What a great couple of weeks we have had. The children have built their knowledge and understanding about Reconciliation week and the importance of learning and respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture. We have started to learn more about the importance of recycling, reusing and reducing our rubbish and the children have been able to engage in a box construction project.
Box construction Project
The last couple of weeks Amber has been spending one on one time with each child to help them with their box construction project. Our goal for this experience was to help extend the children’s ideas and understanding of what they could make from the craft resources that are available at the collage table. Each child was asked to decide on something to create using the cardboard boxes and other craft resources. With the help of Amber, the children were able to extend and explore their imagination and creativity and build their ideas and wow, I hope you all were very impressed with what your child had created as we were. We had many robots, boats, pizza ovens, caterpillars and butterflies.
During this experience the children were able to extend and build their;
- creativity and imagination skills
- problem solving skills
- Fine motor skills- scissor skills and pencil grip
- coordination skills
- manipulating and using craft tools- Sticky tape and glue
- extending their ideas and expressing themselves through their art
- extending shape and colour knowledge
- planning skills
- social and communication skills
EYLF- identity, community, wellbeing, learning, communication
Reconciliation week
Last week we acknowledged Reconciliation week through embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture through the learning play experiences that were set up in the room as well as engaging in conversations, watching ‘Walking together’ play school episode about Reconciliation week and reading a book called ‘Respect’ written by Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson.
It is very important that in our curriculum we provide opportunities for the children to learn and develop an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and history, this isn’t just during Reconciliation week or Naidoc week we do try and embed the history through out our weekly programs and discussions with the children.
How have we embedded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander into the program?
*The last couple of weeks we have had a camping area set up with sleeping bags, a fire, a bbq and bbq food as well as a couple of didgeridoos, Waa the crow and Bunjil the eagle puppets and the ‘Welcome to country’ book written by Aunty Joy Murphy and Lisa Kennedy in the play space for the children to read. The children were pretending to play the didgeridoos which extended the play by adding more Aboriginal musical instruments and listening to a man playing the didgeridoo on the big screen.
The camping area has now turned into a hospital corner which has also been set up with paper bark for the children to use as bandages, nature items and wooden fruit for the children to pretend to be bush medicine as well as with all the other equipment that you would usually see in a hospital like gowns, thermometers, stethoscopes and other doctor equipment.
*We have also been learning about recycling, reusing and reducing rubbish to care for our earth. During our discussions we have been learning more about how the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were great at reusing and using the environment around them to build things and how much they cared for their environment.
*Jaime (student teacher) organised a bark painting experience where the children were able to use natural colours to paint on a natural material. The children enjoyed painting on the bark.
*Displaying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flags in the room
*Providing incidental learning experiences like puzzles and imagination areas with Indigenous resources.
EYLF-Identity, community, wellbeing, Learning, communication
Other Areas of interest inside
- Construction- Dinosaur Duplo and marble run
- The children were able to help Jaime on Friday cook Damper and it was very delicious with butter and Jam
- The pet wash turned into a baby wash
- blow painting
- Painting and pasting nature materials at the Easel
- Farm animal imaginative area
- play dough with trashies and bins.
Areas of interest Outside
- Scavenger hunt- looking for particular items and colours around the yard
- Obstacle course
- We changed the doll area to SES rescue head quarters. The children enjoyed dressing up and rescuing and helping their community.
- trucks in the sand pit
- the cubby house in the sand pit turned into a ice cream shop. Yummy chocolate ice cream was being made.
- Snake imaginative table
Group time
- What’s the time Mr Wolf- building the children counting skills
- The Hokey Pokey – we also learnt the Aboriginal Language for hand, foot and bottom
- We sorted our rubbish and recycling bin to make sure we were putting our rubbish in the correct bin. We spoke a little bit about the recycling symbol and what that meant.
- Yoga Friday- Parsnip the cat
- Show n tell- Thank you to Corben, Tay, Marley, Pascale, Poppy F, Fox and Chet for sharing their show n tell with us last week.
We also said goodbye to Jaime. It was Jaime’s last day with us on Friday, the children are going to miss her. The children helped make a good luck card and we gave it to her at the end of the session on Friday
Last weeks photos – https://photos.app.goo.gl/4etJh8SENHJat2ig8
Happy Birthday to the three special girls who got to share their birthdays together, Ivie, Saila and Pascale.
What’s happening next?
- World environment day 5th of June and world ocean day 8th of June- we will continue exploring how we can care for our country and start exploring more about caring for the ocean.
- Hospital dramatic area
- New puzzles have been added
- Painting with cotton buds on the easel
- Group time- Music and movement experiences, playing with musical instruments, Reading the book ‘Duffy’s lucky escape.’
- Outside- Weather dependent-
- Obstacle course
- Farm duplo
- SES head quarters.