What a wonderful start to the new year we have had. Throughout January, we started transitions with the Kindy Koorlongka children, who were moving to pre-primary and Minasan. Kodomo children had settling visits into Koorlongka, we had some children moving into Koorlongka from Pikanini two, and we had 8 new children to the centre.

School Holidays:

We started the year with the January school holidays and had fun-themed days. The popular days were Water Play Day, Messy Play and Science Day. This allowed the children to get to know the new room and experience lots of fun and excitement.

News:

To get to know the new children better, we encouraged them to bring in something special from home that means something to them or something they are interested in. We had children bringing in photographs of favourite places, sensory toys, favourite books, dolls, science tricks etc. Many children brought in news and confidently stood up in front of the class to share their news. This developed their confidence in speaking and listening to others. We also learnt about questioning.

First day in Kindy/ Koorlongka:

The start of Kindy is a big transition in a child’s life. They are starting a new school part-time, part-time in a new room (Koorlongka) at childcare, and some even start in Minasan (before and after school care). In Koorlongka, we try to ease the anxiety by asking them to reflect on their first day at kindy or Koorlongka. Ask them to draw a picture of a moment and the teachers would write about it. We also ask them to reflect on how they felt throughout the day. The children enjoyed this process and felt calm in their reflections.

Transition people:

Another activity we do to ease the transition is everyone decorating a paper person with their face on it. We have photos of the children from last year playing in Koorlongka and photos of their visit to SCBC Kindy classrooms. The children then drew pictures of their houses in the other two rooms.

The children then move their paper person to the room that they will be in for the day. This also allows children to see where their friends that they made last year in Kodomo are for the day. Some may be in Koorlongka, some may be at school, and some may be at home for the day. This process helped ease the anxiety about where they were in the day, which friends would be with them and where their other friends were.

Kiddo Program: Balance

Kiddo is our physical literacy program, which teaches fundamental movement skills through fun games. This term we have been working on our balance skills. We have improved our ability to hold a balance on one leg for longer and hold different tricky balance poses. Our balance has improved during our gymnastic sessions as we move along the beams without holding the teacher’s hand. We put our balance skills to the test when we went to nature play. This was a challenge to balance on the ropes and logs.

Syllables:

Syllables in a skill we start to teach every year. This year, the children used stickees on a discovery table to help practise this skill on their own. They would choose a stickee, tap out the syllables and then place it on the correct number/picture prompt. The children loved the stickees and talked about what their favourite fruit or vegetable was. We also used the Diana Rigg syllable time resources to teach the children the skill at mat times. 

Writing and recognising the letters in our name:

This term we have focused a lot on writing the pre-writing shapes and starting to trace and write the letters in our name. We have done this in many ways, like writing on whiteboard tables and whiteboard sheets, in the sand, with playdough, painting over our names, magic writing with white crayons and water paint, and in the air with dancing ribbons. We also did lots of different activities with finding and ordering the letters in our name. Like finding the right lettered blocks, cutting out letters and glueing them in the right order.

Sorting: More/less and the same:

The children have become great sorters. We have been learning how to sort collections of items in different ways. Learning to recognise similarities and differences in objects. Once the groups are made, we extend their learning by thinking about which group has more objects, or less objects and if there are any groups that have the same amount of objects.

Harmony Week:

For Harmony Week, we had costumes from different parts of the world and pretend food to role-play with. The children enjoyed dressing up and guessing which country they came from. The children also enjoyed guessing the different pretend food and sharing if they have had it before. We also did some real cooking from the cultures we are from and learnt some dancing or games. We made Bryndzove Halusky (potato dumplings) from Slovakia and learnt Slovakia folk dancing, Trifle from the UK and learnt hopscotch, pancakes with Canadian maple syrup from Canada, goody, goody gumdrop ice cream from New Zealand and learnt poi-poi dancing and African porridge with meats, cheese and veggies from South Africa, but many African cultures have a maize meal porridge in their cooking. We also played some fun children’s games from African countries.  

Emergency services:

The children have shown a great interest in the emergency services. We started off with learning about the police force. We set up a police station. We practised independently dressing ourselves in the police costumes. We also practised our writing skills by making pretend police tickets for our teddies and teachers. We enjoyed adding to the play area by making police cars. Here, we researched what a WA police car looks like and identified all the parts we needed to add to our cars. We also enjoyed making our own police badges and learnt about the different ranks in the police force. Finally, we showed an interest in our fingerprints and studied our unique patterns. We learnt how the police collect fingerprints at a crime scene. We are hoping to get a visit from some local police officers to extend our learning.

Our next interest is in the paramedics, doctors and nurses. We are going to change our dramatic play area into a hospital. We are excited to have paramedics and an ambulance coming to visit the children on Tuesday, 8th, April.

Next term we will learn about the firefighters and hope to have a visit from a local fire station.

Mrs Ralph
Koorlongka (Kindy)Teacher