Reddam Early Learning School Newsletter Vol 23 Issue 3 Woollahra

REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL WOOLLAHRA NEWSLETTER

The happy sounds of the children at play permeated the ELS during the week. Sometimes these sounds might just become part of the background grey noise we experience while strolling through the space –but just stand still for a moment and listen, and the sounds are suddenly a reminder of what makes an early learning environment such a special place.

It reminds us that the conglomeration of laughter, singing, casual chatter and explosions of delight is what learning is all about. This week it had the added element of Valentine’s Day, which saw the classrooms transformed with splashes of red everywhere –and much talk about how we show love to those who are closes to us.

I read a quirky but wonderful quote this week, which captures something of the value of play. It says that “Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” Curiosity and exploration – and

each day, it is through play that real learning takes place.

In our environment, and especially as we lean into the richness of the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, our teachers are constantly aware of the need to balance unstructured play with that which had more focus and direction. Because it is both that learning takes place. As such, the termly Provocations in each class provide a relatively structured launchpad from which creativity, exploration and learning can take place.

This requires the teachers to be intentional in their preparation of activities, and in their awareness of where each child is at as he or she takes part in the activities. The Early Years Learning Framework speaks specifically of intentional teachers and of the need to be “deliberate, purposeful and thoughtful in their decisions and actions”.

It is heart-warming to watch our teachers in action – in particular to notice their intentionality –as they are constantly aware of the dynamics while the children are playing. From gently guiding their interpersonal interactions, to cheering on their accomplishments, to prodding them to explore a new idea or creative activity, all of this adds huge value to the already beneficial aspects of play.

Open-ended questions posed by the teachers encourage the children to explore ideas that they may not have thought of, while at the same time building their language skills as they explain what they are planning to do, or what they think of an idea. Intentional teaching is thus not an alternative to unstructured free play but rather an additional, enriching extension. Watching it in action is so evident in the sparkling eyes of the children as they excitedly explore even more avidly whatever it is that they are engaged in.

Have a great weekend!

Dee Pitcairn Principal

The Nest (1R)

Happy Valentine’s Day

All of us in the Nest wish you a Happy Valentine's Day.

It was another wonderful, fun week in the Nest and this week love filled our classroom. The Nest wanted to share the love with their families and friends, so we chatted about who and what we love. We talked about cuddles, sharing, and smiling as ways to show others we love them. The children were introduced to the shape of the heart, and we talked about the colours red or pink being used to describe love. We found some red and pink things in our classroom. Valentine's Day is about love. Your family relationships are the most important loving, relationships you can ever have.

This week as the families entered the Nest, they were met with our Valentine’s Day set-up and, on the table, there was a box that read “Share the love”. The families were invited to spend a special moment with their child and write them a special message for Valentine’s Day. The children really felt all the love from the special messages that you wrote for them. We displayed these messages on our baobab tree in our classroom and the children gathered around as we read out each special message to the children.

As founder of the Reggio Emilia approach (on which our school philosophy is based), Loris Malaguzzi explains to us that education must be a collaboration between the children, their teachers, and our families, if it is to have a long-lasting, significant impact. This is illustrated in his statement that “learning and teaching should not stand on opposite

banks and just watch the river flow; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning and how to learn.”

Hannah Corrigan, Min Pattharasiritanarat, Chloe Grimes and Helena Zhang

"To the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you are the world" Dr Seuss

The Nest (1R)

Fledglings (1E)

By Tatiana Botrel, Jane Teh, Vivianne Zeaiter and Joyce Matsui

Specialists Classes – Dance and Drama with Laura

It is a delight to see our wonderful Fledglings children settling quickly after drop-off, with some already eager to begin their day. They are enjoying partaking in our group times, as we sing our welcoming and goodbye song “Tick- Tok”, as well as using their counting fingers to discover how many friends joined us in the classroom.

Recently, we introduced our special classes, “Music”, “Dance and Drama” and “Playball”. This week we observed confident involvement and enthusiasm in the “Dance and Drama'' class. The children especially enjoyed the parachute games, singing and dancing while following Laura’s lead. The class supports the children in developing their imagination, as there is a lot of wonder in different scenarios, for example, train rides, picnics, beach time, animals and more.

Celebrating Love

The Fledglings Term One Provocation is “Celebrating Life”. Previously, the children helped us to create lanterns for Lunar New Year, which we used to decorate the room. The children enjoyed looking at their creations on the wall and talking about them with their teachers.

February is a month devoted to celebrating love: family love, pets love, friendship love, love everywhere, in different shapes and forms. As teachers, we seek to find learning opportunities in everything we do. We try to locate, acknowledge, and teach children about things when the opportunity arises. Monthly or annual celebrations are wonderful to explore.

Valentine’s Day can be taken as an opportunity to introduce children to the concept of expressing their feelings towards someone they care about. For this special and important celebration, we filled a large trough with red coloured tinsel and paper, gold pebbles and mixed flowers’ petals to explore love by smelling, touching, and feeling. Children explored this activity with their teachers talking with them about the flowers' lovely fragrance and the petals and pebbles' soft texture.

We also enjoyed listening to love songs such as “Love in the Air”, “ Skidamarink a dink a dink” and “Twinkle star”, while popping bubbles in our dance party. We read special books about love, for example, “The little book of Love” by Trace Moroney and “I’ll do anything for you” by Karen Katz.

At the Mini Atelier, we extended the children’s interest in visual arts with the use of paints. The Fledglings stamped love hearts on the paper by dipping heart cookie cutters into white paint and pressing them on top of a piece of pink paper.

Early Years Learning Framework, V2.0, 2022:

Outcome 1- Children develop knowledgeable, confident self-identities and a positive sense of self-worth. Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.

Outcome 2- Children develop a sense of connectedness to groups and communities and an understanding of their reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary as active and informed citizens.

Outcome 3- Children become strong in their social, emotional and mental wellbeing.

Outcome 4- Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies, and natural and processed materials.

Outcome 5- Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.

Fledglings (1E)

Stage 2

By Sarah Noone and Echo Jia

“Feeling love brings a special sense of belonging, warmth and security to our children. When they experience themselves as loved, they build a healthy self-esteem, and become free to love others and engage the world with less fear” - Bill Hallam, Child Psychologist & Professor Crag Olson, Melbourne, Australia

This week’s focus for stage 2 was on LOVE, as we celebrated Valentine’s Day. We invited our children to come to school dressed in red or pink on Tuesday and Thursday. We read a story called “In My Heart, A Book of Feeling” by Jo Witek and “When I’m Feeling Love” by Trace Moroney, which led us to talk about this great feeling we all have, and how to show our appreciation to the people we love.

During group time, we encourage our children to talk about the people they love, and why they feel that way about these people. When our children talk about love, they may be expressing their feelings of attachment and affection towards the people around them, such as family members, friends, or even their favourite toy or pet. They are beginning to understand emotions and relationships, and talking about love can be a way for them to express and explore these concepts. We also incorporated “Love” at our atelier. We invited our children to do the heart shaped prints for the people they love, which is an activity to support the open web space (area between thumb and index finger) that will build the muscle strength for our pincer grip.

For young children to celebrate Valentine's Day as a way to learn about love, friendship, and kindness, provides an opportunity for them to express their appreciation for the people they care about, and to practise social

and emotional skills such as empathy, communication, and sharing. Through creative activities, storytelling, and sharing their ideas, our young children can develop a deeper understanding of what it means to be loved and how to show love and affection to others. Celebrating Valentine's Day can also help to create a positive and inclusive environment where our children feel valued and supported.

EYLF Outcomes:

1.4 Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.

2.1 Children develop a sense of connectedness to groups and communities and an understanding of their reciprocal rights and responsibilities as active and informed citizens.

3.1 Children become strong in their social, emotional and mental wellbeing.

5.3 Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.

5.4 Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work.

Stage 3

By Susan Casey, Daniella Gosty, Emily Hunt and Fiona Liddell

My World, Your World

Learning about what is important to your family and to the culture of the society we live in provides opportunities to teach the children to connect with and contribute to the world.

In the Stage 3R class we start our mornings with our Acknowledgement to Country and the first activities for the year in our classroom included looking at the country we live in, ‘Australia’, and creating our placemats for the tables. This year we used the aboriginal stamp of symbols that the indigenous people use in storytelling. The children showed an interest in the Australian animals and finding Australia on the world globe. We read many stories, and the story ‘Waddle, Giggle Gargle’ by Pamela Allen about a magpie caught the children’s imagination as they chanted the magpies call of "waddle giggle gargle paddle poodle”. Following the story, we made our own version of a funny hat to hopefully stop the magpie from swooping at us if we walked by.

Cultural celebrations are an important part of who we are as a family and society and the children in the class were also introduced to the celebrations of the Lunar New Year (as many families celebrate this festival) through stories, music and dance, and small group discussions. We also read the Chinese New Year story that introduced the 12 zodiac animals of the Lunar New Year, and we found out this year’s animal is the Rabbit. We discovered that in Stage 3R we are all born in the year of the pig and our teacher was born in the year of the goat. At the atelier, the children were invited to participate in decorating lanterns, creating fireworks with paint and rabbit prints with the sponges We also did a group collaborative project to decorate a lantern that all the children were invited to participate in. Our final experience was to make a Chinese dragon with a body and head that we then used with instruments to create a parade. We learnt new songs that included “See the lion dance and prance, fireworks pop, drums go boom boom boom, and the children laugh and play all on Chinese New Year’s Day.”

Love is in the air!

We hope you all had a wonderful Valentines with your families.

The children looooooved sharing the love with our celebration of love and friendship for Valentine’s Day. They were excited about making a special card to be given and they talked to us about who they love. Many hearts were created in the playdough area, and we painted hearts at the easel, along with colouring heart patterns at the table. The children talked about mums, dads, brothers and sisters and our new friends in the classroom as the people that they love.

Happy Valentine’s to all.

EYLF Outcome 2-2 : Children are connected with and contribute to their world by responding to diversity with respect.

Stage 4

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

This week, the children and educators at Reddam ELS celebrated Valentine’s Day, the day of love. It was so beautiful seeing all our little people dressed in shades of pink and red and some of the teachers were even surprised with chocolate and flowers from the children.

In preparation for Valentine’s Day the Stage Four children were very busy creating beautiful pieces of art to display in our piazza.

Before we started our love-related activities the question was asked: “What is love? What does it mean?” The children had some answers:

Edwyn: Love is giving presents to others.

Rafferty: Making love hearts.

Mackenzie: Also kissing for love.

Oliver: Hugging.

Mikala: Kindness and loving people.

Thomas: Giving you pretty stuff and doing something for others.

Henry: More Hugs.

For their Valentine’s art activity, the children in Nina’s class could choose from a variety of paper pieces which included colourful paper, cellophane and shiny squares, to create a beautiful love heart collage, with each piece of paper representing a piece of their heart.

A benefit of making collages is that it helps children to strengthen their fine motor skills by selecting paper pieces using their fingers and then sticking then into place. It also further facilitates great hand and eye coordination to move and fit it onto their love heart shape.

To further extend on our creative expression, we read the book ‘This Love’ by Isabel Otter

and Harriett Lynas. This timeless book shows that love is a common language with the power to unite, wherever you come from.

After reading the story, we further reflected on who or what we love.

Here are some of the children’s responses:

Oliver: I love Marshmallow and going to the movie.

Henry: I love my Mummy.

Kaitlyn: Mummy and Daddy and Erinn and ice -cream.

Rafferty: I love my Mummy and Daddy.

Edwyn: I love chickens.

Mackenzie: I like my cat Trixie-Lou.

Allegra: I love my Mummy and my daddy, Harry and Angus and going to the movies. And ice-cream.

Innaya: My brother and my cousins.

Thomas: My Mummy and my Daddy and my brother and my sister.

Chloe: I love my brother and my Daddy.

Harlow: Playing with my Mummy and Daddy.

Rafi: I love my doggie and my brother.

Louis: I love my cousin and my whale.

Mikala: I like my Mummy and my Daddy and my doggie.

As an additional art activity, the children created Valentine’s Day cards for their loved ones.

We wish all the families a wonderful weekend filled with love.

Music

With Valentine’s Day this week, the children in Stages 3 and 4 shared some things they loved in our introduction new song, “Hello, My Name Is”. We love our families; books; puzzles and dinosaurs, to mention a few. Standing up in front of the class can be daunting for some, so I was so happy to see that our friends Oliver and Esta had the confidence to stand up this week! Once we were through our song and introductions, we picked up our maracas for our warmup scales on ‘MA’ and ‘LA’, being sure to try to keep our tongue in our mouth to help create the correct shape for ‘LA’. With our voices warm, we sang our “Good Morning Song”; “ABCs” at an increasing tempo to help build our rhythm and layering this exercise for coordination; and “The Sunflower Song”, this week adding simple maths equations by adding one farmer each round.

We have been working on our rhythm animals for the last two weeks; from shaking and stomping to trying to keep in time with changing rhythms to music. This week I brought in building blocks to help us ‘build a rhythm’. We first started by finding how many sounds are in some of our names, and then found how many sounds/shakes were in our animals of ‘DOG’, ‘CAT’ and ‘SPIDER’. DOG and CAT were represented by a single block, while SPIDER is represented by a double block. We swapped and changed the blocks around to help us build and play different rhythms.

In Stage 2 and The Fledglings we opened the lesson with “Open Shut Them” to get our hands moving and our brains switched on. We started learning “Wake Up Body”, a movement warm-up to help us create awareness of different parts of our body, waking up our hands, shoulders, nose, hips and feet. Once our bodies were awake, we warmed up our voices with our simples scales with our counting on ‘MA’.

With our maracas we sang through our sing-a-

longs, working on our coordination and movement while helping build our listening skills. “Walking Walking” helps us engage various major motor movements from jumping, stomping, tiptoeing and stopping at different tempi –all before coming to a stop. We introduced “Johnny’s Hammers”, which is a simple song to help with our coordination between our hands and feet, while learning to count up from 1. To end the lesson, we had some play on the Piano Mat. Taking it in turns, the children came up to move across the mat to make it create sound. They walked, stomped or jumped across – while all our other friends practised patiently waiting for their turn.

In The Nest we opened the lesson with our instruments and sing-a-longs. It’s so great to see our little ones becoming more confident and engaged. We used our maracas for major motor, our castanets for fine motor with our “ABCs”; “Wheels on the Bus” and “Twinkle Twinkle”. We introduced our bells, which we held and shook along to “BINGO”. The children had free range to choose and play whichever instruments they preferred.

To end the lesson we used the Piano Play Mat to encourage them to stand up and walk across, although some of our little ones managed to crawl!

Dance and Drama

This week in Drama our focus was Bears, Bears, Bears!

Stage 1 and 2 explored the theme of Bears with the popular nursery rhyme “Teddy Bear’s Picnic”. Extending on our ideas from last week, we used our imagination to walk/jump/hop/ march through the woods and arrive at our picnic (on the parachute). Elliot in Stage 2 showed us how fast and slow we can march. Fi Fi showed us how to jump to the picnic.

Stage 2 are very good at following the leader, and we are beginning to introduce walking in rhythms and freezing. Waiting at our picnic was a stuffed toy (ballerina bear). The stuffed toy was hungry! We discussed what food might be served at a picnic, and pantomimed eating some of the foods. In Stage 1 Jayden ate a banana and Harlow ate a pear. The stuffed toys then wanted us to put on a show for them. In Stages 2 we recapped “what makes a good audience?” and how to take a bow. The children came up with some great answers and actions including “goggles for watching, audiences are quiet, shhh”, “audiences clap for you”. We then showed the toys how good we are at balancing on one leg and touching our toes. We also revisited the dance and song from last week called "teddy bear teddy bear". We did all the actions with ballerina bear, focusing on copying and listening.

Stage 2 also used their bodies to become big daddy bears, mummy bears and baby bears. Olivia in Stage 2 showed us the different volumes of roars from each bear. Elliot showed us how to stamp as different bears.

All the Stages had a special visit from my Rabbit friend. They took turns and used their gentle hands to pat the Rabbit. We finished by shaking the parachute for the toys. Jason in Stage

2 is becoming more and more confident with the parachute and Frankie had a huge smile while we were shaking. Stage 2 practised their bows.

Stage 3 and 4 explored the theme of bears in a few different ways. We started the lesson by talking about bears. What they look like and sound like; black and brown bears; and what to do if you find one in the wild.

We then decided to go on our own bear hunt! First, we needed to pack an imaginary bag. The children came up with ideas on what we might need. Some suggestions included hats, sunscreen, water and jumpers. Hue brought his binoculars; Harvey packed some fruit and sandwiches. We used the popular song "We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” as a backing for our hunt. We mimed spotting them. Mia in Stage 4 saw a Brown bear and told us to climb a tree.

In Stage 4 Freya saw a black bear and we all backed away slowly. Mackenzie remembered about the bubble gum from a story I told them, so we used that to scare off two bears. We then found ballerina bear waiting for us at the picnic.

We finished the class with a memory game. I brought in foods on a tray for the teddy bears picnic and the children had to remember what was on the tray before I took one away. Milo and Callum in Stage 3 remembered all the foods. To finish, we couldn’t go on a picnic without doing the song "teddy bear’s picnic". Everyone danced beautifully. In the song we learnt all about the right things to do as an audience like listening, watching, sitting up straight, and clapping.

What a busy and fun class we had! See you next week.

Dance and Drama

Dance and Drama

Sport

This week in ELS Sport we focused on the use of bean bags as our equipment item. The boys and girls played several games working as a team and individually on their balance, coordination and focus. The class was set up with spot markers with bean bags in the activity area. The spot markers were used as a home base.

We played the following games: ‘Move Like This’, ‘Bean Bag Body Parts’, ‘Bean Bag Balance’ and ‘Bean Bag Eggs’. Each game allowed the students to showcase their range of coordination of both balance and their ability to throw and catch. The Stage 3 and 4 boys and girls have started the year off well and are engaging in all activities to the best of their ability.

Reddam Early Learning

would like to wish a very happy birthday to Jacob Luo, Theodore Rosen, Ruby Read, Isabella Stesel, Charlie Yu who celebrated their special day this week

We hope you have a fabulous day!