Reddam ELS Woollahra Week 8
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
One important aspect of any school’s progress and innovation is to ensure that time is spent reflecting on best educational practice, not only within the Australian context but also by benchmarking against international trends. This is something we take very seriously in the Reddam House ELS environment, and we are fortunate to be part of the Inspired international education group, which assists us to stay on top of best practice globally.
A few years ago, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), commissioned an intensive study which led to the publication of a report, namely ‘The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030’. It looked at the current state of education around the world and provided recommendations for education policies and practices for the future.
Most importantly for us in an early learning environment, it spent considerable time looking at the critical place that early learning should play in societies across the world, noting that “Children who have
access to high-quality early childhood education and care are more likely to succeed in school, graduate from high school, and pursue further education and training.”
The report made the point that the world is changing rapidly, and education systems need to keep up, especially so that children are able to develop key competencies such as creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and social and emotional skills. This finds a wonderful synergy with our Reggio Emilia approach here in the ELS, and the way in which Provocations are used to stretch the children to explore their innate curiosity and desire to explore.
The report also mentioned that lifelong learning is essential, and it is our great hope that the sparks of curiosity which are ignited in the ELS will indeed last a lifetime. This will, we trust, inspire individuals who will continuously develop their skills and knowledge throughout their lives in order to keep up with changing work and societal demands.
The report reminds us that “Investing in early childhood education and care is an investment in the future of our children and our societies, and we must prioritize it accordingly.” It is our great privilege to be part of the “investment” you have made in your child by choosing to send him or her to our school. We look forward to ensuring that ours is an education deeply rooted in enquiry-based learning, as the children develop warm and nurturing relationships, in an environment conducive to true learning and exploration.
Have a happy weekend!
Dee Pitcairn PrincipalHappy Birthday
Reddam House ELS would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to
Francesca Chan
Hugo Henderson
Thomas Rogers
Mila Tagand
Frankie Moffat
Jamien Tseng-Ling
Allegra Zubani
The children are arriving at school happy, eager and full of energy ready for their day ahead, showing their sense of belonging to their school community. These moments were captured as the children arrived at school with their loved ones.
National Quality framework
Quality Area 5 - Relationships with children.
The aim of this area is to promote relationships with children that are responsive, respectful and promotes children’s sense of security and belonging.
Relationships of this kind free children to explore the environment and engage in play and learning.
"Experiencing belonging - knowing where and with whom you belong is integral to human existence".
Children belong first to a family, a cultural group, a neighbourhood and a wider community. Belonging acknowledges children’s interdependence with others and the basis of relationships in defining identities. In early childhood, and throughout life, relationships are crucial to a sense of belonging. Belonging is central to being and becoming in that it shapes who children are and who they can become.
Within early childhood, a child’s sense of belonging can relate to how comfortable a child is within the setting, having a sense of trust and security with their educators. When a child has a sense of belonging they are more confident, feel more secure, are encouraged to be more creative and are more likely to explore their world of learning.
Our Lockers
“I keep my belongings in my locker. I keep my locker neat and tidy so my belongings do not get lost.”
Family Photos
A child’s primary source of comfort is their family. When children come in and see their own pictures on the wall, they know that Reddam is a place where they ‘belong’. Children feel safe when they see familiar things around them, and by having pictures of themselves and their families on the wall, not only do we build a sense of security for them in the physical environment, but their sense of self-esteem is also developed.
Hat pockets
Each of the children also has a pocket to place their hat in for outdoor play. The pocket has a photo of each child displayed on it. The children in the Nest are becoming more confident to find their picture and get their hat, ready for outdoor play.
In the Fledglings we approached the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day by promoting a sensory experience with green food. We organised a tray with different green veggies, fruit and herbs, and encouraged the children to touch and smell them. Some children also wanted to taste the fruit or squash them between their hands. We also had a great time dancing to traditional Irish folk songs, sharing a little bit of the background culture from Hayden’s and Harlow’s family.
Continuing the celebration for St. Patrick’s Day, we decorated the classroom in a way to immerse the children in green colour. We learned about the meaning of the shamrocks when celebrating St. Patrick’s as it is the flower that represents Ireland.
In the Mini Atelier, the children used a green capsicum to stamp their own shamrock on the paper, just to document another fun celebration in the Fledglings.
Elmer, the Elephant
This week in the Fledglings, we continued to explore animals, focusing on learning more about elephants. We displayed photos of elephants on the walls, with key points about them, for example, what they like eating and where they live.
At group times, we read the book, “Elmer” by David McKee. In this book, Elmer is a coloured patched elephant and all of his other elephants’ friends laugh at him because he is different. We took this opportunity to talk about kindness, and our feelings. The Fledglings were great at displaying their emotions, showing understanding about happy and sad feelings, making the corresponding facial expression.
In the Mini Atelier, we collaboratively created a coloured elephant, using mosaic paper. The children were very interested in using the glue stick and then exploring its sticky texture.
We are looking forward to seeing the next chapters for the Fledglings’ celebrations in life.
The Early Years Learning Framework V2.0, 2022
Learning Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity. Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.
Learning Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world. Children respond to diversity with respect.
Learning Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing. Children become strong in their social, emotional and mental wellbeing.
Learning Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners. Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another.
Learning Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators. Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts.
This week in Stage Two we celebrated Harmony Week! Harmony Week is about recognising diversity in Australia and celebrating the vast multiculturalism which can be found around the country. Orange is the colour chosen to represent Harmony Day as it signifies social communication and meaningful conversations. Within Reddam we have families from a great number of ethnicities, religions and cultural backgrounds and we think this is something to celebrate!
In the Treefrog class we focused on celebrations around the world! We recently did artworks and learnt more about Holi, St Patrick’s Day and now Harmony Day – Tuesday the 21st March – which is a day for everyone. To signify our coming together, we made handprints. This represents each individual child, all unique, yet part of the community at Reddam.
Handprint crafts allow children to develop independence as they apply the paint themselves, and it gives them confidence as they can carry out the task without needed help. Children can also develop their understanding of spatial awareness as they choose the position of their hand, asking themselves will it fit here? By painting directly onto their hands, children practise a sensory experience as they feel each stroke of the brush. This also draws attention to their fine motor skills and hand grasp as they hold and direct the paintbrush.
Although helpful for development, this activity is also so much fun, as seen in the children’s faces and voices. Remy excitedly said, “I can do it myself!”, Ethan noted, “It’s orange!” and Alfie said, “Feels cold” when the paint touched his hand. As well as the handprint painting activity, we spoke about what Harmony Day means and we read books such as We Are All Kind by P. Crumble and Jonathan Bentley to promote the core ideas of having love, respect and consideration for others while celebrating diversity throughout Harmony Week. By sharing these messages through texts which are accessible and engaging
to children of this age group, the values of Harmony Week will be promoted continually throughout the year in Stage Two.
● Outcome 1.2 - Children develop their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience, and sense of agency.
● Outcome 2.1 - Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation.
● Outcome 2.2 - Children respond to diversity with respect.
● Outcome 5.2 - Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts.
Over the past few weeks, the children in Stage 3 have been learning about each other and our families, through presenting family photos and sharing stories about their lives at group time. The children are beginning to see that everyone is different and are becoming aware of diversity. We have had lots to celebrate over the last couple of weeks, with birthdays, St. Patrick’s Day, and Harmony Week.
St. Patrick’s Day is a day of celebration of Irish culture and heritage and is celebrated all around the world. Traditionally on this day people wear green and attach a pin of shamrocks to their clothes. In Ireland the day is marked by attending parades and Ceili (traditional Irish dances), with family and friends. We explored some traditional Irish stories and songs. In Stage 3E the children learned a song with Emily in the Irish language called ‘Mo Chorp’ which translates to ‘My Body’ .
As part of our St. Patrick’s Day celebration on Friday we made traditional Irish soda bread. Soda bread is a staple food in Irish homes and can be enjoyed at any meal, usually topped with a layer of butter. The children took turns measuring out and mixing the ingredients. For this recipe we used plain flour, wholemeal flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. Before we put our bread in the oven, we cut a cross on the top of the loaf. This is traditionally done to let the fairies out and to protect the household. The children could smell the bread as it cooked. When we took it out of the oven, we let it cool a bit before topping it with some butter and a little bit of jam. We sat around the table to taste it and the children gave it their seal of approval by asking for more!
We also celebrated Harmony Week. Harmony Week is about inclusiveness, respect and belonging for all Australians, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, united by a set of core Australian values. In Stage 3 the children are beginning to recognise differences, so this week we celebrated our differences. In Stage 3D with Fiona the children learnt the song ‘We are Australian’ with AUSLAN. This song symbolises Australia and its people who have come to live here together from all over the world.
Throughout Stage 3 we had conversations about kindness and respect, and the ways in which we can spread kindness in our class, school, and community.
“We can share with our friends.” Ben
“You can give a hug.” Lyla
“You can smile at the people.” Sophie
“We can listen.” Leonie
We made bracelets using orange beads; two round ones and one with the first letter of each child’s name placed in the middle. One of the round beads represented our families and homes, the other represented our friends and school, while the bead with the letter represented us. This bracelet is a reminder to the children of the connections they have in their world. While we made these we recalled our conversations and kindness and respect and how we can show these things to the people in our lives.
The 4R Travelling Bear
One Monday morning, a gorgeous fluffy bear was found in our classroom looking at our Family Photo Album! Teachers Yuliya, Cassandra and the children decided to give this bear a name and to look after him. Some adorable names were given to the bear, like Violet, Muesli Bar, Lost-and-found Teddy, Cookie, Brendan, Husky- Man, Mummy, Bella and Butterfly.
The gorgeous fluffy bear soon became our very loved 4R class mascot. Our class Traveling Teddy bear project is a highly successful way for children to interact, make observations, use cross-curricular language and aspects of social and emotional learning to help scaffold their skills, in an enjoyable way. It is a collaborative project with all children in our class, which helps to encourage their confidence, identity and connections with home, while embedding culture and a respect for diversity with families.
The travelling bear helps children's learning and development by:
- establishing a sense of belonging and of being valued.
- developing a greater understanding of others’ lives and different cultures.
- making connections between home and school.
Each week, the children share a special journey and an array of adventures with our 4R Travelling Bear. Children and their families are encouraged to send in snapshots and on return of the bear at school, children complete a mini presentation of all the adventures that they got up too! Most recently, the Travelling Bear visited Hunter’s house, where he joined a tennis class, enjoyed some sushi and even participated in Little Athletics! Next, it was on to Sarah’s house where her family created a poem of the Travelling Bear’s adventures:
“The Everywhere Bear came to Sarah’s house on Monday, So Mum got the tunnel out and we all had a play
Then Dad thought it would be a hoot
If we took Bear down to Queens Park for a scoot
Bear woke up early in Sarah’s bedroom
And went to the piano to play a tune
Then sat in Ruby’s highchair for something to eat
Before meeting Poppy and Sheila out on the street
Thanks for coming Everywhere Bear we had a great time, I know you’ll have fun now with my friend Valentine.”
Off to Valentine’s house, where the bear enjoyed hairdressers, swimming lessons, a slumber party with all the teddies in Valentine’s room and a lovely walk to Kutti beach in Vaucluse.
We have also been participating in many different learning mediums to mark the exciting arrival of the 4R Travelling Bear. We were inspired to paint our own bears to display in our classroom. Here the children selected their own shades of browns, while practising the correct pincer grasp to control and manipulate the paint brush. Next, we added googly eyes, a jewel for its nose and an expression of our choice such as happy, excited, scared or nervous in red crayon. These are proudly on display in our classroom alongside our ‘Travelling Bear Roster’ that the children can access at any time as they excitedly anticipate its visit to their home.
We also completed a writing task, by posing the question: ‘The Travelling Bear and I will go on adventures to...’ One at a time, I checked in with each child’s pincer grasp as they had a go at writing what adventures they plan to go on with our travelling bear. Here were the children’s responses:
Julian: Show him my bed.
Eliyanah: beach, park, hotel.
Thomas: Real swimming, he can watch.
Valentine: The park and play toys.
Alyssa: A picnic, I love him!
Lucas: Go to a party.
Leanne: Play toys.
Phoebe: Pretend swimming.
Mia: Go to a hotel.
Hunter: The playground and to a picnic.
We look forward to many more adventures with our 4R Travelling Bear, which is encouraging many learning opportunities for children to extend their memory by recalling an event, gain self confidence in retelling their story, learn to listen to others and, most importantly, develop a greater understanding of others’ lives.
Melodies are one of the main components which create a piece of music, and are probably the first thing you’ll recognise when listening to music. Did you know the oldest known melody is around 3,400 years old?
In Stages 3 and 4 this week, we began with a warm up of “Hokey Pokey” learning our lefts from rights. To warm up our voices we sang some voice sounds on ‘ME’ , ‘YOU’ and ‘LA’ over thirds, ascending and descending scales. We used our maracas to shake in time with each note we sang to help improve our timing. With our maracas in hand we went out into the garden for “The Sunflower Song”, and using our simple maths equations we added more farms each time; in Stage 4 this week we added ‘minus’ equations.
Exploring a little storytelling through music, we sang through the song “Going On A Bear Hunt”. Our lead explorer held the binoculars as they led the class marching around the room and singing with call and response, as they clapped in time. I held images of some of the different environments which the explorer called out, and then the rest of the class became that environment. For the tall wavy grass, we stretched our arms high and waved them gently in the wind; and Stage 4 also became the river.
Over the last few weeks we have been using our building blocks to read, build and play back rhythms –and also for the melody for “Who’s That”. So this week we used the building blocks and animal flash cards to read, and build our melody for “Who’s That?”. I used the blocks to build the melody for the children to read and copy using their flash cards. Then we had to read and build different rhythms, before clapping it back. Continuing “Who’s That?”, which we learnt last week, we turned it into a listening exercise. One person stood at the front facing away from the class and had to guess the person I chose singing behind them by the sound of their voice.
In Stage 2 and The Fledglings we tried to learn our lefts from to rights in Hokey Pokey as we held our maracas. We did our weekly scales to warm up our voices and sang through our "ABCs”, starting on the floor and working on shaking in time, before layering it with our stomp and freezing on queue as the tempo increased. We sang through “Apples and Bananas”, working on our vowel shapes – Harlow loved it so much she requested it again... and again.
We also went on a bear hunt, but instead we did various movements to get through the different environments. We stomped through the mud, swam across the river, waded through the grass and crawled into the cave. We also sang with call and response while we did our best to clap in time with the song.
Using our rhythm animals and castanets, we worked on our fine motor movement and clicked out simple rhythms to ‘DOG’ , ‘CAT’ and ‘SPIDER’ – swapping between hands which ensured that they both got a workout!
To end the lesson, we had some free play with our bells and using our beaters to hit them and create pretty ringing sounds.
In The Nest, we opened the lesson with our sing-a-longs of “Open Shut Them” to get our hands moving, and then picked up our maracas to shake through our “ABCs” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”. We love to shake and bounce along to music with a fast tempo. At Frankie’s request, we sang “Wheels on the Bus”. We used our castanets to click to “BINGO” and “Twinkle Twinkle”, trying to strengthen our fingers.
We got everyone up and marching for “Ants Go Marching” and shaking along with our maracas, or clicking with our castanets. Before we ended the lesson with our bells and beaters, we did our best to make them ring.
Dance and Drama
This week in Drama we went on a fairy tale adventure.
Stage 1 and 2 started by looking at pictures in the Old McDonald book. We looked at and discussed the animals they saw and what noises they make. We then played the song, and we all sang, clapped along and did all the different animal noises and actions. I emphasized the Pig and read them the story of the Three Little Pigs. We looked at the materials they built the houses with and acted out the Wolf part. They all loved trying to blow the house down!
In Stages 3 and 4 the children began by reading the story, followed by discussing who the characters are in the story, the main ideas, and the sequence of the story.
Next, the children explored various versions of the story, introducing a strong female character, Mrs. Hood, her daughter, Little Red, and a wealthy countess, who rented them their cottage. This gave them the opportunity to explore moral dilemmas and issues to do with status as well as relationships –sophisticated concepts for young children.
I then went into role (I dressed up and put on an apron and hat) and became Mrs. Hood, inviting all the children to adopt a collective role and imagine they were Little Red. She asked carefully phrased questions to encourage thoughtful responses: What do you think I should do? Should I allow Little Red to go in the forest alone to visit her grandmother? This stimulated a lot of discussion among the children.’
Next, the children planned their journey through the forest and imagined the sounds they might hear. Again, I prompted with questions: If trees could talk, what might they say? The children thought they would echo what Little Red was thinking, whispering phrases like ‘Don’t stray off the path, don’t stray off the path!” Is this the right way? (Similar to a sound scape)
For the final part of the lesson, we played a quick game of ‘What time is it Mr. Wolf?’ I also asked one child to put on the piece of red material, while the rest became the spiky bushes that Little Red had to push past. The teacher built up the tension: Can you hear footsteps? Two red eyes appear out of the darkness! What do you think happens next? The children were encouraged to tell their own endings. They loved the excitement of the drama, and it had a positive impact on their understanding of the story.
This week in Physical Education in Stage 3 and 4 we introduced our first major game – basketball.
Using size 3 basketballs allows the early learners to gain and grow in confidence. as they learn how to catch, pass and bounce the balls without fear. The main focus across the next two weeks will be dribbling and ball handling skills.
In order for the classes to achieve these outcomes, the focus and goals we are working towards are the following:
● Skill: I will dribble a basketball continuously with 1 hand.
● Cognitive: I will tell a friend what continuous means.
● Fitness: I will actively participate in PE.
● Personal & Social Responsibility: I will follow all directions and use equipment in a safe manner.
Our first couple of games this week were called:
Bubble Breakers
Dribble Fitness
Rob the nest
As always, the classes were great listeners and enthusiasm was evident across both stages. We look forward to increasing our basketball skills and knowledge across the next few weeks.
