Reddam Early Learning School Newsletter

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Whether as parents or teachers, we do all we can to keep our children safe, especially by providing environments in which they can grow and explore safely. The Early Years Learning Framework mentions the words ‘safe’ and ‘safety’ several times, in an acknowledgement that when children feel safe they are more likely to develop their personalities and skills in the best possible way.

The EYLF mentions that by providing “predictable and safe environments”, it means that children are able to “approach safe situations with confidence”. And ultimately this is what we all hope for that the children will grow in confidence and will develop their own unique individuality “and become mindful of their own and others’ safety.”

However, as we all know only too well, we are not able to wrap our children in cotton wool at all times not now nor in the future as they grow older. They will face situations

which are potentially risky, yet it is often in assessing and then overcoming these risks that they will grow. Being able to weigh up the potential risks in a situation is a critical skill which all children must develop.

A recent article makes a useful distinction between hazards and risks. It points out that “A hazard is something that might cause harm. We tend to think of more obvious examples like an uncovered pond or trailing cables, but behaviours like bullying or neglect can also be classed as hazards. Risk, on the other hand, is about probability and consequence it’s the chance, high or low, that someone will actually be harmed by a hazard.”

The article goes on to remind us that “we know that activities like climbing, tool use and fire have a higher level of risk but help children learn about their environment and their own capabilities. The risk of serious injury is evident, but the benefits are also clear. As long as there are clearly explained safety rules, modelling and supervision, children can be fully involved.

Many potentially hazardous activities have multiple benefits and are low risk if they are well controlled.”

We have all experienced those wonderful moments with our children when their sense of achievement glows from them as a result of overcoming a tricky obstacle or challenge, despite or made even more powerful because of the potential risks involved. Climbing a tree, jumping over a muddy puddle, hammering a nail into a plank, helping in the kitchen… all of these carry with them an inherent risk. And yet all of them also bring such enormous potential for celebration.

As adults, we play a critical role alongside our children, as we help to scaffold them through risk taking, while providing them with the necessary encouragement and guidance. The greatest joy, of course, is then to applaud their achievements as they step beyond hesitation, learn how to assess the risks themselves, and master yet another skill in the adventure of life.

The Stage 3 children and their parents had a wonderful end of year celebration this past week and we look forward to enjoying more of these moments with the rest of the children in the ELS over the coming weeks.

My sincere thanks to Hannah Corrigan (Stage 3 Co ordinator) Susan Casey, Echo Jia, Emily Hunt, Jasmin Bailey, Jisu Kwon and Cecilia Peturi. Special mention and thanks to both Jason Corrigan (PA ELS) and Amber Larsson (PA Primary) for their photography skills and organisation and for their support of our beautiful children in the Early Learning School.

Enjoy your weekend!

Dee Pitcairn Principal

The Nest (1R)

We enjoyed the benefits of warm weather this week. We ventured outdoors daily to run around climb and explore under the big trees, and we also enjoyed some water play now that the weather has warmed up.

The children really embraced the opportunity to forage and explore on the ground and in the garden. A few of the children made up their own game of stomping through leaves on the ground under the trees as if walking through the woods. They followed one another as they walked behind and around the trees in a loop. When they got to the end, Leo said, “Again” and off they went again, one behind the other for another loop. It was so lovely to witness the children deep in their full imagination, resourcing their own learning. We have also been witnessing the beginnings of little friendships starting to bloom amongst some of our children. Arjun, Florence and Capri all gathered around to share their little leaves, reaching out or passing one to each other. Leo and Capri were seen chatting to one another, while passing toys to each other. Harlow looked out for her younger peers by passing their comforter to them when they were upset. It is such a thrill for us in the Nest as we witness these lovely moments between our children. Guiding our children to learn social skills is a large portion of our work as educators in the Nest, so it is rewarding when we see our little ones finally learning to share or wait their turn or show empathy or caring to one another.

We took out our little magnifying glasses to investigate up close the various things we found outdoors. This delighted the children as they learned to look through the glass to see a magnified version of what they could see with their bare eyes. We investigated bark, leaves, insects, and dirt all such great fascinations for our little ones, as they really embraced this activity. In other outdoor fun, we brought out some little red wheelbarrows and a selection of small balls for the children to load into them to push around. First, Kiri scattered the balls around the yard, and the children ran to go and find and collect them to put them in the wheelbarrows. They loved the challenge of running and finding the balls to then throw them into the wheelbarrows with a sense of achievement. Each child was given a turn to push around the wheelbarrows, whilst the others either walked alongside them or picked up the balls. It was great to see the children working alongside one another in this shared goal.

Indoors we bought out the water tubs with some little containers and sea animal toys. Again the children were invited to have a turn at the water tub table to work alongside their peers, splashing and playing in the water. In Early Learning, we acknowledge the environment as a teacher. When children engage with their environment and use natural resources in their play, they are building their sense of understanding of the world and their place in it, while also building their understanding of their own abilities to affect and influence things. Water play is both enjoyable and educational and has a range of benefits for your child’s social and emotional development, as well as developing their physical abilities and early literacy and numeracy skills. We also celebrated Olivia’s 2nd birthday this week. She was so excited when we bought out some special playdough cupcakes and sang “Happy Birthday to you!” She knew it was especially for her as she had a big smile on her face, clapped and pretended to blow the candles out. Of course, the others wanted to join in on the fun, so each child was given a pretend cupcake to play with and not eat!

It was another great week.

REDDAM

Fledglings (1E)

By Tatiana Botrel and Jane Teh, Fairies in the Fledglings

The Fledglings continued to display a great interest in playing and learning all about fairies. The children get so excited to talk about fairies that every now and then we can observe them looking for fairies around the classroom. After they finished making their own fairy doors, adding some flowers to decorate them, the children used their imaginations to talk to each other about what happened when they knocked on the fairy doors. Charlie said that, “The fairies are coming soon”, Zoe thought that they would arrive flying, while Vanilla got excited to see the “so beautiful” fairies.

While engaging with the Fantasy World resources in the classroom, the children have been developing great conversations with their peers. As we are reaching the end of this school year, the children are displaying willingness to play alongside their peers, allowing more interactions to happen. Respecting the children’s interest and extending it promotes a meaningful learning experience where the children are the leaders in this process.

Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners. Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another. EYLF, 2009.

Outdoor Play Exploring the ELS Deck

Since the beginning of the year, the ELS Deck is one of the children’s favourite parts of the day. Going outside and engaging in physical development activities brings a new and fresh moment to our day at school.

The Fledglings enjoy spending most of this time in the sand pit, digging holes, filling up buckets and using their imaginations to pretend to cook, while stirring sand, seeds, and leaves in the bowls.

The obstacle course also brings great enjoyment to our little Fledglings as they challenge themselves to climb up the wooden boards, balance on the frames and then jump off the box.

Although the Deck is a place to promote lots of active play, it also offers opportunity for quiet play, with the table activities. In our case, the children enjoy spending time building blocks, and drawing.

Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing. Children take increasing responsibility for their own health

Fledglings (1E)

By Tatiana Botrel and Jane Teh,

Stage 2

By Daniella Gosty, Sarah Noone, Romy Kaiser and Viviane Zieatter

STAGE 2

Learning is an active process of construction (not reproduction) and is enhanced when each child has a voice in decision making, and they can make choices about their learning.

Paper towel colour mixing

The Kookaburra group participated in a colour mixing experience using primary colours to create their new colours. Colours are everywhere and it is a wonderful experience for children to see how colours mix and blend together.

The children were provided with water in five jars, food colouring, eye droppers and paper towels. The children described the water as “white colour” and Luis added “white like a ghost.” A few drops of red colour were added, and the children shouted, “It is red now!” We then made green water, yellow water, blue water and added all the colours into the last jar to create black water. They used eye droppers to squeeze their chosen colours and drip onto the paper towel, to create lots of wonderful colours. The children seemed fascinated by how the paint spread all over the paper towel and how colours blend.

The children were asked to describe their new colours and here are their responses.

Sophie: “rainbow colour”

Cosmo: “rainbow too”

Isabelle: “orange and purple,”

Riyaan: “Black”

Halle quietly observed the paint spreading out on the towel.

Saskia: “Blue, purple”

Claire: “purple colour “

Hudson: “purple”

Theodore and Luis loved mixing all the colours creating lots of new colours. Jackson named the colours he used “yellow, green”.

Liam calmly combined colours and watched them blending to new ones.

Maeve was meticulous about where she put the colours, and she described her new colours as “orange, purple, green and brown”. James was fascinated while using the droppers and watching the coloured water mixing. He said, “Look, it’s mixing.”

Milo started with separate drops, and when he noticed that colours would mix when he dropped them close together, he experimented by intentionally mixing them by dropping colours on top of each other.

Through this hands on experiment with primary and secondary colours, the children experimented with cause and effect and were engaged in scientific thinking to predict such as how water colour will change when food colouring is added and compare the consistency of colours when two or three colour are combined, or “what shades of new colours will have”. They observed how the coloured water is absorbed by the paper towel. They used a multitude of fine motor skills like squeezing, pouring and mixing, and worked on controlling those skills.

EYLF learning outcomes 4.2 Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating EYLF learning outcomes 5.1 Children use language to communicate thinking about quantities to describe attributes of objects and collections, and to explain mathematical ideas.

By Daniella Gosty, Sarah Noone, Romy Kaiser and Viviane Zieatter

Stage 3

By Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily Hunt and Echo Jia

This week in Stage 3 we were very busy preparing for our end of year celebration which took place on Wednesday and Thursday. The children had regular music sessions with Nick over the last couple of weeks where the focus was on practising the songs for the show. They worked on singing ‘Here comes the sun’ and ‘We are Australian’, as well as singing and learning the actions for ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ and ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gumtree’.

On the morning of the show the children were filled with excitement, and they really looked forward to seeing their families in the audience. After eating morning tea together, we warmed up our voices and took some deep breaths before making our way to the stage. The children put on a great show, and we were so proud of them! It has been a long time since we have been able to welcome families and friends into school for a celebration, so it was wonderful to have everyone together again. We hope those of you in attendance enjoyed the show!

By

Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily Hunt and Echo Jia

REDDAM

By Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily Hunt and Echo Jia

By

Susan Casey, Hannah Corrigan, Emily Hunt and Echo Jia

By Jane Pledger, Sandra Carberry, Nina Bergel,Yuliya Ginis and Christina Mandalidis

Celebrating Halloween with our children and families

Our families and school community celebrate many occasions throughout the year. Some celebrations reflect religious or cultural events shared by our families and children. Many celebrations are child centred and follow the interests of the children at our school.

Halloween is an occasion that has grown in popularity each year through all age groups and stages. Here at Reddam, Halloween comes alive through our wall documentation, the dressed Piazza, the art experiences, sensory exploration, and, finally, the dress up day. During the planning, we ensure the children have the agency to choose the celebrations they would like to participate in. The children decided what they want to be. On Halloween, the children expressed themselves creatively and dressed up as anything they could imagine, some characters were real, some were imaginary, we even had a fried egg which was one of the highlights. As the celebration drew to a close, we wanted to reflect on the highlights and ask each child what they loved best about our Halloween celebration.

Harvey: The spooky mirror was the best part of Halloween.

Lindsey: I liked the hallway; it was fun playing in there.

Marvin: I liked the dress ups and trick or treat.

Ashlee: The hallway is always the best.

Valentino: My mum got scared and that made me laugh.

Alfred: The potions. I pretending to drink them.

Adam: Face painting is my favourite.

Lincoln: The hallway was so scary, and I loved it.

Cecila: The scary doll made me laugh and scream at the same time.

Mikala: I like spooky stuff, so I was laughing all day.

Another amazing week for our Stage 3 and 4 PE lessons. The sun was shining, and the boys and girls were super enthusiastic about their lessons. It has been a pleasure to see them grow over the last five weeks. This week in PE we focused on coordination and teamwork. We started our lesson with two warm up games, the first being ‘Stop and Go Bubble’, which involved students moving around learning to manipulate their bodies and warm up various major muscles ensuring that they maintained balance and coordinated both upper and lower parts of the body. The second game, called ‘Traffic Lights’, involved the students being able to move around in a defined area and following traffic signals, all whilst listening to music. The classes all enjoyed this game as we introduced the blue light as the police, for if they failed to stop on red. This created a whole lot of laughter in all the classes. Our next activity of the class was a game of ‘Builders and Bulldozers’, two teams having to flip and switch the coloured cones before the other group had a chance to flip theirs. This allowed the students to work together as small teams and coordinate themselves in a defined space using hand eye coordination and developing the initial stages of peripheral vision. As part of the next phase we moved on to a circuit to combined all of our movements over the last 4 weeks hopping, jumping and running over 3 laps of a small circuit. The last activity was using the HUGE parachute. We made mushroom clouds, made waves and the favourite of the lesson was making popcorn this involved making waves to remove the balls from the parachute as quickly as possible. What a week of learning and fun from our Stage 3 and 4 boys and girls. We look forward to adding different sporting balls to our program to finish out the year using dribbling, bouncing and catching to manipulate the balls in a variety of situations and games.

This week in Drama class was all about bears!

Stage 1 dusted off the flying carpet and went on an adventure through the woods. We marched, jumped, and walked through to the 'Teddy bear’s picnic'. We arrived at the picnic and had a visit from a teddy bear who had lots of food. The teddy bear was a ballerina and wanted to put on a show, so we clapped and joined in dancing to 'teddy bear teddy bear'. Vanilla showed us her ballerina tippy toes. Well done to Bobby who joined in for the parachute and cuddled the bear.

Stage 2 was introduced to the story by a ballet bear (teddy bear) who sat on the parachute and showed the children how to sit. She asked if they wanted to see her picnic items and join her for morning tea. But ballet bear had other ideas and asked the children to close their eyes, and then she ate one of the food items. Could they guess which one it was? The children loved this memory game. We also went on an adventure through the woods. The children hopped, jumped, and skipped, and Claire showed us her tippy toes which led us to the bear’s house. Then we used our bodies to discover the difference between big daddy bears, mummy bears and baby bears. We also acted out the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. We got to act out all the different characters. We even used props (real plates) for the porridge. Saxon showed us how hot the porridge was by making a funny face. Hudson fell over because the chair broke, and Hallie rolled on the floor to mess up the bed.

In Stages 3 and 4, the lesson was all about Goldilocks. I began the lesson with a memory game of food items at the Teddy Bear’s picnic then went into role as Goldilocks telling the children about my escapade in the Bears’ House

“So, you know the other day when I broke into the bears' house, well I saw the porridge on the table and yes, I went over and tried the first bowl which was too hot, then I went over and tried the second one. YUK, how could anyone eat cold porridge? The small bowl was just right, but a teeny tiny bowl of porridge wasn’t enough for me……”

“Do you know what else I had for breakfast? Don’t tell anyone……Well, I opened the fridge; gee, those bears eat well. After that little bowl of porridge, I found a frozen pizza in the fridge, so I put that in the oven. A big bowl of cherries, I mean cherry juice, got all over the place but so far, I don’t think they have noticed.”

We discussed what Goldilocks had told them and acted out the story and even changed parts of the story! We changed our voices and bodies to become different characters. Hubert had a low voice for daddy bear, Noah had a soft voice for mummy bear and Lily had a squeaky voice for baby bear. Tommy in Stage 3 showed us how little the baby chair was using his body. We ended with picture postcards of the house and the woods.

It was our celebration week for Stage 3! I was so proud of what they did and the showcase they put on.

In Stages 4 and 3, we opened the lesson with our Solfa Scale using our microphone. After our voices were warmed up, Stage 3 then rehearsed for their celebration as we ran through their showcase.

Stage 4 enjoyed taking turns at singing “Do Re Mi” on a stage that we made in front of the class, with the ‘audience’ singing along and performing the actions. We sang and signed “Twinkle Twinkle”; then revised “Colours of the Wind” before using our maracas to sing through “Apples & Bananas” and “Kookaburra”, working on our vowels and coordination as we got faster and faster with our actions.

Both Stages 3 and 4 ended the lesson with the xylophones. We were given different colours and letters to find, helping work on both colour and letter recognition. We discussed pitch, listening to how the sound got higher and lower and we played up and down on a C Major scale the children took it in turns to either play up or down the scale.

Stage 2 and The Fledglings opened the lesson with some movement in "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" before moving into our scales. Stage 2 practised some ascending and descending scales on 'DA'. We used our maracas for our sing a longs with "The Sunflower Song"; " I'm a little Scarecrow" and our "ABCs" before both the Treefrogs and Kookaburras came together to practise for their celebration.

The Fledglings went to the zoo before singing and dancing around the room to "Do Re Mi". To end the lesson, we had free time on the xylophones and my keyboard, testing their colour recognition.

Down in The Nest we made our way to the mat as we picked up our maracas ready for our sing a longs and fan favourites, helping build on movement, rhythm and coordination. We encouraged our motor movement with "Sleeping Bunnies" and "Ants Go Marching" before ending the lesson with some free play on the xylophones.

REDDAM

REDDAM

Reddam Early