Reddam Early Learning School Newsletter Vol 22 Issue 35

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER

Dee’s Message

One of the most important learning experiences of a young child’s life is to start seeing that he or she is not the centre of the universe around whom all things revolve. From the moment they are born, our babies are doted over and inundated with attention and love. So it is only natural that their primary perspective is that they command a significant place in the scheme of things around the household not that they would be aware of such complex matters at their age, of course!

However, as they grow older, so they begin to realise that they inhabit an environment in which others also need and receive attention. Whether with siblings in the same home, or when they have friends coming over to play, or when they attend school for the first time, they are confronted with the expectation that they will share with others. They have to share toys and other special items, and they have to share the time of the significant adults in their lives with others.

In many cases, this leads to what we might term attention seeking from young children. Inevitably, attention seeking is regarded negatively. However, a recent article points out that attention seeking should actually be seen as an important aspect of personal development during childhood. One researcher points out that it is “how we find and involve ourselves with what interests us, what encourages and what inhibits us in following our curiosity.”

The article goes on to suggest that “Children and young people blossom when they start to discern their desires and fascinations. Conversely, those who do not manage to achieve this can feel at a loss, bored, or even disenfranchised by their schooling. Young children seek attention from others to find out what they want to give their attention to. A child seeking attention does not yet know what they are seeking attention for. They discover that in the company of another, like an interested adult.”

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

“In terms of child development, there’s something very powerful about babies’ and young children’s capacities to recruit attention. They’re magnetic in some way.” Our ELS teachers and all parents are thus in a wonderful position to use this “magnetic” energy to expand the children’s interests and to help them to extend on their “desires and fascinations”.

While we might sometimes baulk at attention seeking from our children, especially within the context of when other children are around, as the writer of the article suggests “If attention seeking is the child’s route to discovering their desires, surely we should welcome it?” It is certainly an interesting perspective and one which should give us all something to think about, especially in those moments when we might instinctively shut down attention seeking behaviour from our child.

Enjoy your weekend!

Dee Pitcairn Principal

The Nest (1R)

The children were full of energy and excitement as we prepared ourselves to head outdoors earlier this week. The children all know now to sit down near the door to get their hats and sunscreen on and to wait patiently for their name to be called to go outdoors. Over the course of the year, this has been a challenge for our toddlers as they all naturally want to push to the front and go first! But the teachers in the Nest help them to sit and wait by singing songs or reading a story to engage them until everyone is ready. Little by little, week by week, the children have been learning this routine, and to our surprise earlier this week all of our children sat down on the mat and waited with anticipation to be called.

One by one, they were asked to come out, an educator held their hand and helped them out the door. The transition went so smoothly. Additionally, when it is time to come back inside again, the children are called over, an educator helps them in the door, they hand over their hat and go and sit down to wash their hands and drink their water. Routine, and consistency with transition time is so important for our little ones to learn as it prepares them for their classes next year. It also prepares them socially in the community, as they learn to become aware of others around them, learning patience, waiting, being kind and considerate and gentle with others.

This week we enjoyed the beautiful spring weather outdoors. It was lovely to watch the children who were so happy to be running around and exploring. The little wagons with balls were popular, as the children all participated in collecting the balls and wheeling the wagon around. Capri and Leo followed each other around the yard carting their balls around and chatting to each other happily.

Olivia had so much enjoyment finding and collecting as many balls as she could and tipping them up out of the wagon.

This turned into a game with her friends joining in to help find the balls. Meanwhile, Arjun and Krishna found some water on the play equipment and occupied themselves with the fascination of splashing the water with their hands. August enjoyed climbing high up on the play equipment landing and “driving” the wheel.

We also engaged in water play outdoors. The wind was blowing a gentle warm breeze on Tuesday, so we set up the little water tubs under the big trees to create a peaceful atmosphere for the children. One by one they gravitated to this area to investigate and play. “Splash splash,” we said as they tapped their little hands into the water. They loved feeling the water on their hands or scooping it up with a utensil or little watering cans. Some of the children loved this idea and went over to water the trees in the garden. This led to the children naturally exploring what they could find under the trees. They would pick up a leaf or some soil and transfer it into the water tub. It was lovely to see our little ones enjoy making up their own activity resourcing their own learning in this way,

The Nest (1R)

The children could come and go as they pleased by running off to play on the equipment or explore another area of the yard and then returning to the water. It was lovely to watch them so peaceful, calm and happy, being free to explore in this open ended way.

Later in the week, we created our very own spring flower collages. In springtime we see some beautiful blossoms and flowers appearing in our gardens and by the roadside. Franklin has been picking a little flower each morning and bringing it in to show his teachers. With this interest in our natural word around us, Teacher Kiri decided to bring in some Rhododendron flowers from her garden to share with the children. Teacher Min found some beautiful deep red blossoms from our school garden. We set out a spray of flowers for the children to explore and choose from for their picture collage. Every child was given the opportunity to participate. The children were all very intrigued by the flowers and spent time observing, touching and pulling the petals. It was amazing to see them being very gentle and specific about which flowers they chose and where they placed them. Little Joshua enjoyed pulling at the flower petals that he was observing closely. When he was finished placing them onto the glue on his paper, he held it up to show Min, saying “see” with a smile and a look of pride in his work.

Leo enjoyed watching and helping stir the glue for Min. He stated to name the colours he was seeing purple, white, pink and red. When he finished his painting he said, “All done!” and he continued to play with the flowers on the table. Capri really enjoyed it so much she wanted to do more, so she said, “More” and “Oh”, “What colour?” August tapped his little hands on the table with enthusiasm. “Oh,” he said when Min passed him the flower.

Teddy paid a lot of attention to his creation, as he delicately placed the petals on his paper. Arjun found the activity to be very soothing and wanted to do more. Frankie said, “Oh flower” and “Where is it gone?”, while holding his hands up. Florence loved exploring and feeling the little flowers in her fingers. It was such a colourful beautiful experience for all.

Fledglings (1E)

By Tatiana Botrel, Jane Teh, Marina Moliboga and Nadia Breus Mini Beasts in the Fairy Garden

Over the past few weeks, the children have displayed a greater interest in learning and exploring the world of the fairies. They have worked in the Atelier to build their houses, their special doors and spreading magic around by blowing fairy dust.

Last week, when we spoke about the fairy’s Secret Garden, the teachers asked the children what they thought this garden looked like. At that time, Wolf said that there were ants in the garden, which led the other children to also name insects. Extending the children’s interest in this magical garden, this week we gave them a box full of mini beetles to observe and investigate. The children looked at the bug’s colours, their shapes, and Tati shared the beetle’s names with them. Cruz wanted to see the beetle’s tummy, so Tati got a torch to make the tummy of the beetles more evident. The Fledglings were mesmerised as they engaged with this resource and more investigations will continue throughout the next few weeks.

Building Blocks

Lately, the Fledglings children have been spending a lot of time persevering in building big towers. They try to stack everything they can balance together. The children enjoyed building vertical towers with the interlocking pins. All year this has been a Fledglings favourite, gathering the children together at the table to build the higher the better! In this experience, the children usually display perseverance to fit the pieces together, and many times, work collaboratively to use all the pieces from the basket.

Building blocks are a powerful learning tool

and help children to develop their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, spatial awareness and reasoning.

Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners. Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating. EYLF, 2009

Fledglings (1E)

By

REDDAM

Tatiana Botrel, Jane Teh, Marina Moliboga and Nadia Breus

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

What’s in a name?

From the beginning of the year the children have used placemats which include both their names and photographs for mealtimes. The placemat being personalised to each child gives them a sense of belonging as they know where to sit during the mealtime routines. As of Term 4, the children have become increasingly aware of symbols by displaying an emerging interest in assisting their parents in looking for their names on their lockers each morning. With this in mind, the children were introduced to the Montessori sandpaper letters to help them to recognise the letters in their names. Some recognise the first letter while some recognise the whole word and this is the beginning of their literacy skills. The children have loved to watch the alphabet being spread out through the classroom as they use their names on their lockers to assist in their search.

This learning experience can be linked to Vygotsky’s theories. He believes that language, literacy, and numeracy skills should be “scaffolded” by adults. To use a scaffolding experience, the children have each been given a label with their name on it to use as a reference when searching for letters from their names. For those who need the extra challenge, the first letter of their name has been removed and they have been searching for the letters from their names. There has been an opportunity for the children to extend their letter recognition by removing their photos from their lockers to help them search without their images. Some of the children will rely on memory and familiarity of their locker placement but it is a great way for the children to focus on their names.

Our aim is to further extend their developing knowledge in recognition of letter symbols by introducing the children’s individual name tags alongside the large alphabet letters.

Of course, not every child will be able to pick up their alphabet this way or this early. It’s important to follow your child’s lead and not pressure them to learn when they’re not quite ready yet. After all, research has shown that pressuring children to learn before they are developmentally ready can actually be counterproductive.

By

REDDAM

Daniella Gosty, Sarah Noone, Romy Kaiser and Viviane Zieatter

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

Rain Cloud Science Experiment

Following the heavy rain on Sunday, the children were full of chat about how loud it was, how it woke some of them up and how it made some of them feel cold, amongst other observations. Following these discussions, we took out our First Encyclopaedia of Science to see if it might have any interesting facts about weather or rain. It did!!!!! The book explained to us that there are lots of different kinds of weather. It can be rainy, snowy, sunny or windy. The three main things that make the weather happen are the Sun, the air and water.

The book then went on to explain how and why we have rainy days.

‘The amount of water in the world is always the same. Rain is not new water.’

We then followed the steps to discover where rain comes from.

1. The Sun heats up the water in the seas, lakes, rivers and snow on the mountain tops.

2. The water turns into water vapour, a gas, which we can’t see, and rises up into the sky.

3. Up in the sky, it’s cooler and the gas turns back into tiny water droplets.

4. The water droplets bump into other droplets and join to make clouds.

5. As more water is added, the droplets get bigger and heavier and fall as rain.

6. The rain falls down to the ground where it flows back into the seas, lakes and rivers.

Stage 3

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

Following this discovery and given our provocation of Young Einstein, our natural extension to this conversation, is to complete a Rain Cloud Science Experiment. What do you need to create this experiment? Don’t worry, these are items you can regularly find at home:

· Shaving Foam

· Food Colouring

· Water

· A glass jar

Next we followed the four simple steps to complete the experiment:

1. We began this activity by asking the children to fill the chosen container with water. We made sure not to fill it completely to the rim, leaving some space, about an inch, from the rim.

2. Next was the exciting part for the children, adding the shaving foam. We had to be careful here not to add too much foam, as it takes time for the rain to fall, and we didn’t want to lose interest in the experiment.

3. The children took turns to add a drop of food colouring to the foam. We chose blue and used a dropper, which also helps the children to develop their fine motor skills.

4. Next came the most awaited step for the children. We needed to wait for a few minutes to see such a beautiful and exciting rain like effect. I asked the children to observe closely! The weight of the food colouring starts to push the foam or clouds and falls down through the water creating a pretty and cool rain like effect. It doesn’t resemble rain drops, as such, but gives something more like streaks of rain falling.

As we waited for the rain to fall the children were invited to the Atelier to create their very own representation of rain clouds. What a wonderful learning experience.

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

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

The children have been very interested in painting, drawing and also have been inquisitive about shapes in art and famous artists. This week in group time we looked at the covers of the three books which have been on display on our bookshelf. The children looked at the covers of the books and tried to figure out what they all had in common. They guessed they were about artists, painting, and using things. Finally, Lily exclaimed, “They all have faces on them!” We read the book ‘Portraits’, which was created by Claude Delafosse and Gallimard. We saw the art of famous portraits from famous artists revealed as we turned the transparent pages. The next book we read was ‘Hello, Picasso!’ made by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The book was compiled with some of Picasso’s famous works. The children took a great interest in one painting called ‘Dora Maar in an Armchair’. This painting is of a woman whose face is painted from two sides at once and the children found this very amusing.

Lyla: It’s a mooshed up.

Anna: There’s a hat and lots and lots of triangles.

Eva: The body was mixed up.

Elizabeth: The ears are different shapes.

Austin: It looks like it had a tail nose.

Nina: The face is yellow. Our faces aren’t yellow.

Lily: The smile is on the cheek.

This lesson on the abstract face transferred into an amazing art experience. During free playtime the children were invited to make their own Picasso inspired faces, following on from looking at Picasso paintings. Each child had a printout photo of themselves in various sizes, random facial features, paint, markers and glue. They sat down and cut out features of their faces and then stuck them onto a larger A3 sheet of paper if they wished. They used the tabletop easels to complete their own portraits of themselves. The children really enjoyed seeing their faces in a different way and found this experience quite funny, but also insightful, as they began to understand and view themselves from a different perspective.

The children then had some fun experimenting with face magnification and distortion. They all had a turn at using an A4 magnifying board. They put it up to their faces and experimented with the board, noticing that if they moved the board further away things got bigger and if they moved the board closer to their face things got smaller. As each individual child tried this, the children on the mat could see how this also correlated to the size of their face.

The children have also been busy preparing for their transition into Kindergarten, with the introduction of workstations. This is where a variety of activities are set up at the tables and some on the floor, as we have limited table space. This encourages the children to engage in table activities, further developing their focus and concentration, and also to challenge them! We will be using workstations each week to further prepare the children for school with new and different activities to challenge them and their persistence.

The sun was shining for our Stage 3 & 4 PE lessons this week, and some high temperatures ensured that our boys and girls had their hats on for the lesson time and also had their drink bottles ready for some hydration breaks.

This week in PE we focused on foot eye coordination and dribbling.

We started our lesson with two warm up games, the first involving the students moving around the learning area getting familiar with dribbling a soccer ball in traffic. As always, a fun active playlist was in the background, motivating the boys and girls to have fun. Once the music stopped, the group would perform a small number of high knees, heel kicks or star jumps to get our blood flowing and our heart rate up ready for the main part of the lesson.

The second game, called ‘Stop and Shoot’, involved the students being able to move around in a defined area and following the cones and kick the ball through the hoop target. The focus was getting the students to be able to aim their passes and manoeuvre around the working zone without making contact with anyone else.

The last activity was a game called ‘Numbers’, where each student was given a number and versed someone else with the same number from the other time.

What a week of learning and fun from our Stage 3 & 4 boys and girls.

We look forward to adding different sports to our program to finish out the year, using bouncing and catching to manipulate the balls in a variety of situations and games next week.

This week in Stage 1 we continued our 'Magic Carpet' ride. The children started by naming the colours on the parachute. We then pulled out the magic carpet and flew all the way to a dinosaur museum. I hid lots of fibular fossils around the room (footprints) and everyone had to find them and return them to me. We all learned the Dino song and finished with a visit from the rabbit puppet. Well, done Ethan who used gentle hands to pat the puppet.

In the Fledglings, we also went to the dinosaur museum. We used our bodies to become different types of dinosaurs including T rex, Brontosaurus, Velociraptor and Triceratops. I showed them what the dinosaurs looked like in the book I brought in. We gave each one a different sound or moment. We even linked different colours to different sounds, movements, and dinosaurs. Well done, Billy, who stomped his feet loudly, and Lily, who snapped her hands like a Dinosaur.

In Stage 2 we began practising our songs, dances, and actions for the concert in a couple of weeks. I can’t tell you what we are doing as it’s a surprise!

In Stages 3 and 4, the children explored and acted out the story of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’, highlighting key phrases

They began by discussing the characters in the story. What is different about each of the goats? The children used their bodies to show the different sized billy goats, while being aware of their personal space. They thought about the steps, if they were lighter or heavier. Was the shape of their body bigger or smaller? Next, each group created and shared a simple performance of the story as I narrated. They imitated specific creature’s movements and demonstrated their understanding of the story’s characters and setting.

All the children took on the role of one of the goats and the teacher gave them a letter e.g., ‘G’ and in order to cross the bridge they had to think of a word beginning with that letter e.g. grape, giraffe, gumboots, etc., or a word starting with the first letter of their name. Well done, Freya, who said Frog, and Henry who said Helicopter. In Stage 3, Thomas said Goat and Edwin said Gorilla.

The nursery rhyme, ‘Jack and Jill’ was introduced to the children. Like ‘The Billy Goats Gruff’ the characters in the rhyme make it up the hillside but have difficulties. The children echoed each line of the rhyme after me; they then sang the song and acted it out.

In Stage 4 I asked the children to brainstorm what Jack and Jill might do next after falling down the hill.

Mime was used to recap the lesson: open the box, pull something out that was used in the story or nursery rhyme, and think about their facial expressions and body language.

This week, the children used key arts vocabulary: character, personal space, imagination, voice, body, story, character, freeze, and teacher in role.

Music has the ability to evoke emotions and memory, and we explored that a little this week in Stages 3 and 4.

We opened the lesson with ‘The Silent Game’, rhyming words, finding colours all to get us focused and listening. We warmed up our voices on ‘LA’ and a range of animal sounds across a variety of different vocal warm ups. With our voices warm we sang through our ‘ABCs’, and tried to focus on our spatial awareness as we sang and moved backwards. Stage 3 had a blast dancing their way through the zoo; and Stage 4 began learning their new song “Look at me I’m Going To School”, which sings about all about getting them ready for ‘big school’.

Using our maracas, we revised ‘Pitch’ ‘high’, ‘middle’ and ‘low’; and the children demonstrated they could recognise them through their bodies. We shook our maracas high; swung our hips for middle; and stomped our feet for low. Some of our kids still challenge themselves by looking away from the keyboard, making sure they can’t see my hands.

Using three different sounds of music, I gave the children a blank piece of paper to draw how the music made them feel. One song inspired ‘happiness’ and we got happy faces, ice cream, families and love hearts. Another inspired ‘sadness’ and ‘calm’ in some, and so we got sad and calm faces. The third inspired ‘excitement’ and the urge to dance their attempts at excited faces were adorable, but some even drew ‘scribble’ because they felt silly or crazy.

In Stage 2 we came together again this week to practise our celebration songs. Our Treefrogs got to enjoy the double music lesson, learning a new fine motor warm up with "5 Finger Family", wiggling each finger. We used our play mat to take turns at jumping and walking backwards, before enjoying some free play between the play mat, as they made use of the bells, percussion instruments and my keyboard.

The Fledglings opened the lesson with learning "5 Finger Family", as we pretended to use our binoculars to find each finger. We warmed up our voices on 'MA', which slowly got faster and faster. With our voices warm, we sang through some of our sing a longs "ABC Freeze"; "Sleeping Bunnies". We revised our rhythm animals, this time adding in 'CATERPILLAR', shaking our semi quavers.

Using the play mat, we tried practising sitting in a line before stomping and jumping their way across. To end the lesson, they also enjoyed some free play time on the play mat, bells and my keyboard.

The Nest opened the lesson with some motor movements and actions in "Open Shut Them" and Olivia's "Wheels on the Bus". We sang our "ABCs", working on our added freeze. Our "Sleeping Bunnies" pretended to be sound asleep before waking up to jump and dance their way around the room.

“Music is what feelings sound like” Author, Georgia Cates

We used our castanets to help strengthen our fine motor movement to "Twinkle Twinkle" before strengthening our stomps on the play mat or crawling for some.

We ended the lesson using our bells, which are great to help visual motor integration with hitting the bells with the sticks.

Reddam Early Learning would like to wish a very happy birthday to Theodore Pitsis who celebrate their special day this week We hope you have a fabulous day!