Reddam Early Learning School Newsletter St Leonards Vol 22 Issue 22

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER Principal’s Message

5th August 2022

By Mrs Simone Cooke

Dear Parents, We all remember our first childhood friend. The one we woke up excited to see inside the school gates. Play dates filled with adventure, fun, and laughter.

For children, making friends is a vital part of growing up and an essential part of their social and emotional development. Attributes such as social competence, altruism, self-esteem, and self-confidence have all been found to be positively correlated to having friends. Building friendships enables children to learn more about themselves and in turn develop their own sense of identity.

Establishing friendships is an important part of your child’s developmental milestones. for our children and creates the foundations for lifetime relationships. It also allows our children to experience diversity as they make friends from a range of different cultures and backgrounds and discover that people have different interests, tastes and talents. This opens up our children’s minds to new ideas and in turn develops greater understanding and acceptance of others.

As teachers and parents there are many ways we can help our children navigate friendships, become more confident and help to build and develop their social skills.

Help your child to develop positive social skills. Help them to understand the importance of sharing, taking someone else’s feelings into account and listening to each other. These can be supported by organising plenty of opportunities for your child to meet lots of different people REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER

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Principal’s Message Continued…

Arrange play dates. If your child is shy and reluctant to branch out and speak to others, invite a friend for a play date at home, where they feel comfortable, as this will enable them to be at ease and is a good way of cementing friendships.

Demonstrate to your child how friendships work by letting them see how you behave with your friends Help your child find other children with similar interests, such as through a swimming class, ballet class, soccer team – children choose friends based on similar and shared interests.

1st April 2022

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER

At Reddam we regularly talk about the importance of being a good friend to others.

We also talk about using inside voices, kind hearts and gentle hands. Even in good friendships disagreements can occur, it might be over a toy or inability to agree on which game to play. Providing our children with the resources to negotiate, share and handle conflict appropriately all ensures that our children is building strong socialisation skills from an early age. Our Reggio Emilia approach to learning fosters collaboration and team building and guides our children to navigate social relationships where they can build meaningful friendships that provide them with a strong sense of belonging.

Understanding that friendship isn’t always easy, is another important part of socialisation. Children can be hurt when someone says “ You’re not my friend today” or excludes them from their play. Whilst these usually resolve very quickly, please always speak to your child’s teacher if a problem continues as our teachers are well equipped in dealing with these altercations and can provide strategies to help both children solve their problems so that all our children can play in a safe and inclusive environment.

We should never underestimate how important friendships are to our children.

Even from a young age our little ones start to build strong connections with each other. How lovely it is to see them greet one another each morning by shouting out their name in excitement or see them running over to each other to give them a hug and show them how much they love them. The friendships our children form with each other create strong foundations , not merely for the time they are together in Preschool, but quite often into lifelong friendships.

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Stage 4R

By Ms Lauren Doughton and Ms Emily Brazel

Our Blue Planet The ocean is a fascinating part of our planet and covers nearly three quarters of the earth's surface. It is important for us to understand the dangers that the world faces and to do all we can to educate our children and how they can make a positive impact on their environment.

As the ocean goes, the earth goes. If our blue planet is negatively impacted, so are we, therefore we need help children to understand the importance of keeping our oceans safe.

This term we will be breaking down the blue planet step by step, allowing them the opportunity to understand what lies beneath the waves. We will begin our term by firstly gaining an understanding of what the children already know, encouraging them to use their language and communication skills to assist their teachers in creating a mind map of possibilities. It is essential to gain this understanding of what the children already know in order to intentionally build on their knowledge, whilst integrating math and literacy into the curriculum.

Our Ocean Wonders In order for teachers to programme accordingly for children throughout the term, it is important that they gain an understanding of what the children's already know. Together with the children, teachers brainstormed at the start of the week as a class around the topic “Our Blue Planet”. This activity not only gave children the opportunity to use their language and communication skills in a group setting but it allowed teachers to build on children's prior knowledge. Prior knowledge has long been considered the most important factor influencing learning and student achievement. Once this group session has finished the children had the opportunity to work individually with their teacher for a writing experience. Firstly, teachers asked each child the question “What do you want to find out this term?”. The children were able to put on their thinking caps and set to work. Once the children had thought of an appropriate cognitive question the used their fine-motor skills to write this question out on a fish they created. This activity allowed the children to not only practise her tripod grip but develop a greater understanding of letter and sound recognition and as well letter formation and word structure.

The Food Chain Throughout the week the children engaged in a powerpoint presentation that began to explore and explain food chains. The children were then invited to discuss their understanding.

“A food chain shows how each animal get its’s food. Food chains show the ways that living things depend on each other” Afterwards the children sat with their teacher to extend on their knowledge to create and draw their own food chain. It was amazing to see the children show enthusiasm in participating in a new topic and exciting topic.

Loose Parts Creation The children were encouraged to use their creativity and imagination to create a scene under the ocean. Each child was given a variety of ocean creatures, shells and glass pebbles in order to construct an image. Once they finished their creations they was asked to use their language and communication skills to articulate their scene to their teacher. This skill of retelling helps children to build on vocabulary whilst demonstrating their growing understanding of story structure.

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Stage 4R

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Stage 4R

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Stage 4E

By Ms Sarah Ross

Over the past couple of weeks Stage Four have begun a new provocation surrounding the topics of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The children are very excited about this and each child has been sharing their curiosities and wonders about the world. Each wonder or inquiry question has been carefully recorded and included in the educational program throughout the term.

By utilising the topics of STEM into our learning provocation we aim to inspire and build upon each child's understanding of concepts and the creative thinking and inquiry processes that are necessary for life-long learning. Stage Four will be encouraged to challenge and extend their own thinking and that of others through collaborative interactions and negotiations. We look forward to sharing our learning and discoveries with you all each week!

I wonder…

To begin our learning provocation the children engaged in brainstorming discussions where we explored the meaning of the word ‘wonder’ and how to structure an inquiry question. Each child shared their interests and ideas and formed a question that they could use to investigate and extend upon their knowledge. Afterwards, the children carefully recorded their wonders by writing them down and displayed them on our provocation board.

Some of the children’s questions include; “I wonder how birds fly?” – Yuno “I wonder how robots are made?” – Dylan “I wonder how we make t-shirts out of garbage?” – Thomas “I wonder how we make phones?” – Leo “I wonder how cheese is made?” – Augusten “I wonder how grapes are made?” – Serafina “I wonder how monster trucks and tractors are made?” – Ethan A “I wonder what dogs eat?” – Zavier “I wonder how dogs talk?” – Kai “I wonder how traffic light are made?” – Henry “I wonder how turtles get their shells?” – Azure “I wonder how balloons are made?” – Flynn Forces To begin our exploration into Science Stage Four explored the topic Physics and learnt about different types of forces. In class discussions the children discovered that there are five different types of forces including; push, pull, friction, magnetism and gravity. After discussing each type of force the children shared examples of each force represented in their daily lives such as; pushing a broken-down car or toy trains with magnets being pulled together.

Throughout the week Stage Four continued to investigate forces through play and structured activities where they sorted magnetic and non-magnetic materials, raced marbles down ramps, discerned which types of objects can roll, and painted with magnets.

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Stage 4E

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Stage 4E

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Stage 4D

By Ms Emily Chacon

As I am sure you are aware, the children have embarked on an under the sea adventure! Our topic for Term 3 is called ‘Deep Blue’.

Throughout our first week we have explored why the ocean is so important.

It is a source of food for humans The ocean creates the air we breathe It controls the weather The oceans give us water The sea absorbs carbon dioxide The children worked together to research and create a wonderful information board. As a group the children drew and painted different images that supported their researched area. By the end of the week our information wall was complete.

In our following week the children have been hard at work, researching and exploring the zones of the ocean. The ocean is divided into 4 zones which are named based on the amount of sunlight they receive, sunlit zone, twilight zone, midnight zone and abyss.

Across the week we read ‘Ocean’ by Helene Druvert & Emmanuelle Grundmann which assisted the children in exploring various creatures that live in each of the zones. One creature that caught the children’s eye was the oarfish or ribbonfish. This creature is the longest bony fish and can measure 5-10 meters and could swim upright in the water if it wanted to.

We were so amazed that we wanted to measure it out. Miss Emily placed tape on the ground and measured out 10 meters. When finished the children were invited to lay on the floor to see how many could fit inside. We were surprised that 7 children could fit inside!

Next week we will continue on our under-water adventures, looking at various creatures, life cycles and other mysterious beings.

It has been wonderful watching the children further develop in their literacy and writing.

We will be continuing our activity books as I feel they have assisted all children in their pre literacy skills and fine motor development.

A new area that we will be bringing forward is ‘home readers. Each week the children will be invited to bring home a reader that has been adequately levelled to them. We are looking at commencing this in week 4, 15th August. If this is something that you feel you would like to commence at home, then please let me know and I can set this up for you. If not, the children will still be exposed to these readers in small reading groups. The children will together read stories and engage in other literacy skills in a group setting.

Again, this will be commencing in week 5.

I can’t believe we are already halfway through the year! The children have worked very hard, so please feel free to come into the classroom at any time to view your children’s fine work.

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Stage 4D

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Stage 4D

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Stage 3/4

By Ms Riina Andrew

Welcome back to term 3! We have some wonderful provocations in store for the class this term and cannot wait to share our new knowledge with you.

To start off, we will be exploring different types of rocks, minerals and gems. This provocation of Geology was planned as a learning experience as the children have been interested in collecting rocks and treasures over last term and asked if we could explore rocks in more detail. We will include sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks and where we can find them.

A group time was conducted to ascertain what knowledge the children already have surrounding rocks, gems and minerals and where to find them: Lucas: Some are in the river

Matthias: They are found in the ground

Leo Z: I like the small, green ones

Spruha: Some rock fall

Tianze: Some are little

Sammy: Some look like strawberries

Marcus: Rocks are in the sand

Junso: Some rocks are big

Joshua: Some rocks are smooth

Lucian: Rocks are in the beach water

Elizabeth L: Stones and rocks

Alaya: Smooth rocks

Hugo: I found big rocks at the beach

Alizay: Some of the rocks are smooth and some are not

Linda: I saw the rainbow rocks on the TV

Jane: They have lots of pretty colours

Mark: I know how rocks get smooth from the water on top

Valentina: Some are spikey and some are soft

Leo G: My dad doesn’t find me rocks Jack: Some are sharp and some are smooth

Annabelle S: I made a pointy crystal with my grandma

Sarah: Some are in the water

Megan: Rocks in the beach

Ashton W: I don’t know anything about that

Rohan: I can find spikes green and purple rocks

Wesley: Molten rocks come out of the volcano

Milo: All of them are very heavy

James: Some are sharp

We then explored an educational book called ‘Rocks and Minerals’ and sat in a small group and had a discussion surrounding the different colours of the rocks and gems and how to describe these items to each other and ways to classify them.

If your child has any interesting rocks at home or finds one out and about, please feel free to let them bring in their rocks to share with the rest of the class.

At the end of this provocation we will have gained rock knowledge and will start becoming experts in rock identification and plan to dig for our own rocks and minerals next week.

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Stage 3/4

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Stage 3/4

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Stage 3/4 Vacation Care

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Stage 3/4 Vacation Care

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Stage 3E

By Ms Bianca Lazar

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you” - Frank Lloyd Wright Welcome to Term 3! This term Stage 3E are investigating elements of nature, such as fire, wood, water, metal, earth, and air. Each morning children were engaged in literacy sessions with Miss Bianca. During our literacy sessions, children listened to a variety of nature storybooks. Children were then asked individually what nature is.

What is nature?

Joseph: Dinosaur

Leo: Water and frogs

Henry: Mountain

Faris: Animals

Sophie: Water and fire

Aaron: Snow

Ethan.Z: Park

Risa: Animals

Jake: Rocks

Summer: Rocks

Finn: Sky

Owen: Fire and trees

Ethan C: Trees and leaf

Claire: Fireworks and water

Caelie: Lying on the grass

Gisele: Leaves and trees

Stella: Clouds and water

Aneilia: Fish and sand

Sofia: Water and butterflies

Franco: Trees and the beach

Charles: Animals and trees

Alexandra: Snow and mountains

Ethan G: Flowers and rainbows

Morgan: Ocean and animals

During vacation care Miss Bianca and Miss Itzi observed that Stage 3E children had a strong interest in craft, especially cutting. To support this interest, we offered a table with items found in nature such as flowers and leaves and scissors to cut. This activity was a huge success and engaged much conversation around flowers and leaves, as well as making safe decisions whilst using scissors, such as, sitting down and using with an adult only. On another learning table, children explored a sensory fine motor nature explorer’s experience to support dexterity which is helpful in fostering pre-writing skills.

You will notice our beautiful garden art display above the lockers. On the art table, a variety of different coloured flowers were displayed to prompt children’s imagination.

Miss Itzi sat with each child and encouraged them to look closely at the colours, textures, and shapes and to draw what they “see”. After they completed their drawing, they then applied water coloured paint. The use of different mediums during pre-school years fosters dexterity and hand-eye co-ordination.

Sign In Table There has been a change in the classroom with the sign-in table returning outside the class. Please use the sign-in as a transition to school routine. Take time to encourage name identification to support early literacy. If you are pushed for time or a specialist class is occurring, please ask Miss Brooke or Miss Itzi for assistance.

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Stage 3E

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Stage 3E

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Stage 2/3 & 3R

By Ms Gabriela Guimaraes

Rainforest Every time we breathe, our body takes in and uses oxygen that's in the air. But where does this oxygen come from? Trees and plants in the rainforests help put oxygen in the air. Then, when we breathe out, our body puts out carbon dioxide. This is what the plants use to help them produce food in the photosynthesis process. So, the plants, including those found in the rainforests, produce oxygen that we need to live and we, in turn, produce carbon dioxide that they need!

This week was all about plants, monkeys, birds, and butterflies with our Rainforest provocation. Rainforests are the oldest ecosystem on Earth and have such beauty to them. Children and teachers had a lot of fun learning about the plants, animals, ecology and climate in the rainforest.

We started our provocation with a leaf printing art activity. We made some beautiful leaf printing art using natural leaves that we gathered on our nature walk in our garden. Leaves and flowers make particularly striking and beautiful prints. For a better result, we painted the leaves using a paintbrush rather than dipping them directly into the paint, to ensure the paint wasn’t applied too thickly. Then we pressed them directly into the paper, smoothing over the back of them using our hands, and carefully peeled off to reveal the print. We all loved trying this activity out and made a huge stack of leaf prints in a variety of shapes.

What is hiding in the forest was another rainforest invitation where the children were asked to use their fine motor skills to cut grass to find what was hiding behind it. After lots of chopping, the grass was trimmed! We could see flowers, butterflies, and an elephant! It was a fun way to add in some scissors practice into our day.

The children were also invited to play with a rainforest sensory bin, make anaconda’s out of pasta shells and to make their own jungle out of natural resources.

Rainforests help more than just Earth's air. They also help to keep our climate, the conditions around us over a period of time, and water systems healthy.

Rainforests absorb both tropical heat and moisture, which then gets used by the plants and animals living there. This feature is important because if heat and moisture build up, strong storms like tornados and hurricanes become even stronger. Having a climate that is not too extreme is vital to all kinds of life on Earth, including human life.

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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

Fairytales and Folklore Welcome back to another exciting term in Stage 2R! Our provocation for this term is Fairytales and Folklore, and over the coming weeks we aim to explore the rich literary history and beautiful imagery of the classic European fairytales, Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, as well as the traditional folktales from the many cultural backgrounds within our class.

The Three Little Pigs The first fairytale we looked at was the story of the three little pigs and the big, bad wolf! We introduced the topic by bringing it up during group times, to gauge the children’s familiarity with the story and discover what they already knew. We asked them to share their thoughts with the class, and it was wonderful to see them recalling specific parts of the story or connecting the themes to their own experiences and memories.

“Three little pigs have a house like Goldilocks” - Claris “Three pigs are baby pig and mummy pig and daddy pig” - Liv “Pig has house and goes up stairs and oh no! Wolf is naughty” - Bella “Pig makes house of straw and house of sticks, and wolf comes!” - Claudia “Three little pigs have house and pigs say ‘oink oink’, cow says moo” - Madeleine Miss Sara created a beautiful small world display with models of each of the pigs houses, and the children were given a range of materials to construct their own shelters for our pig figurines. They used shredded paper for the straw, twigs and popsicle sticks, and solid wooden blocks for the bricks, and carefully stacked and balanced everything together to make their house. Once they were done we asked them to test how sturdy their structures were by acting as the big, bad wolf to huff and puff and blow the house down! We asked them to think about why some materials were easier to blow away than others, introducing them to the concepts of weight, density, and cause and effect.

During group times we read the story and used it as a springboard for class discussions.

To connect with themes of empathy and kindness, we talked about how the pigs worked hard to build their houses, and the wolf was not nice by destroying them, but the other pigs helped out by letting their friends into their houses. In the playground we continued the theme through dramatic play with the teepees! The children played the role of the pigs hiding in their tents, and the teachers were the wolf trying to get in.

They loved having the chance to act out the story, laughing hysterically together as we said “little pigs, little pigs, let me in” and they responded with “Not by the hairs of our chinny chin chins!”

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Stage 2R

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Stage 2R

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Stage 1E

By Ms Justine Heydra

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much” – Helen Keller During our vacation care period we gave the children various opportunities to pick toys and activities on their own. Many of the children displayed an interest in different "community helper" activities with doctors and firefighters being some of the top choices for them to explore and play with. We also revisited and discussed the importance of hygiene and washing our hands due to the ongoing covid-19 situation.

As a result, all of these elements came together and our term 3 provocation "Community Helpers" was created.

Our first sensory activity allows the children to play and explore red and white blood cells. We used large white balls and jumbo water beads to recreate our bodies white and red blood cells. This activity is great for texture play and fine-motor development.

The children loved the slippery feeling of the jumbo water beads and they all had a great time playing and having fun.

Our second sensory activity was a matching activity. The children each had the opportunity to select and match different organs inside the human body. We expanded on our vocabulary by naming the organs and also named the colours. This activity helped with hand-eye coordination, concentration and language development.

As part of our dramatic play corner the children engaged in imaginative play by pretending to be doctors. The children enjoyed wrapping their babies in bandages and checking their temperatures . The social interaction between the children is exploding and developing on a daily basis. The children love playing together and have such adorable conversations amongst each other. During the children’s play sessions, it was very interesting to observe the different skills that the children used through sociodramatic play. It was also insightful to observe their perspective on what happens at a visit and how caring and nurturing they were with their babies.

The children also enjoyed a fun band-aid activity , where they had the opportunity to place a band-aid on their baby’s wound. This exercise encouraged fine motor skill development as the children had to open up the band-aid and place the band-aid on their baby while handling the stickiness of it. The children all showed different emotions in the process of helping their babies and enjoyed watching and helping each other.

Our focus song this week was “Them Bones” which is a lively and catchy song based on the different body parts and what other body parts they are connected to. The children all participated and had so much fun dancing and singing while learning more about the human body.

Wishing you all a great weekend and we look forward to exploring the world of Veterinarians next week.

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Stage 1E

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Stage 1E

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Stage 1R

By Ms Amanda Felton

Footprints!

Welcome to term Three! It’s all very exciting as we start the term with animal investigation. Allowing Babies to explore and be challenge from a new direction of what our world is and in a fun and interactive way, we explore nature and animals.

“What a large footprint! Who dose this belong to?” Are just some of the question we ask and we discover that it’s an elephant. Each of the Babies explore and investigate elephants. Some of our Babies were not so keen to touch the elephants as it is new and strange looking to them, but once the confidence was up! They all enjoyed playing and looking at the elephants. We continued on with some exciting painting…and what do we do! Footprints! A great way to get the Babies engaged and use their gross and fine motor skills to stamp out the footprints.

We are also excited to have our specialist classes back and we jump right into My Gym, Drama and Music and of course some relaxing yoga all to do with focusing upon the overall well-being of learning about our health and becoming very confident learners here at Reddam.

Well done Babies! A great start to Term 3.

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Stage 1R

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Drama

By Ms Laura Hudson

It was lovely to be back teaching Drama to the children.

This week we did a PIRATE themed creative drama lesson. To begin with everyone sung and played along to the tune of, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” If You’re A Pirate And You Know It… Swab the deck!

Walk the plank!

Be a mermaid!

Look for treasure!

Say Ahoy!

Hoist the sails!

Next, we played the popular game ‘Simon Says’ Pirate Style. Here I gave pirate ship orders and silly suggestions: Swab the deck! Dig for Treasure! Count the stars! Swim like a mermaid! Pull up the anchor! Fly like a parrot! Row the boat! Make a pirate face! Etc. In Stage 1 we also rowed our boats and saw a turtle swimming beside us (puppet). They took it in turns to greet the turtle. Matthew had a giggle, Phoebe and Bianca were very curious to how the turtle moved!

The next activity was called Brain Dance. This is a fun way to warm up your body and brain. As we moved through a series of body patterns, the children engaged their bodies and imaginations, and built new neuropathways. Each of the elements is based on primitive reflex and helps to boost learning, behaviours, and emotional states. To learn more, check out Braindance.

This is what we did in the brain dance 1. Breath: Breathe in the ocean air. Breathe deeply through your nose and out through your mouth. Really imagine the smell of the sea.

2. Tactile: Protect your skin out on a sunny pirate deck. Glide sunscreen all over your body, head to toe. Really massage it in.

3. Core-Distal: Imagine you are a sail. Use your arms to expand as the wind fills you up.

Then contract as the wind shifts. Keep growing and shrinking in this way.

4. Head-Tail: Grab hold of that big wooden steering wheel and sway left and right with a full range of motion.

5. Upper-Lower: For the upper body, dab the stars in the night sky. For the lower body, do a pirate jig.

6. Whole Body: Walk the plank! Then swim around!

Well, done everyone, what a fabulous first week of drama.

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Drama

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Yoga

By Ms Brooke DeSilva

It was so wonderful to meet all the students at Reddam this week! For our first week of yoga together, we got to know each other by talking about our favorite yoga poses.

To get to know the students, we did a range of yoga poses where we were sitting down, balancing on one leg, and even jumping around a bit too! We linked these moves to different animals and how they move and grow in their environment.

We started sitting in caterpillar pose, and gradually built up to butterfly to warm up.

Then we sat on our heels and practiced a breathing technique we use in yoga called Lion breath – and then incorporated this into cat stretches and sleeping lion. We moved on to our balancing poses by practicing 3 stages of Flamingo pose: standing, flying flamingo, and dancing flamingo. We finished our active practice with frog pose where we of course had to practice our leaps!

It was great to meet the kids and see them learn how to progress different poses little bits at a time. I look forward to next week!

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Yoga

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Piano

By Mr Alan Tang

It was very exciting to be back for the first week of term 3. The children were more focused and mature after the holiday care period :) Stage 4, 3/4 and 3 were learning "Baby Shark" and some revision on identifying keys. Many of them could easily find the keys at ease. Stage 2 and Stage 1 enjoyed "Alla turca"by Mozart and a modern French's piano piece "Comptine d'un autre été". The children demonstrated the ability to retain knowledge about the piano after the holiday period and they are ready to learn more complex songs for the following few weeks :) Looking forward to next week already. :)

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Piano

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My Gym

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My Gym

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