We want to wish our duckling’s friend Tristan a happy 2nd birthday and say goodbye to our educator Mariam from duckling’s room as sharni joined us from 1st of July. We can still see Mariam working in kinder room or at family grouping time.
Many parents have noticed we have been working on changing the room around at the moment because many children have been engaged in several sensory and imaginative experiences. Due to the children’s interests of animals & insects we set up the insects and snakes area.
In July, we set up the play dough area, educators have noticed that Liam, Amelia, Max and many children liked to use play dough as cooking resource for pizza, cookies. Educators discussed the children’s interests of cooking to join the two areas for one home corner area and they can use the play dough for cooking lunch, dinner.
Many children enjoyed cooking and put what the children made from the play dough they put it in the oven and they bought to us for tasting. One day, Liam bought the pizza and he said to us “Wait, it is hot! Blow it!” We enjoyed watching them expand their imagination through play.
We also have moved the children’s book corner and portfolios to create a small homely quiet retreat area with our new couch and dresser for children and parents to use, we use this area a lot for large and small group times and to sit with children who want to look at their portfolios. Please feel free to use this area at any time.
The children are still enjoying the book and CD of the very hungry caterpillar by Eric Karl and we have been singing 5 cheeky moneys swinging in a tree, the wheels on the bus, old McDonald.
Recently we have been very lucky to have the opportunity to keep two more room pets. We now have two baby guinea pigs, little girls called Bella and Scarlet. The children are able to help look after our new pets by collecting food for them in the kinder yards garden, socialising with them by having turns holding and patting them. Our guinea pig friends are quite vocal at times and when they squeal almost immediately one of the duckling’s children go rushing over to the hutch to see what’s wrong, this shows us that the children are slowly learning about nurturing and empathy towards animals.
The children have been introduced to water colour paints as a variety of art medium to experiment and use. The concept of dipping a brush in water then rubbing the brush on a colour pallet was very foreign to the children, however with educators help and role modelling most of the children are competent in how to use this paint method.
On that note of art, we have begun to see more and more advanced stages of art. Amelia P is able to write the letter “A”, Gabby is able to identify her name, several of the children are able to label and give meaning to their artistic creations and more and more circular shapes are being drawn on paper which are the foundations of how children learn to draw people. Well done Duckling’s!
We also like to develop our ducking’s children’s language and literature to bring some books from home and share it in the group time with us. It will help the children to improve their self –help skill, looking after their belonging, getting independent. Please come and discuss with the educators which day you would like to bring the book.
Thank you.
Heidi, Jenny and Sharni