The Pikanini 2 children who moved up to Kodomo this year have embraced the new learning skills and the structure of the Kodomo room. They have shown confidence in their abilities by pouring their own water, cleaning their placemats, and scraping the food from their plates into the bin. A challenging skill this year for them is to wait before they do the above. The cleaning is done by calling one table at a time, working collectively with the Koorlongka room to promote the easy transition to Koorlongka next year.
They have become used to the sound of the bell, and most are responding to it, stopping what they are doing, keeping quiet and focusing on the educators. We have worked hard on mat time, and they are responding to “criss-cross apple sauce (crossing their legs) and singing:
“Hammer, hammer, hammer
Shake, shake, shake,
Roll, roll, roll,
Shhh, shhh, shhh,
They sing this song with so much enthusiasm, and most of them sit quietly and focus on our mat session afterwards.
Our Orange Christian program is an interactive activity on the iPad where the children listen to a beautiful bible message and sing songs with different movements. The educator interacts with the children by asking questions about the message and explaining if they do not understand. One of the themes for the Orange Program was “Jesus loves me”, and an educator provided red hearts. The children pasted their photo inside, and they all took it home to their families.
The children also developed their fine motor, creative, cognitive and language skills by copying zig-zag lines and the first letter of their name, big pop-sickles, and fish, painting and cutting sun and rainbow strings, with the assistance of the educators. Their knowledge of colour, cutting and pencil grip skills are evaluated, and their milestones are documented. All their artwork is displayed in the room for a few days before it gets filed in their art filing system and replaced by new art.
We had an exciting hospital week where the children lived out their imagination skills by being doctors, nurses, and patients. We created a reception area by turning our kitchen unit around and pasting a big red cross on the front. There were bandages, band-aids, and wipes available. The children were dressed in doctor’s jackets, wearing protective hair nets with stethoscopes around their necks and glasses. They took the “patients” temperatures and wrapped bandages around their legs and arms. They even had tiny clipboards with their patient’s information on little cards. There were X-rays on the wall, and the children did very interesting artwork with the educator scaffolding their learning, creating an X-ray hand with white paint for the hand on black paper and earbuds as the bones. We are extending this activity by doing the different parts of our body. The educators are reading from very interesting books with a lot of pictures to the children and are interacting with the children by asking where the body parts are and what their functions are. The educator did an interactive poster with the children, marking all the body parts. They read about what the most important organs are and that some people need assistance with their body parts, e.g., wearing glasses because their eyes need the help, or being in a wheelchair because their legs do not work properly. The children developed so many skills through doing this. Their creative thinking was challenged, and communication with the educators was plenty, so their language skills were developed and extended. We also have a set of teeth that we will be using to extend on how to brush your teeth and the importance of it.
One of our most exciting sensory activities was when an educator encouraged the children to build a river in the sandpit made of foil and branches. The children relished in this activity, made dams, and drove the cars and trucks through it. They were all wet but enjoyed the sensory play and being creative.
One of the educators noticed that we had a pomegranate tree in our outside area and plucked a few. The educator opened it up for the children to explore. The children revelled in this activity, and it has become a weekly activity that the children implemented.
We have not been able to visit the nature play area behind our fence because the UV has been very high the last couple of weeks. As soon as the UV drops to acceptable levels, we will definitely visit this area.
We celebrated Ocean Week by providing the children with blank fish that they had to cut out on lines to create a fish. They decorated it with paint and glitter, and the educators spoke to them about keeping our ocean clean and safe for the sea animals and the beaches safe for people and the bird life.
We had water play on the 8th of March, where we created an ocean with blue spaghetti, sand sticks and stones. We added sea animals and creatures, and the children explored the ocean with their creative thinking fine motor skills and by talking to them about sea life, the educators assisted them with knowledge and new vocabulary.
We also had a set-up with sea animals on the table, with material that represented the ocean. The children enjoyed exploring with all the animals and were keen to share their knowledge with each other and the educators.
Mrs Van Niekerk
Kodomo Curriculum Room Leader
