WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING IN CHILDCARE THIS TERM

Educators Day

Early Childhood Educators’ Day: A time to say ‘thank you’ On Wednesday, 2nd September, here at SCBC Childcare Centre we hosted a special morning tea and a delicious cooked lunch thanking all our Educators, staff, and the leadership team for all their remarkable talent, creativity, dedication, and hard work.

2020 has been a very unique year for all communities. Many families have been affected by the pandemic in some way or the other, be it financially or with disruption to our routines and lifestyle.

Our team of 42 staff members are the heart and heroes of our service and this year, they’ve truly stepped it up to superhero status, giving their all to ensure that the children in our care have minimum disruption to their routines. Staff received a personalized gift as well as a certificate of appreciation.  Thank you to all of the families who took the time to sign the thank you cards and wished our team a wonderful day. We know that service excellence is where it all begins.  Our dedicated and passionate staff are committed to continually giving careful attention to every task and every relationship during your child’s educational journey with us.

We celebrate Educators day every year, but this year it was extra special. It was a pleasure to host a celebration day for our Educators with a small message…. “For being the Heart and Soul of everything we do…. Merci Beaucoup”.

Language & Literacy Development – Over 3 year olds

Pre-Kindy

In our Pre-kindy class, Ms Holly uses different mediums such as video recording, music, and singing as a tool for developing knowledge of self, language, and confidence. This approach aims to teach children at an early age to experiment with different musical instruments and media tools. In the Pre-kindy room, the Educators use singing as an intentional approach to verbally communicate with their children and foster children to become comfortable with their own voice.  

As a part of the programming, the children sent out a special video message to their special people for Father’s Day on EDUCA, our communication platform. The experience was well received by parents, as we captured their beautiful messages for families from their children. However, the learning outcomes achieved and learning extension possibilities from a simple experience were many.

Nurturing and responsive learning environments are important for the development of strong speech and language skills (Harrison & McLeod, 2010). This includes frequent opportunities for children to share attention with adults, interact, and hear language for a variety of different purposes.

In line with Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory and Bruner’s (1986) concept of ‘scaffolding’, children learn through interactions with more knowledgeable others.

Kindergarten

Utilising Diana Rigg resources, the Kindy children are working through the letters of SATPIN. The Educators encourage conversation and round table discussions amongst their peers using pictures from magazines and matching them to the letter they start with and cut them out. From there,  learning extends to letter formation. Encouraging children to write their own names then looking for the SATPIN letters in their own work.

The children continue their work on developing positional words which are prepositions that describe a noun’s position relative to another noun. Mrs Ralph and her team have focused on the importance of teaching students positional words because they can help to expand their vocabulary, promote their understanding of grammar and math.

Going on a bear hunt around the Centre, traveling on top, under, behind, in front, inside, between, next to around, and over things are all part of the intentional teaching.  When Children use their bodies in the learning process, it can have a big effect, even if it seems silly or unconnected to the learning goal at hand. Researchers have found that when students use their bodies while doing mathematical storytelling, it changes the way they think about math. Learning and developing positional words provides the early foundation and development of knowledge for measurement and geometry.

Indigenous Six Seasons Art Collaboration – Whole Centre Project

In the southwest of Australia, the Nygoongar seasonal calendar includes six different seasons in a yearly cycle. These are Birak, Bunuru, Djeran, Makuru, Djilba, and Kambarang. Each of the six seasons represents and explains the seasonal changes we see annually. This six-season calendar is significant to Nyoongar people, as it is a guide to what nature is doing at every stage of the year, as well as understanding respect for the land concerning plant and animal fertility cycles and land and animal preservation.

In June, we entered into the Makuru Season. Makuru sees the coldest and wettest time of the year come into full swing. Traditionally, this was a good time of the year for Indigenous communities to move back inland from the coast as the winds turned to the west and south bringing the cold weather, rains, and occasionally snow on the peaks of the Stirling and Porongurup Ranges.

Makuru is also a time for many animals to be pairing up in preparation for breeding in the coming season. If you look carefully, you might now see pairs of ‘Wardongs’ (ravens) flying together. You also notice these pairs not making the usual ‘ark ark arrrrrk’ that these birds are well known for when flying solo.

Flowers that will start to emerge include the blues and purples of the Blueberry Lilly (Dianella revoluta) and the Purple Flags (Patersonia occidentalis). As the season comes to a close, you should also start to notice the white flowers of the weeping peppermint (Agonis flexuosa) as the blues begin to make way for the white and cream flowers of Djilba.

Infusing indigenous cultural competency into the curriculum is important to our team. By using the knowledge that is available to us, our Educators provide meaningful provocations that acknowledge the Nyoongar people’s six-seasons and recognising the changes that take place in our environment.

In our Atelier (Studio), Corey Marwick, our Atelierista was intentional with his provocations, providing as much information as possible about Makuru and allowing the children to express their thoughts and feelings, with the materials provided. The project is a collaboration of all ages, from our babies to our kindergarten. What unfolded was an exciting prelude of creative opportunity, divergent thinking, which in turn lead to innovative thinking.

As Corey has a degree in Visual arts, he was able to combine the works of the children in a digital format for Canvas printing which is displayed in the Centre. The Art Piece is fantastic. As you can see, although the provocations provided pictures of Ravens, trees, and fauna, how the children interpreted those images and what they created was very unique. This is their representation of the “Makuru Season” – and we think it is brilliant!

We have used this opportunity to embrace Djilba season. A time to look for the yellow and cream flowers starting on mass. Again, it has been a whole centre collaboration including our Community Playgroup. At the end of September, we will see another Art piece pulled together to be displayed in the Centre for all to see. 

Studio

The Studio continues to be a favourite place to visit for both staff and students. It is a continually evolving space for creativity. Take a look at the invitations our children get to experience in a programming cycle.

Bambini Invitations, Provocations and Extension (6 – 18 months)

  • Clay construction, (clay pieces, natural materials, straws, an extension from our reef making activity from the past two weeks, open-ended play/creation with these materials)
  • Crepe paper sensory play; tearing, scrunching, throwing, (sticky contact area on the wall for them to throw the paper at), based on current Bambini program section on Visual Stimulus, (EYLF  4.1, 4.2)
  • Create contact and cellophane boards to shine light through onto the walls or place on the overhead projector, colour mixing and sensory exploration, (EYLF 4.1, 4.2)
  • Add natural materials, (sticks, leaves, etc.), to construction play/vehicles
  • Rainbow soap foam sensory play, (2 tablespoons of dishwashing liquid, 1/4 cup water, colouring; made in batches and added to a large tray), (EYLF 4.1)


Pikanini Invitations, Provocations and Extension (18 months – 3 years)

  • Continued use of the Goldilocks house for role play/creative play and continuation of use of the blank house for the children to draw on themselves, (probably the older children will do the drawing and the Pikanini’s can role play with the characters that the older children invent, (extended learning experience). EYLF 5.1, 5.3
  • Thumb and fingerprint art, attempt to make Hungry Caterpillars with our fingerprints, also free reign to create with this medium.
  • Making a road for our construction vehicles, (extended learning – use strips of card, make ramps/hills, etc.)
  • Continued work on gluing materials to our large and small goanna sculptures depending on children’s interest in this
  • Create foods that the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate in the story, (one apple, two pears, three plums), etc. make a basic counting chart with these for the Pikanini room to use (also pass on to them the large caterpillar we made). EYLF 5.2, 5.4
  • Tea party creative play with a teapot, cups, plates, and sprinkles, carried over from last week, using a funnel to collect sprinkles from tray once used to be used again, (creative play and hand-eye coordination development).
  • Decorating paper plate puppets and using them for role/dramatic play; voicing them, making them interact.
  • Continued work on cutting and pasting using caterpillar images.

Pre-Kindy Invitations, Provocations and Extension

  • Continue use of dream and thought bubble drawing prompt sheets, have only had a chance to use these once and the conversation that rose from it was very interesting/creative, (will also make Goldilocks mashup cutting and pasting activity available for children to use for other creative ends as they did last week; some selecting characters to paste to Goldilocks image and other children pasting/adding these to their own artworks).
  • Continue use of armature wire and buttons with plasticine, some great creations have risen from this, and lots of creative play so it seems a good idea to continue this while the children are interested.
  • Continued work with hammer, nails, and card, also wood for any children interested, will add lights to hammer and nail set up and continue to show the children how to make interesting light effects by shining light through holes they’ve created with hammer and nails
  • Printed learning journeys of children’s studio activities made available to the children for discussion and reflection, (based on current Kodomo Program August “Photo of the week”), recording what children say about what they’ve been doing using this as a springboard for further activities and ideas. EYLF 3.1, 5.1, 5.2, (visual text). Extended Learning.
  • Construction play with vehicles, recycled resources, and natural materials.
  • Thumb and finger print art.
  • Drawing portraits of friends through Perspex sheet. EYLF 3.1, 5.1 – We could also attempt using whiteboard markers on the windows to trace the outside world. We could also place photos, (have the children take portrait photos of each other for this purpose), of our friends/the Kodomo children under large Perspex boards for tracing., (carried over from last two weeks, not yet attempted)
  • Based on the current Kodomo program section on last names giving children name badges as they come into the studio, writing their names with them, (using sticker sheets), encourage them to use each other’s last names when communicating, maybe use “Mr” and “Mrs”… with each other for fun/laughs.

Koorlongka Invitations, Provocations and Extension

  • Create a sequence map of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”, (house, river, mud, forest, snowstorm, cave), cotton wool snowstorm, coloured sand mud, pop stick and paper trees, paper plate bear, and black background cave. EYLF 5.2
  • Role plays interview scenarios using a real microphone, children to play characters from stories, maybe interview the cardboard characters form the Goldilocks house as they are playing, demonstrate and then hand on to the children to do as a creative play activity. Based on Koorlongka’s daily News Reporter activity where a child relates what happened in their day to the class, (extended learning), EYLF 5.1
  • ”One Way Jesus” pop stick art, creating an arrow and a cross; decorate/paint, (based on children learning this song in their class). EYLF 5.2, 5.4
  • Continued work on painting/decorating/collage over our Wattle Bird sculpture for part of our Djilba, (the current Nyoongar season we are in, Winter moving into spring), display.
  • Make traceable laminated alphabet available with pegs between our two drying racks for children to peg up words real or invented. EYLF 5.4
  • Continued work with hammer, nails, and card, also wood for any children interested, will add lights to hammer and nail set up and continue to show the children how to make interesting light effects by shining light through holes they’ve created with hammer and nails
  • Contact Perspex to create colour window/add to light play section.
  • Use the studio laptop to look up reference images of things the children would like to draw.

How incredibly blessed we are to be able to provide such wonderful opportunities to our children and to also work with a team of dedicated educators. We are exceedingly grateful for our work environment, our families, our children, and our college community. We praise the Lord daily for his creations, for providing the wonders around us that enrich our lives and we look forward to all of the possibilities for that are ahead of us.