugs, creating potions and involving themselves in their own imaginative play.

Reminders Sickness: As to Simone's email earlier in the week regarding illness please keep your child at home if they display any signs of being sick.

Warm clothes: Please ensure that you are dressing your child in appropriate clothing for the weather. It has been very cold and children have been coming to school with no jumpers, we would hate for them to get sick.

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Stage 4R

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Stage 4R

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Stage 4E

By Ms Sarah Ross

“Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn.”

– Stephen Hawking Early childhood is an ideal time to ignite children’s interests in coding, robotics, and engineering. Many young children are curious about the inner workings of the world around them and as our world evolves technology is becoming more essential in our daily lives. Stage Four are very aware of the technology around them and this week they have been developing an understanding of how certain technologies work. This has included the introduction of an educational robot called BeeBot! Additionally, as Stage Four continue with our life cycles provocation the children studied the incomplete metamorphosis life cycle of insects.

BeeBots The BeeBot is an exciting tool used to teach children the fundamentals of computational thinking. As an introduction to the use of BeeBots Stage Four spent time learning about what the BeeBot’s functions are. This consisted of learning and practicing directional language and reading symbols that convey directions. After the children made observations of how BeeBot works they were able to have their own turn of controlling and programming BeeBot to move around the classroom. This turned out to be a very exciting learning opportunity for all of Stage Four and they very much look forward to engaging in future challenges with the BeeBots.

Beetle Drawings As Stage Four studied the incomplete metamorphosis lifecycle of an insect they discovered that these insects have less steps involved on their way to becoming an adult compared to butterflies, moths and ladybirds. As an extension of interest on our initial discussions on the life cycle the children were keen to identify key features that identify an insect such as having six legs and antennae. To consolidate these ideas and learnt knowledge the children practiced making three dimensional sculptures of insects using play dough and loose parts. After this in-depth study, the children were invited to practice drawing pictures of beetles including their key features.

This week we saw the Stage Four children really apply themselves during provocation learning and show their love for hands on and open-ended experiences. This has been a great opportunity for the children to showcase their autonomy and independence and we look forward to supporting Stage Four extend these skills and love for learning further.

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Stage 4E

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Stage 4E

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Stage 4D

By Ms Emily Chacon

How Does It Work?

This week the children have been exploring REACTIONS! Throughout our introductory week we researched what is a reaction? And what are some types of reactions?

This research week was to prepare the children for our wonderful chemical and chain reaction experiments next week. We are very excited!

We continued our imaginative writing task, where the children were invited to use their creativity skills to create a magical potion.

‘Create a magic potion. What can it do? What are the ingredients?’

It was amazing to hear the children’s ideas: “My potion explodes buildings. Mix salt and eggs” – Alison “My potion is to make people fly. Mix orange and a rainbow” – Everly “My potion is to make people sit down. Mix purple and milk” – Grace Engaging the children in creative writing not only encourages imagination and cognitive skill building, but it also provides numerous opportunities to develop children’s emergent literacy capacities. This includes making meaning/expressing ideas in texts, fine motor skills, concepts, phonics and creative and exploring texts.

We have also begun our new chapter book for this term ‘James and the Giant Peach’

by Roald Dahl. This story is about a boy who is given magic beans, but before he could use any of them, he accidentally drops them under a peach tree. When he wakes up the next morning there is a giant peach and he finds a hole on the side and decides to crawl in, what awaits is fun and adventure!

The children have really seemed to enjoy the book and are able to give feedback and ideas on the storyline.

Reading chapter books at a young age assists in building a strong foundation for literacy by increasing the children’s attention span and strengthening vocabulary and comprehension.

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Stage 4D

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Stage 4D

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Stage 3/4

By Ms Riina Andrew

Coding During the final week of our Coding provocation, the children were able to revisit some of their favourite experiences of the last four weeks. As predicted, the Bee-Bots were the most popular item of which the children wished to explore! We also enjoyed following sequences (steps) to make Fairy Bread to finish off our last week of Coding and the best bit was we got to eat it!

We also ended the week with a large group time discussion and recap of what we have learnt. Below is a transcript of the children’s thoughts and comments: Jane: “I liked the Bear Hunt game where we learnt left and right” Elizabeth: “Playing with the Bee-bots was the best” Alexa: “I liked the going on the Bear Hunt” Marcus: “I liked the teddy bear game on the chairs” Megan: “I liked the arrows” Julian: “I liked coding the sandcastle aeroplane” Junso: “I liked the teddy’s” Milo: “I liked the Bee-bots” Cyon: “I liked the Bee-bots because they can go forwards and backwards” Leo G: “I liked making the Fairy Bread” Wesley: “The Bee-bots were the best because I liked pushing all the buttons” Tianze: “I liked pressing the Bee-bot buttons” Valentina: “I liked the office computers” Brielle: “I liked news time and showing my car” Matthias: “I like from the coding computers” Zac: “I liked playing on the computers” Alizay: “I love about Coding about Bee-bots” Rohan: “I make a good choice and got a cracker on my plate (Fairy Bread) Mabel: “I liked the Fairy Bread” James: “Playing bears and Bee-bots” As we enjoyed making the Fairy Bread so much this week, we have decided to commence next week with the new provocation of Fairy Tales, which we are all very excited about.

On Wednesday, we participated in the ‘National Simultaneous Story Time’. This is a yearly event where a story book is chosen and is read by educators across the nation.

This year the story book was ‘Family Tree’ by Josh Pyke and Ronojoy Ghosh. To celebrate this event, we invited Miss Bianca and her Stage 2 class into our classroom so we could listen to the story together. We all have a lovely time listening to the story and dissecting the story afterwards and discussing our favourite parts of the book.

Thank you to all the wonderful hand manipulation items that the children have been bringing to school for ‘Show and Tell’. We have enjoyed them very much and look forward to next week and sharing our favourite books!

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Stage 3/4

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Stage 3/4

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Stage 3E

By Ms Bianca Lazar

Hola and bienvenido de nuevo!

As we conclude our trip to Spain, Stage 3 children enjoyed their last week immersing themselves in lots of dancing, singing, constructing, and creating. On the learning tables this week, children recreated the famous lizard mosaic using coloured tissue paper and glue. The sculpture is located at the entrance of Park Güell in Barcelona, Spain. The statue was designed by the modernist architect Antoni Gaudi and is one of the most popular symbols of Barcelona.

On the other tables, children were invited to construct the iconic building in Barcelona, ‘The Sagrada Familia’ using building blocks. The building is famous for being one of the most iconic examples of Antoni Gaudi’s unique style, combining elements of Spanish Late gothic designs.

On the long art table, children were asked to pack their very own suitcase. They used scissors and glue to cut out and glue different clothing items into their empty suitcase.

Finding motivating activities that also teach key vocabulary and semantic skills is often difficult. This socio-dramatic language learning experience is great for children’s vocabulary and fine motor development. Cutting gives young children independent movements of each finger. Cutting with scissors works on the separation of two sides of the hand and strengthens hand muscles. Bilateral coordination is also addressed when they have to hold the scissors in one hand and paper in the other.

And lastly, on the numeracy table children engaged in a colour sorting activity. When sorting the objects into the correct tub, children were encouraged to pronounce the colours in Spanish. Sorting objects helps build visual perception and thinking skills.

Children can generally sort into colours before they can identify the name of the colours.

Learning to categorise and classify helps memory skills.

Our Family Origins This week, children have continued presenting their family origins to their peers and educators. Speaking in front of a group is an effective activity to encourage the use of descriptive language and develops a child's ability to retell stories – in turn leading to improved communication skills which are important throughout their lives.

Our next destination… UNITED KINGDOM!

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Stage 3E

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Stage 3E

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Stage 2/3 & 3R

By Ms Gabriela Guimaraes

At the Farm Continuing on our transportations and occupations unit the children this week put on their straw hats on and were involved in a series of farmer activities.

We started with a fine motor skill activity. We invited the children to milk a Cow. It was a perfect activity for our week at the farm provocation. We allowed the children to grasp and squeeze their fingers downward to simulate milking a cow.

We even attempted to fill a small glass with the “milk.” In this activity the children worked on their bilateral coordination, fine motor skills. Grasp and hand strength.

The children always love hands on activities through touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, moving and hearing. These activities enhance learning while stimulating the children’s senses.

In one of our learning stations the children were invited to wash dirty muddy farm animals and in the art atelier we got dirty by doing farm painting with real mud.

Sensory play lays an important foundation for later learning skills. It doesn’t only helps children to differentiate sharp from round, smooth from rough and cold from warm but also helps them verbalize the various sensations they feel. Those activities are also considered calming and therapeutic.

Sensory activities also naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while creating, playing, investigating and exploring. This is a basic step in empowering the brain’s ability to discover, classify and sort more complex information later in life.

Therefore, providing those opportunities for sensory play is crucial to children’s brain development.

We also invite the children to participate on a STEM activity. We set up an invitation with popsicle sticks for the children to make their own barns. This STEM activity focused on problem solving and engineering.

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Stage 2/3 & 3R

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Stage 2/3 & 3R

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Stage 2R

By Ms Madeleine Grant

Across the Desert…

This week we continued our journey through the natural world by exploring the extreme conditions and rich ecosystems of deserts. During group times we talked about how deserts are places where it hardly ever rains, so they are very dry. Following from last week, we learnt that most plants and animals need lots of water to survive, but some living things had adapted to thrive in these arid climates.

The children were given trays of sand, and hiding under the dunes were one of the most popular desert creatures - snakes! Most children were delighted to find the snakes and loved making them slither around and hiss at their friends and teachers. Some assigned them roles, explaining to us which was the mummy snake, daddy snake, and baby snake. They buried them in the sand, telling us “snake is hiding” or “baby snake is going to sleep”.

We also used the sand as a prompt to assess their pre-writing development. They used their fingers to make lines in the sand, and we asked them to attempt more complex and refined patterns such as copying the different shapes of the snakes. Some were long and straight, some were curvy, and some were tightly coiled. Through this we wanted to assess where each child was at with their fine motor and coordination skills, and the task mimicked the process of writing and intentional drawing.

We continued the fine motor exercises with the cactus inspired playdough! They moulded the green dough into different shapes, looking at photos of cactuses and succulents for inspiration, and added uncooked yellow rice to represent the protective spikes! The children gave the tiny muscles in their fingers and hands a work out as they kneaded the rice through the dough, making a tough and gritty texture that became more clay-like as the week progressed.

For our art project we used sand mixed into earth-toned paints to make thick, grainy sand dune inspired paintings. The children were fascinated by the texture, and experimented with the different techniques they could use to make different patterns.

They scraped, stamped, swished and spread the paint across the page, creating a beautiful and unique three dimensional landscape.

With the weather getting colder and the big winter coats starting to come out, can I please ask children to refrain from bringing toys and other items to school as our locker space is quite limited! Also please ensure all children’s clothes are clearly labelled, including all jumpers, coats, clothing and shoes.

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Stage 2R

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Stage 2R

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Stage 1E

By Ms Justine Heydra

Igniting curiosity though S.T.E.M. “Like learning to count or read, learning how to do science is a lifelong process.”

- Peggy Ashbrook.

This week our S.T.E.M provocation took us on an exciting journey of experiments and testing theories such as ; what objects will float and which ones will sink. The children also had the opportunity to explore and play with our magic sand that resembled sand outside of water but when submerged the sand could be moulded and played with under the water.

Our first sensory activity was the “Volcano Experiment” This activity was done in both an individual setup and also as a group exercise. During our provocation group time the children had the opportunity to listen and learn about our experiment. I demonstrated the experiment to the group and the children then each had the chance to conduct the experiment on their own with a little assistance.

The volcano experiment is often used to demonstrate what happens when an acid reacts to a base. For our experiment we used vinegar (acid) and baking soda (base) We also added some food colouring to our vinegar to make it look more fun and dramatic.

This experiment was fantastic for our age group as it demonstrated a better understanding of our science concept which our children cannot fully understand theoretically yet at their age.

After the group experiment the children had a second turn at our Volcano experiment at our activity table, for this sensory activity we used the same ingredients, however we used a dropper to add the vinegar to the baking soda. The children all loved this activity and it definitely ignited their curiosity for science. We also extended on our vocabulary and they strengthened their finger muscles by using the dropper to transfer the vinegar.

Our second sensory activity was an exercise where we discussed and put into practice whether certain objects would sink or float. The children each had the opportunity to add different objects to our sensory water tubs and we discussed which ones they thought would sink and which ones would float.

The children enjoyed this activity and recognised their own achievements when they guessed the sink or float of an object correctly. Through this activity the children were introduced to a simple physics experiment that encouraged the children to make predictions and observations about buoyancy and density.

Wishing you all a great weekend with your family

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Stage 1E

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Stage 1E

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Stage 1R

By Ms Amanda Felton

All Things Red! What a fun time we have been having at Reddam this week investigating the colour red. We never knew how many red items we could find, a red ball, a red sock, a red hat and even strawberries are red! . We have enjoyed exploring many objects through sensory play and having such a lovely time passing items to our friends and learning to share with one another.

This week we had a wonderful time painting with red dots and we played with a new ingenious painting tool called the dotter. Even though our fine motor skills are only just developing we are all so clever that we learnt how to pick it up using our pincer grip and then had a wonderful time stamping it up and down on the paper, we had to be careful not to print our hands and it can be tricky holding a paintbrush.

With the sun shining outdoors time we all really enjoyed outside play and walking and crawling around the green space.

Well done Babies keep up the wonderful effort!

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Stage 1R

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Drama

By Ms Laura Hudson

The Secret Garden, Dragons and Knights Last week in drama in Stage 3 and 4 we found a key in the Giant’s house. We needed this key for the last part of the treasure map. This key led us into the forest where we saw a door in a tree, we tried the key and hey presto it worked. We zoomed down the slide and we found ourselves inside a secret garden that looked very magical. Up on the shelf were some sparkly glass jars, we stood on our tip toes to reach one and decided to open it and sprinkle it over ourselves.

This was fairy dust, everyone described what colour they had and what the dust had turned them into. We had fairies, unicorns, butterflies, and birds. We decided to walk a bit further into the garden when we heard a few noises and I suggested we play magical statue’s, dancing to our imaginary music and every time we heard a noise we would freeze (e.g., Snake slithering, Owl hooting etc.) We also played a game of red light/green light but the children were magical creatures, and the other children are trying to sneak past. We followed the twisty path through the magic garden that led us to another door. Everyone decided to open it. We looked at the map and saw it was the cave. Who did the Cave belong too? We had lots of ideas, Cohan from Stage 3 suggested a bat cave, Oscar from Stage 4 said a bear. We moved closer towards it and heard someone breathing and saw fire, Hector, Violet, and Ashleigh said it’s a Dragon’s Cave!

Next, I began a discussion about the time that dragons were. It was a long time ago and people lived in villages. They didn’t have cars and machines to do all the chores. They generally rode horses, so the jobs people did were different to ours today. The children choose a job to do in the village. Some suggestions included, grooming horses, preparing bread and chopping wood.

One child was chosen to go outside to become the Dragon, when this person enters again the villages’ call “The dragon is coming” and freeze in a sculpture. The dragon goes up to the villagers and breaths fire on them, if a villager moves, laughs, or smiles they have to join the dragon and go outside. This game was played until there is only one villager left.

Next the room was transformed into the Dragon’s Lair. The children helped build a dragon cave with a few chairs and some material. They had to remember what the Dragon’s Lair looked like for next week.

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Drama In the Nest through to Stage 2 the children used their senses to go on an interactive adventure led by the teacher.

They began by looking at pictures of dragons, copying their facial expressions and body posture. Also, in Stage 2 they discussed what they sound, feel and smell like.

Next, I went into role as a knight and told the children that a dragon had stolen her treasure and she needed help to find it.

Then I led the children on an interactive adventure that incorporated several obstacles and sensory activities including, walking over the pebbled bridge (bubble wrap), swimming up the stream (putting their hands in water) going through the slimy tunnel (feeling the slime) and finally smelling the dragons cave (mud). At the end of the adventure, they saw that the dragon was sleeping (puppet) and had to work together to get the knight’s treasure. They decided to tip toe in the cave and make a line, passing the treasure and the knights’ keys down the line one at a time quietly. They managed to do this successfully without waking the dragon.

What a great adventure. Well Done everyone!

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Yoga

By Ms Nicole Mulholland

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Yoga

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My Gym

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My Gym

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A Final Note…

On a final note, we would like to send huge congratulations to our much loved Enrolment Officer Michelle Kellett on the arrival of little Olivia Rose on 17th May. Her older sister Maddie is getting in lots of cuddles and Michelle sends her love to all our Reddam families.

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