This term has been busy, with many fun events and learning opportunities.

July School Holidays

The school holidays were a fun break from schoolwork and a time to build friendships with teachers and peers. We had a much-loved movie and pyjama day with hot chocolate and popcorn. Other highlights were the Disco Day, Messy Play, box construction, etc. We had a pet’s day where the teachers and some children brought in pets from home. We had some birds and rabbits visit for the day. The children enjoyed Green Thumbs Day and Be a Farmer Day, where we learnt where some of our food comes from and planted some seeds. This interest inspires our theme for the term.

Farm

This term, we explored where our food comes from. We set up our dramatic play area as a farm with a pretend fruit tree and vegetable crop. We placed pretend fruits and vegetables either in the tree or attached to green pipe cleaners and leaves or under pretend soil, depending on where they grew. We also had animal puppets and made our own cardboard cows that we pretended to milk by squeezing milk out of gloves. We learnt about dairy farms and watched videos on how they milk the cows and make cheese, yoghurt and butter. We even made our own butter by whipping cream, squeezing out the buttermilk and setting it in the fridge. On the same day, we used the buttermilk to make pancakes and had them for afternoon tea with our own butter spread on top. We also went on a fruit discovery trip where we got lots of different fruits from the shops. We tried them all and chose our favourite ones to blend up with yoghurt and milk to make a healthy smoothie to go with lunch. Finally, we had a herb discovery where we explored the herbs growing in the garden. We picked them, smelt them, and discussed what foods they would taste best with. We compared them to some shop-bought herbs. For National Aboriginal and Islanders Day, we chose the best herbs to complement the damper and made some for-afternoon tea. We have got some awesome chefs in the making.

Pyjama Day

We participated in Pyjama Day for the National Pyjama Foundation, which raised money for kids in foster care. We did this over two days so that both Kindy groups had the opportunity to join in. We enjoy a relaxing day, watching educational movies and enjoying hot chocolate and popcorn.

Resilience Project (gratitude and empathy)

This term, we have been learning about gratitude and empathy for the resilience project. The children have been on gratitude walks, where we have been around the centre, taking photos of what we are grateful for. These included teachers, toys, food, art supplies, etc. We displayed the photos on our door in the room. We have also learnt from Martin Heppel (the funny man, as the children refer to him) about empathy, which means learning how others feel. We role-played different scenarios and discussed how everyone felt about the scenario and what we could do to help.

Initial sounds

This term we have been learning about the initial sounds in words. We have been making letter posters where we cut out pictures from catalogues that start with a certain letter. We have also been playing matching games and thinking of funny descriptive words that start with the same letter as our name.

Positional Words

We have been playing a fun game called Timmy’s Clues in Koorlongka that teaches us about positional words. Each fortnight, we have three focus words. Paw prints are hidden around the room based on the focus words, for example, under something, next to something, on top of something, etc. What the paw print is on, under, next to, etc, are clues to help us work out Timmy’s question for the day. Like, what is his favourite colour? The children have been loving going on a hunt for the clues and come in excited each day, wondering where they would be. We also played Follow the Leader, which is another fun game that teaches these skills.

Weighing

The children have had fun exploring scales and measuring the weight of things. They have been using comparison scales and numerical scales. We have also been using these scales in our cooking experiences to give the children real-life connections to their learning.

Dental Week

We had a busy month of August, starting off with Dental Week. In this week we learnt about how to take care of our teeth and about what foods are healthy and good for our healthy and which are not. We did some experiments showing what could happen to your teeth if you had too many unhealthy foods and didn’t brush them away. We did this by putting eggs into different liquids and seeing the effects they had on the eggshells (which are like our teeth) over a week. We found that coffee and coke stain your teeth, Vinegar and orange juice eat away at your teeth, and milk is good for your teeth. The one in the vinegar completely ate away the shell. We also did an experiment on how plaque grows on your teeth when you don’t brush them and have lots of sugar. We saw how much yeast grew in sugary water compared to just water. This week, we role-played dentists and pretended to brush germs away from our teeth.

Science Week

The next week in our busy August was Science Week. Each day, we had different themed experiments. On Monday, we explored our tastes and smells by going on a fruit and herb discovery. On Tuesday, we made different rocket ships. One out of balloons, and we raced them along straws on a string. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjU1IAgRcQg . The other was made by mixing bicarb soda and vinegar in a bottle, which had the bottle shoot into the air. On Wednesday, we explored magnets. We went on a hunt around the centre, finding things that were magnetic. We also explored how magnets repeal when two positives or two negatives are together and how they attract when the opposites are together. On Thursday, we explored the weather. We did the water cycle and rain experiments, made a tornado in a jar, and made lightning and snow. Finally, on Friday, we learnt about colours. We mixed water colours in test tubes and mixed paint to make the colour wheel. We also did the magic milk experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq1_fVcji4g

Book Week

The last week of August was our Book Week. This was a wonderful week of exploration into literature. Many children dressed up in characters from their favourite books and brought in these books from home for the teachers to read. We also had interactive story recall stations of well-known books like Wombat Stew, The Gruffalo, Three Little Pigs Were Going on a Bear Hunt and The Hungry Caterpillar. Children also painted scenes from their favourite stories or created their own.

Mrs Ralph
Koorlongka (Kindy) Teacher