REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
Dee’s Message
20 May 2022
Dear Parents and Caregivers, We all know people in our lives who are really good at listening. And then there are those who we know are only listening with half an ear. The art of listening really is just that – an intentional act, to switch over from whatever is keeping us busy or on our minds, and purposefully to give our attention to what another person is saying. But what of small children? How do we help them to become better listeners? We can all think of those moments when we have tried to get a child to listen to us and known that not one word is going in! This is especially when they are completely engrossed in some activity, which has captivated their attention – or when they know that they are expected to do something which definitely doesn’t fit with what they want to do at that moment!
dutifully sit and listen intently to what we are saying. There always seems to be some other object which demands their attention, or something which needs to be played with, or a body which insists on wriggling around. This is not unusual, however, as there is so much happening in the complex neural pathways which are being laid down in the early years of a child’s life that it’s not unusual for their minds to be elsewhere when we are speaking to them. Children are also more likely to focus on only one activity at a time and they have not yet learned to see things from other perspectives apart from their own. One educator puts it this way, “Young children are developmentally the centre of their own universe. When absorbed in playtime, they may not be able to perceive anything outside of their little world.”
As we can also probably all admit, there are not many moments when our little people REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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Understanding this will help us to realise that ‘not listening’ to us may well not be wilful disobedience at all but an inability to give all their attention to more than one thing. It is also true that “Children are likely to be good listeners if you are listening to them. Providing children with ways of practising listening skills through experience is also important.” This is a skill which our teachers constantly stress with the children. Sometimes it means everyone stopping what they are doing, having free hands and then getting all eyes to focus on the teacher before giving an instruction. Learning how to listen takes patience, especially when the children have a fascination with learning, exploration and play. As we all know only too well, such moments of play and discovery are far more interesting for them than listening to an adult. However, by overtly practising listening skills with the children and then complimenting them when they have followed up on a task, we can enhance their abilities to listen and to act on what they have heard. Have a great weekend! Dee Pitcairn Principal
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The Nest (1R)
Kiri Winders, Helena Zhang, Fiona Liddell and Min Pattarasiritanarat
The Sun has been shining this week so the children have been excited to venture outdoors. Before we go out in the mornings, we put our hats, jumpers and sunscreen on. The children are becoming familiar with this routine. Their eagerness is apparent as they run together, down near the door where we announce that we are ready to go outside. Part of our routine is to sit in a group and listen to a story whilst the children wait for their turn to go outside. This was very challenging for the children at first, as they are naturally so excited and want to run outside! Through a consistent routine, and talking with the children about the expectation of waiting our turn, we are noticing the children are increasingly able to wait and demonstrate their patience.
each level of the equipment to the ground. The educators guide the children to help them navigate this task safely! We encourage them to sit down on their bottoms before sliding down to the ground. It is wonderful to see many of the children demonstrating their learning. We watched them point their toes and stretch their legs as they attempted to touch the ground. When their feet didn’t touch the ground, they either carefully shuffled their body forwards while holding onto the bar to slide themselves down until they made contact with the ground. As the children crossed the wobbly bridge, they took various approaches such as crawling, walking slowly or holding onto the ropes and walked sideways across. The children demonstrated an awareness of their own capabilities whilst maintaining control of their bodies. (EYLF Outcome 3 and 4.2)
We are noticing that the children are developing their waiting skills throughout the day. We observe them waiting quietly while their lunch is being prepared and observe them waiting on their beds until their educator comes to change their nappies. In addition, we have seen them practicing their waiting skills during their play. They wait for a special toy to be passed to them or wait for their turn to open the peekaboo tab during story time. Patience is an important life skill for children as they learn to cooperate within a social group, and they learn to understand the reciprocal rights and responsibility for active community participation which sets them up for life. EYLF Learning Outcome 1. Outdoor play was equally as challenging for the children but this time the challenge was setting physical boundaries! It is wonderful to see that the children are pushing themselves outside of their own comfort zones to explore and play on different equipment. As they climb, they recognise their own ability and are challenged with considering different methods of returning down from REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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The Nest (1R) One beautiful moment outdoors on Tuesday was when a big wind blew and all of a sudden we had a shower of autumn leaves that started to fall from the big trees overhead! Olivia said "Wow" and Teddy pointed up high with amazement. We all gathered under one of the big trees to observe this spectacular show. The children felt the excitement as they watched the wind blow the leaves around. There were many leaves to jump around in and explore. Kirshna, Alfie, Leo and Capri stomped on top of the leaves whilst others picked them up and watched them fall. We talked about the wind with the children. It was a wonderful sensory and meaningful experience. The children loved it so much that we decided to continue this experience indoors. We brought some of the leaves inside and put them all over the classroom floor for the children to extend their exploration.
strength in their tongues for producing sounds that are made at the back of the mouth. (EYLF Outcome 4.2)
We extended upon the children’s interest in nature and the wind by introducing some colorful windmills to the children so they could experiment with watching the wind blow and the windmills spin! The children looked at them with fascination as the teachers demonstrated how to make them work. Capri, Theodore and Joshua were eager to attempt to make them move by blowing with their mouths. After a few turns, Joshua reassessed his technique then took another approach, as it was taking an enormous amount of blowing to make it turn. He then used his fingers and pressed it on the point of the sail and pushed it down, which resulted in a fast turning windmill. Later on we experimented with walking while holding the windmills and observing the walking motion causing it to spin. The children loved this! As they participated in this experience, the children developed an understanding of how air and their breath can make different items move. Furthermore, blowing exercises support children’s speech as it increases the
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Fledglings (1E)
By Tatiana Botrel, Jane Teh, Marina Moliboga and Nadia Breus
‘Vroom-vroom, off they go’ “Viewing children as active participants and decision makers opens up possibilities for educators to move beyond pre-conceived expectations about what children can do and learn. This requires educators to respect and work with each child’s unique qualities and abilities.” Early Years Learning Framework, 2009.
airplanes. Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners. Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity. EYLF, 2009.
In the Fledglings this week, we extended the children’s interest in transport by offering them sensory activities related to this subject. In the Atelier, we used different colours and textures of grains, to create a sensory tray for the children to explore in with different vehicles. Sensory trays provide children with the opportunity to explore and learn through hands-on tactile play that engages their senses. These bins encourage and support various types of development, including social, language and physical. The children sat down around the big wooden tray, choosing their vehicle to play. Some children, for example, used the bulldozer and the rubbish bin truck to collect grains. Others preferred pushing the grains with their car toys. But the best fun of all was to wave their hands fast around the tray, feeling the texture on their hands, and listening to the faint sound it made. At group time, the children sat together in a circle, while we played the sound of different modes of transport for them to guess the vehicle. They were mostly excited to hear the noise, smiling at each other and trying to name the sounds. Considering the children’s ongoing interest in transport, next week, we will focus on construction site vehicles and take them on adventures on the pretend bus and 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
Exploring the five senses for children is extremely important. Throughout the first term the children have continuously shown they are eager to investigate taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell. Sensory play encourages learning through exploration, curiosity, problem solving and creativity. It helps to build nerve connections in the brain and encourages the development of l a n g u a g e a n d m o t o r skills. This term in the Tree Frog class we will be preparing special activities where the children can explore and experience each of the ‘Five Senses’ In the past two weeks, we have started exploring the ‘Touch’ sense by introducing a few objects for the children to initially ‘touch’ and ‘see’ such as a ball, a shell, velcro circle and a pom pom. We then used words to describe what they could feel: soft, scratchy/rough, hard and bumpy. After this, we prepared another activity called the ‘Mystery Box’. The challenge here was that the children were only allowed to use their hands to guess the item in the box. The objects inside the boxes were the same or similar items that we had shown them previously. Our brain receives touch signals and it interprets what to do with what we feel. For example, when you touch a hot object, the signal will be sent to your brain, and the brain will quickly send a message back to your hand to stop touching the hot object. Your brain’s interpretation of touch is also why a hug from a friend is comforting and a hug from a stranger can be uncomfortable even though the actual touch may be the same. We will continue to explore the sense of touch with the children as they learn the vocabulary that can help them explain what they touch.
We have also found a song which is easy and catchy for the children to learn as it uses the “Apples and Banana” song rhythm: “When I use my eyes, eyes, eyes - I can see the blue sky. When I use my nose, nose, nose - I can smell flowers. When I use my mouth, mouth, mouth - I can taste banana. When I use my hear, hear, hear - I can hear the birdies. When I use my hands, hands, hands I can touch my teddy”. This song can be extended upon as you can add endless examples to the catchy rhythm. For our artwork display, we have used our sense of touch to explore shaving cream. We added food colouring to the shaving cream encouraging the children to use their hands to mix the ingredients and feel the texture. We then used a leaf print and pressed it into the paint and shaving cream mixture to acknowledge the leaves that we see everyday and their changing colours through the Autumn season. The children loved the feeling as they pat, pat, patted their hands on top of the paper. Learning Outcome 4.1 - Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity- Child participates in a variety of activities to expand their curiosity. Learning Outcome 4.3 - Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another.
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Stage 2
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Stage 3
By Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily Hunt and Echo Jia
Mindful Me Our provocation in Stage 3D is ‘Mindful Me’ and over the past few weeks we have been talking about our feelings and how to care for them. When we teach mindfulness to children, we equip them with tools to build self-esteem, manage stress, and skilfully approach challenges. This week and since the beginning of Term Two, our morning circle was followed by 30 seconds of mindful meditation and the children are developing a remarkable capacity to appreciate and join in this brief window of silence. Before doing this, we talk about our 5 L’s - Legs crossed, listening ears, hands in lap, lips together, looking eyes (but we are invited to close if we choose).
Mindfulness meditation and awareness, at its simplest, is paying attention to what is happening in the present moment. It may be what you’re feeling, hearing, or anything else you notice. There is no special place of calm you must reach and it’s not about clearing your mind. It is just an honest and kind look at what you’re experiencing at this present moment.
The children have noticed a change in season. A dazzling display of golden leaves is one of the defining features of Autumn. Last week in the playground the children looked up into the tree canopy and saw that the leaves are no longer green, but they are brown. Lots of wonder and questions came from this. When we returned to the classroom after gathering some leaves, we spoke about how this is an annual event triggered by Autumn’s cooler temperature and shorter days. Autumn is a time for change, the leaves have changed their colours and fall from the trees. The children were invited to take part in a leaf collage or use the Autumn leaves any way they chose. We also listened to the audio of a story called “Leaf Man, by Lois Ehlert”, as we looked up to the tree canopy last week, watching the leaves fall. We acknowledged and discussed the change in the leaves. It is clear that nature is where the children love to be, and we chose to practise our mindfulness in nature. We stood as tall as trees with our hands in the air and by our sides, eyes shut, softly taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out.
During our morning group times, we ask each other how we are feeling, showing interest and empathy to each individual child. We will include affirmations to encourage positive words to be used by our little ones. We will use affirmations of happiness, confidence and empowerment.
“I am kind” “I am worthy” “I am special” REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER
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Stage 3
By Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily Hunt and Echo Jia
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Stage 4
By Jane Pledger, Sandra Carberry, Nina Bergel,Yuliya Ginis and Christina Mandalidis
Provocation ‘My World’ This week we celebrated National Families Week 2022. National Families Week is Australia’s annual celebration of families. The aim of National Families Week is to celebrate the vital role that families play in Australian society. It is a time to celebrate the meaning of family and to make the most of family life. It is held between the 15th and 21se of May to coincide with the United Nations International Day of families.
Louis: Watching TV. Jude: Having dinner, vegetables, all together. Clara: Going to the beach for swimming. Sabine: Colouring together on the table. Arwen: Going to the park together. Hector: Travelling to Spain because you can see your grandparents. Violet: Cuddling together before leaving the house to go to school. Vincenza: Going to Monkey Mania to play together. Freyja: Sitting in the car going to play tennis. Wishing all our families a lovely weekend.
This week the children worked on creating a family portrait. It is important to build and foster a connection between home and school. This experience gave the children the opportunity to engage in conversation and share information about their families and home life. Creating their family picture builds their ability to think beyond the here and now because they think, plan, and make choices while they are drawing. They are also practicing and developing their memory and visual expression skills. There was a lot of sharing of information such as their relationship with parents, or something specific about a sibling. Through these conversations the children are developing their verbal comprehension and expression skills. They used descriptive language to describe what they were drawing, and also talked about size relationships like ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’. Creating their family picture develops selfpride, self-confidence, and identity, as they think of themselves as belonging and as being important. The children shared how they enjoy spending time with their family.
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Stage 4
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Stage 4
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Early Learning School Drama This week in drama we picked up where we left off last week, with our Treasure Map. We found some beans on the bridge, but they weren’t tasty! We had thrown them over our shoulders and into the garden. Suddenly, we felt a vibration on the floor like an earthquake! This week our lesson was based on the popular story ‘Jack and the Giant Beanstalk’. We started off our lesson by pretending to be beans in the ground. I came around and sprinkled some “water” on the children’s backs. I then encouraged them to use their bodies and grow into a giant beanstalk. We then played the bean game – a movement association game (e.g., Jellybean, wobble like jelly, broad beans stand tall with their arms in the air, green beans lie flat on the floor). I tried to trick the children by adding in different words. We giggled a lot! In Stage 4, I sat the children down and told them the fairy-tale story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I knew that the children had prior knowledge of the story, so I tried to trick them by making deliberate mistakes. The children had to correct any mistakes they heard. For example, Teacher: “One day Jack’s Dad...” Children: “Stop! ‘Mum!’” Teacher: “One day Jack’s Mum sent him to the market to sell their old dog, Daisy...” Children: “Stop! ‘cow!’” Stage 2 followed me as we climbed the beanstalk and snuck through the castle at the top. Hallie and Lyla did a great job of sneaking around. When we got close to the “giant” we started to crawl. The imaginary giant woke up and chased us down the beanstalk! When we were sitting down safely back at the bottom, I told the children I had found a key up in the castle and asked them ‘I wonder what it will open next week?”. Stage 3 and 4 acted out the story more closely with the classic fairytale. We used our imaginations and creative skills to act out
the story. We climbed the beanstalk and found the castle at the top. We snuck through the castle to find the giant who was snoring and sleeping. We then broke up into two groups - one group was ‘jack’ and the other group was the ‘giant’. The ‘Jack’ group snuck up to the giants. The giants had to stand and chant “Fee Fi Fo Fum!”, before chasing Jack down the beanstalk. We then swapped groups. I told the children that I found something very special up in the castle. I showed them a golden key. We looked on the map and saw that we needed the key for next week. I asked the children what the key might open. Bobby from Stage 3 said “The key will open a door!”, and Sophia and Hector in Stage 4 thought the key might open a lock. The next picture on the map showed a forest. I asked the children what we might find in the forest. Some suggestions included tigers, monkeys, unicorns, and snakes. I have a feeling the key might open the door to a magical forest. We will have to wait and see! Everyone had so much FUN with ‘Jack’ and the ‘Giant’ this week! In the Nest and Stage 1, we continued with our work using the parachute. We then pretended to be frogs. We sang the song “Galoomp went the little green frog”. Next, I introduced the children to the train whistle, we hopped on the train and used our arms as the wheels. The train stopped at a farm, so we all got off and used our ears to listen to the farm animal sounds that were playing. Alfie loved the chicken sound! Some of the children wanted to move around like the animals they could hear too! Vanilla was fantastic at mooing like a cow! Oh no it was starting to rain, so we put on our gumboots we packed and jumped in all the puddles as well as looking and copying our reflection. We finished with a visit from the new Guinea pig puppet, Gordon. He was a big hit!
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Early Learning School Drama
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Early Learning School Sport This week in sport we introduced a new warm up game that we called ‘Dots’. The students had to move around the space in a variety of locomotion styles and when I called out ‘dots’ they had to run to one of the multi coloured dots that were on the ground. Each dot required the children to do something different. If they landed on the yellow dot, they had to do star jumps. The blue dot required the children to dance any way they wanted, and the red dot meant the students had to balance with one hand and one foot on the ground. The children enjoyed the variety of tasks, in particular the balance dot. We continued to work on our under-arm and overarm throwing this week. The children have been working on stepping forward with the opposite foot to their throwing arm. This helps them to maintain balance and improve the amount of force they are able to exert, and ultimately how far they can throw. We used hoops, on a raised platform, as our targets and the students threw from a variety of distances. The children were able to experiment with their individual throwing style, and had a go at both under and overarm throwing. We finished up with a new favorite game; ‘Cat and Mouse’. The children were ‘mice’ who had to run from one line of cones to the other, while the ‘cat’ rolled a ball across their path, attempting to tag them with it. If the children were tagged with the ‘cat’s’ ball, they themselves became a ‘cat’. We changed roles around so that all of the children had a turn at rolling the ball at their friends. This week, it was interesting to see how the children have adapted their playing behavior when they are ‘mice’ as they were far more strategic about when and how they ran past the ‘cats’.
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Early Learning School Music We know music has an impact and influence on how we feel, but did you know it can also influence what you see? In 2011 a psychological study was conducted and showed that listening to happy music caused the subject to identify and focus on happy faces, while sad music caused them to focus on unhappy faces. The colder mornings are slowly creeping in, so this week in Stages 3 and 4 we warmed up our bodies with ‘Hokey Pokey’. This not only helps get us to get moving, but also reinforces our left and right side of the body. Moving onto our scales, we sang double’s on ‘Doh-Doh’ both ascending and descending, and also on ‘Ti’ twice through, with no break. After singing the 'Good Morning Song', Stage 4 moved onto 'Colours of the Wind' and Stage 3 continued 'Here Comes The Sun'. Both stages are now learning the second verse and I am so proud of what they have learnt in a few short weeks. Challenging our minds, we also continued to work on singing our alphabet backwards. We sang our 'ABC's without shakers first, and then revised it in reverse. Impressively, Finley can almost memorise the alphabet backwards. To break up the singing we danced and we sang our 'Sunflower Song', encouraging some of our more shy friends in the group to be ‘the farmer’.
Revising our music notes that we learnt last week - crotchets and minims - we began to explore the music note called the SEMIBREAVE. This is a note with four counts. To help the children learn this note, we put glue on our hands while clapping the beats, so that our hands became stuck while counting out '1 2 3 4'. Using the play mat, the children were asked to find a letter and stomp out the semibreave note.
In Stage 2 and The Fledglings, we opened the lesson with 'Wake Up Body', which not only gets everyone up, but helps create awareness of our body. Singing our single note scales, we sang on MA and counted '1 2 3 4'. With our voices now warm, we sang our 'Good Morning Song' and sang our songs; 'Open Shut Them', 'The Sunfl ower Song'; 'ABCs'. The new movement song we are learning is 'I'm A Scarecrow', which The Fledglings were introduced to this week. This is a cute song which helps us work with balance and coordination as we balance on one leg trying to scare off any birds. We used our maracas to march to 'Ants Go Marching', stopping and freezing to perform different tasks. We moved in slow motion; crept as quietly as we could; and moved/ shook as fast as we could. The Fledglings also visited the zoo with our maracas while Stage 2 used our bells to play 'Galumph Goes The Littl e Green Frog'. To end the lesson, we had some free play time with different percussive instruments from different cultures. In The Nest we started off with 'Wake Up Body' before moving into our sing-a-longs with our actions and instruments. I was so proud of our little ones this week because everyone was involved for the entire lesson Altas got involved, also collecting and packing away his instruments. Many other friends made great progress in 'Ants Go Marching' by standing up and marching around the room with the teachers, which was great to see. To end the lesson, we also had free play on our percussive instruments as we danced and moved along with 'BINGO'.
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Reddam Early Learning would like to wish a very happy birthday to Ava Solomon and Rafael Kaplan who celebrate their special day this week
We hope you have a fabulous day!
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