REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER Dee’s Message
8 April 2022
Dear Parents and Caregivers, As we reach the end of the first school term of 2022, all those in the ELS can look back on a term filled with new experiences, happy moments and plenty of learning. The children have grown in confidence and in their ability to engage with each other and with their teachers. While physical growth might be more obvious and measurable, the really exciting growth has been to see how the children have developed emotionally, socially and in their learning experiences. Some thirty years ago, Reggio Emilia founder, Loris Malaguzzi, penned ‘A Charter of Three Rights’, a declaration which recognised that any successful educational approach requires the harmonious interaction between children, parents and teachers. When each of these groups is respected and valued for the input which it brings to an early learning environment, the inevitable consequence is a happy space in which children can learn best.
Two short extracts resonate with the way we hope children are regarded here in the ELS. The declaration speaks of each child having an “extraordinary wealth of inborn abilities and potential, strength and creativity.” It goes on to mention “the right of children to realise and expand their potential, placing great value on their ability to socialise, receiving their affection and trust, and satisfying their needs and desires to learn.” How gratifying it has been to watch the children in the ELS blossoming into their potential this year – and to experience the very special support and encouragement given to them by their families and teachers. This wonderful collaboration has resulted in a happy, contented space in which the children were able to play, learn and enjoy each other’s company.
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I am grateful to all parents and caregivers for the trust they have placed in us, and for the support you have shown the teachers. Involved parents inevitably enjoy the process of seeing their children develop during their school years, as they are able to experience all the little victories and new learning experiences along the way. This has certainly been the case in the ELS this past term and the staff and I are most appreciative of your involvement and support. Our teachers constantly fill me with awe as I watch them in action. Their infectious enthusiasm and very real concern for each of the children is what makes their classrooms spaces filled with warmth, kindness and caring. And in such spaces, real learning takes place. I thank each of our teachers for all their efforts this past term. I am also grateful for the incredibly hard work put in by our admin, cleaning and support staff, who go about their business with a ready smile and fantastic efficiency. They really do oil the cogs of the machine and we owe all of them a debt of gratitude. Finally, I congratulate all the little people of the ELS, who have come so far since January. They really do fill the classrooms and play areas with great joy, and we hope that they continue to find this same joy in the months to come. Enjoy your break and we look forward to welcoming you back in three weeks’ time. I know that an exciting series of activities has been arranged for those attending the Holiday Care programme, and that those children will have a fantastic time each day. I also wish all of our families many blessings as you celebrate Easter and Pesach in the coming weeks. Dee Pitcairn Principal
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The Nest (1R)
Kiri Winders, Helena Zhang, and Min Pattarasiritanarat
This week we welcomed our new friend Robbie! He settled in so well and we are very excited to have him become part of our room. The sun came out to play early in the week and we got to go outside and bask in it! The children were so happy to run outside to explore and play. As the door opened to the outdoor space, they quickly and excitedly made their way across the grass to the climbing equipment. It was obvious that because of the weather over the past few weeks that this was something completely novel! Atlas climbed up to the wheel and began to spin it with speed. Theodore P crawled to the bridge, whilst Robbie weaved around the poles to become familiar with his new environment. Alfie spent a vast amount of his time at the noughts and crosses game. Initially he used both his hands and the bar to help him stand upright, and he repeated this motion numerous times. Capri, Leo and Krishna challenged themselves on the swinging bars, holding their hands on tight as they lifted their body weight off the ground to swing to and fro. It took amazing strength! Outdoor play is a wonderful way for the children to extend themselves and test their own physical boundaries and strengths through trying new things. We are noticing the children really gaining strength coordination and speed.
fitting that we set up an Easter egg “hunt” inside some baskets. The delight on their faces as they looked into the Easter Baskets and found an ‘egg’ was priceless. The children expressed joy, surprise and a sense of achievement. Teacher Min bought along some special Easter Rabbits for the children to look at, touch and feel. We read and sang nursery rhymes and songs about Easter, including our favourite, “sleepy bunny”. Other fun activities this week included painting our very own decorative Easter eggs, as well as on paper with paint and sponges. Happy Easter to all our families.
As our school term comes to an end and Easter is around the corner, we decided to introduce the children to the culture and excitement of Easter! Our children already enjoy playing hide and seek type games like ‘what’s in the bag?’ or finding treasures and toys inside boxes and containers, so it was REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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The Nest (1R)
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Fledglings (1E)
By Tatiana Botrel, Jane Teh, Marina Moliboga and Nadia Breus
Term One comes to an end… Wow… what a journey it has been, as we reached the end of the twelve first weeks of the year. The children have come such a long way and, as teachers, we could not be prouder of them and how they settled into their new school environment.
Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity. Children feel safe, secure, and supported. EYLF, 2009.
In this first school term, our focus was on helping the children to become familiar with the Fledglings classroom. We promoted activities that were related to their interests to support them in this process. We gradually developed a routine in the Fledglings, avoiding transitions until they were ready to explore our school. The deck area was a great space to get the children active outdoors, developing their physical skills. In this first term, we had so many different celebrations – Australia Day, Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Harmony Week, and International Women’s Day – which encouraged the children to get to know different cultures. Through a play-based program, the children got to experience diversity, explore colours and also Australian animals. We read lots and lots of books and danced and sang to all the songs in the Fledglings playlist with their favourite hits. The children got very busy in the Mini Atelier, exploring an array of sensory activities, and working on their creativity. We are looking forward to seeing what the Fledglings next chapter will be in Term Two. Whether at Reddam or travelling, we wish you all a great school holiday time! REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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Fledglings (1E)
By Tatiana Botrel, Jane Teh, Marina Moliboga and Nadia Breus
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Stage 2
By Daniella Gosty, Shauna Corry, Sarah Noone, Roberta Sokame and Joyce Matsui
All about Butterflies In the Kookaburra class, our provocation was “My Body” and this term, in the mornings, we introduced a yoga exercise where we started with our kissing feet to create butterfly wings. Gently bouncing our legs in an up and down the motion we were butterflies flying. We then moved into butterflies sleeping by stretching our bodies forward over our legs. It was then time to stretch the butterfly wings by putting one leg up in the air and holding it into position and then the other. The rhyme that we used to guide us through this exercise was “Fly like a butterfly, sleep like a butterfly and stretch like a butterfly in the sky.” Yoga is one form of practice which includes breath control, along with specific body postures that provide a range of physical, spiritual and mental relaxation. It teaches children to be calm, while gaining awareness of their bodies, self-control and discipline. When children practise yoga it increases their confidence, builds concentration and strengthens growing bodies. For children with behavioural issues, yoga can improve their impulses in a positive direction and provide them with an outlet as a way to manage their behaviour. The physical benefits of yoga include developing the right balance of muscle tone and strength throughout the body to support the joints. It builds core strength for good posture and overall physical fitness with flexibility and mobility in all joints and muscles. It helps to Improve balance, alignment and coordination with practice of postures. The social, emotional and cognitive benefits of yoga help children to increase attention span and improve concentration as more oxygen circulates
round the body and brain during yoga practice and breathing exercises, which assists in memory retention and learning ability. It Improves relationships and social awareness through group and partner work. Movement – Colourful scarves and butterfly wings Using scarves, we turned ourselves into butterflies as we flew around the room to different songs such as “See the sleeping butterflies”, “One in the middle and a flying butterfly” and “Here is the garden but where are all the butterflies?” The children were interested to know how the butterfly slept and they became researchers as we used the search engine Google to find out just how they sleep. Did you know that they sleep upside down? Inspired by the butterflies we then went on to do a classic painting activity – the butterfly print. The children were encouraged to identify the colours of choice and see what happened when they mixed these colours and to notice the symmetry that occurs when we fold the paper and then open it again. Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners. Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity,
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Stage 2
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Stage 3
By Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily and Echo
The children had another busy week engaging in a variety of activities. We have observed a growing interest in numbers and counting, with the children stopping during play and asking questions like ‘how many pieces are in this jigsaw?’ and ‘let’s see how many can sit on the boat.’ Children learn about and make sense of different concepts through play, so to build on children’s interest in counting we have added different opportunities for numeracy learning to our environment. ‘Numeracy is the capacity, confidence and disposition to use mathematics in daily life. It is essential that the mathematical ideas with which young children interact are relevant and meaningful in the context of their current lives’ (EYLF, 2009) When we plan for children’s learning we relate it back to their current interests, so that they can get the most out of every experience. They have recently enjoyed reading and listening to stories and engaging in construction play. I introduced the book ‘One Ted Falls Out of Bed’ by Julia Donaldson. This lovely rhyming story takes us through the numbers 1-10 and back again. The children have been engaging in construction play and have enjoyed building a stair using ten blocks, just like Ted does in the book. As an extension of this activity, we have also started building towers using numbered blocks. The children look for the block with the correct number and add it to the tower. It has been lovely to watch the children helping each other out if one of them is unsure what a number looks like. When we add the last block with the number 10 to the tower, the children knock it down, which leads shrieks of excitement and laughter.
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Stage 3
By Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily and Echo Jia
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Stage 4
By Jane Pledger, Sandra Carberry, Nina Bergel,Yuliya Ginis and Bri Rees
The spontaneous part of our program allows the educator to observe each child in the present moment, and add experiences to the program as they happen. Having a natural element to our planning enables learning opportunities to be relevant, meaningful and most importantly, authentic. We have recently been engaging in conversations and activities about feelings and emotions. We have also been engaging in mindfulness experiences. This was added to our program following observations, along with listening to children’s conversations and interactions with others. It is important to talk with children about their emotions and responses to events with a view to supporting their understandings of emotional regulation and self-control.
Henry: “Nervous. When my Mum doesn’t leave a light on.” Freyja: “I was scared in the morning because my sister waked me up by jumping on top of me. And I was still half asleep.” Nina: “Love. When Mummy gives me cuddles.” Oliver: “Sad and angry. I’m sad when it rains.” Violet: “Happy playing with Sofia.” Sofia: “Happy. Violet is at school.” We had a table set up to invite the children to engage in creative drawing, as they drew their interpretation of the Colour Monster from this book. It is hard to believe we are at the end of Term 1 already. What a wonderful term it has been, getting to know all the Stage 4 children and families. Happy holidays!
‘The Colour Monster’ by Anna Llenas This week we read the pop-up book ‘The Colour Monster’. ‘One day, colour monster woke up feeling very confused. His emotions were all over the place; he feels angry, happy, calm, sad and scared all at once! A little girl tries to help him understand what each feeling means through colour.’ The children’s comments after we read the story: Hubert: “Happiness. When it’s not raining.” Samantha: “I’m always angry because when I go to sleep my brother kicked me. And I told my brother not to kick me when I wake up.” Hector: “I’m always sad because Mum doesn’t sleep with us to protect us.” REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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Stage 4
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Early Learning School Drama This week in Drama, the Nest, Fledglings and Stage 2 children went back to medieval times to see knights, dragons, princes and princesses. I introduced the lesson with a piece of classical music and asked if they could guess what we were doing today. Jeremy and Audrey said “Castle” and “Queens”. Good guess – she was right. This then led us into discussing what the children knew about castles. Who lives in them? What do they look like? I told them a story about a goblin who wanted to get the king’s jewels and of course they wanted to act this out. In the story they had to get past lots of obstacles, including the sticky mud, steep hill, path of snakes and pool of jelly. I used another energetic piece of music that had a number of different pitches that guided the children to the castle and back home. When they returned home there was a letter waiting for them from Her Majesty the Queen inviting them for afternoon tea and that she had lost a few silver coins on her way back from her outing with the King; if they find any, she asked if they could bring them with them. The children went and explored in the woods and the castle to find the coins, looking high and low. They found her coins so went for afternoon tea with the Queen. One child was given a crown and stepped into the role of Her Majesty. All the other children had to greet her and do whatever she wanted them to do (bring the horses, shine her shoes etc.) We had some great ideas.
In Stage 3 and 4 the theme this week was ‘The Toyshop’ and ‘Mrs Smelly Cheese’ (using the idea of ‘Toy Story’) The children began by moving around the space in different ways e.g. Like they were a train, a robot, and aeroplane etc and on the command ‘Freeze’ they had to stop as quick as they could. Next, I told the children that I would be someone else and use a head scarf to show I was someone else. I asked the children to think of their favourite toy and to show their toy through their stance as well as portray any sound it may have. They were going to be this toy on the toy shelf. Next, I told the children I was going to turn myself into a lady called Mrs Smelly Cheese and Mrs Smelly Cheese owns a toyshop that is famous for all its magnificent toys. Every time Mrs Smelly Cheese leaves the shop (hides in a corner or turns her back on the children so she can’t see them) all the toys make as much noise as they can and move like their toy! But when Mrs Smelly Cheese returns all the toys must freeze and trick her. Because while she has had her back turned Mrs Smelly Cheese’s toys have been up to mischief! Similar to ‘Red light, Green light’. The children practised a couple of times, so they got into the routine of moving and being noisy and then freezing. I then used a scarf to transform myself into Miss Smelly Cheese.
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Early Learning School Drama Each time I left and came back I acted surprised at the toys being in different positions. I pretended I had left a door open, and the wind had blown the toys across the shop. I also pretended that they were running out of batteries. Lastly, on her return I told them “I have terrific news. The lady I have been talking about has decided to buy all of the toys (but the ones I am playing with are my favourites and I’d never sell them). I am going to the bakery to get a chocolate cake to celebrate.” On my return, I described the cake to the children and then suddenly Miss Smelly Cheese remembers she had forgotten the candles, plates, forks and napkins. She left the cake in the middle of the room: “I wonder if my toys will eat my chocolate cake?” Yes, I’m sure you can guess what happened next.
children absolutely loved this drama activity and kept saying, “Can we do it again?” Well done everyone. What a wonderful first term of Drama.
On the next arrival, Miss Smelly Cheese noticed that the cake had disappeared, and the toys had chocolate all over their faces, on their noses, behind their ears, in their hair, on their belly buttons etc. She then wiped up the mess and threw the napkins away. This was the last time she left the room and she told the children to be as loud as they can! When Miss Smelly Cheese came back, she told the children that she thought they’d been making lots of noise while she was gone and she was going to test them by asking them if they thought “Mrs Smelly Cheese is completely bananas. If so, it meant that she would have to close her shop!’ The children all shouted out “Yes Mrs Smelly Cheese’ and then she pretended to cry but said “Oh well, it’s not so bad. At least I get to play with my favourite toys!” The REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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Early Learning School Sport This was our last week of sport for Term One and the students were such great sports for this session. We continued our focus on the rolling and underarm throwing locomotion skills and I am proud to say that there has been some excellent improvement for students in both Stage 3 and Stage 4 for these skills. Our warm-up game this week was a new take on ‘stuck in the mud’ called ‘freeze and thaw’. When I tagged students, they had to freeze in the position that they were tagged in until one of their friends freed them by giving them a high five. The students love being chased, and they show some promising dodging skills as they are able to change direction with confidence. This game also worked on the students' spatial awareness, which is coming along nicely as we had no collisions. The students were introduced to hoop rolling. This is a progression from rolling the ball that we did last week as the hoop is far more unstable and it requires a more precise distribution of force to ensure that it continues to roll and does not just fall over. The children were given some free experimenting time in the space so that they could practise using the palms of their hands to control the amount of force exerted on the hoop and also to keep the hoop going where they wanted it to go. Once the students started having some success they paired up and practised rolling the hoop to a friend. This was very interesting to watch them try and iron out any issues they were having. We further progressed this game to catching the hoop with your foot which the students found very enjoyable, but quite a bit more difficult.
Our next game was revisiting one we played earlier in the term ‘fruit basket’. Here two students were ‘in’ and had to empty the bucket of multi coloured balls faster than their friends could collect them and return them to the bucket. Some students quickly figured out that if you took the time to throw the balls quite far it took their friends longer to return them. We had previously done this game with bean bags, but the balls made it more difficult to collect as they tended to roll away. We rotated students who were ‘in’ so that all children were able to practise their throwing. Due to the weather, some groups were able to play a new game this week of ‘bean bag golf’. A course was laid out around the classroom using hoops and dots and the students had to attempt to throw the bean bag underarm so that it landed in the hoop in one go. This game turned out to be quite a hit and it looks like we have some keen future golfers on our hands. I look forward to more fun sessions with the children next term.
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Early Learning School Music I can't believe we're at the end of Term One already. It has flown by! This term's focus was around beat, rhythm and movement. This is encompassed in various activities such as ‘The Sunflower Song’; ‘Gahloomph’; ‘Ants Go Marching’ and ‘The Floor is Lava’.
each round. To end the lesson, we played 'The Floor is Lava'. This week we started off at 50 beats per minute and increased it to 65 bpm, challenging the children to listen and find the changing beat.
In Stage 3 and 4, we opened the lesson with our Expression Circle. This time we discussed different things or activities that made us feel happy, rather than just expressing how we feel. Such things as hugs, drawing, playing in the playground and basketball were a few of the things we make our Reddam kids happy. I like to encourage independent thinking amongst the groups, so everyone has to think of their own individual answer rather than copy a friend. We warmed up our voices with some fun animal sounds. We 'Oo - Ah'ed like monkeys; meowed like lazy cats; and we hopped like little bunnies. We sang our 'Good Morning Song' and were ready for the lesson. We sang and stomped our way through our 'ABCs', before trying to glue it together with our reversed alphabet. Stage 4 continued refining our first verse of 'Colours of the Wind', and Stage 3 continued revising our first verse and chorus for 'Here Comes the Sun'. I'm very impressed at how quickly the kids have picked up our songs after only learning them for a few weeks. For a bit of fun, we learnt the actions to ‘The Chicken Dance’... infamous for being played at every birthday party ever. We slowed down as we got the movements in time with the beat and slowly sped them up REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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Early Learning School Music In The Fledglings and Stage 2 we opened our lesson by waking up our bodies – seeing if the kids could find their elbows, knees and chins. We warmed up our voices with our single note scales on 'MA' and sang through 'The Good Morning Song'; 'Open Shut Them' and our 'Sunflower Song' - again encouraging some of our shyer kids in Stage 2 to be our farmer. Still using our maracas, we shook along to 'BINGO', but this time introducing a freezing whenever we removed a letter from Bingo's spelling. We also learnt the actions for 'The Chicken Dance' and flew around the room as birds, aeroplanes and spun around like U.F.Os - the actions and upbeat music didn't fail to get everyone moving and laughing. Stage 2 revised our actions for 'Do Re Mi', while The Fledgings had some free play with the bells, tambourines and a variety of other percussive instruments. To end the lesson, Stage 2 attempted to form a percussive circle with children using maracas, bells and tambourines – we all played together and then tried to have each group play together. In The Nest, I sang to the children as they made their way over from morning tea. As they settled, we sang through our sing-alongs using our maracas and let them run wild with the various instruments – smashing cymbals, trying to spin the den-den daiko (a Japanese style drum with strings and balls attached). I wish all our Reddam families a happy and safe Easter. I look forward to seeing all of the beaming faces in Term 2.
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Reddam Early Learning would like to wish a very happy birthday to Sophie Whealen and Yanni Bull who celebrate their special day this week We hope you have a fabulous day!
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