volume 1 issue 16 friday the 7th of june 2013 › pdf › news2013 › els ›...

Reddam House Early Learning School Newsletter Volume 1 Issue 16 Friday the 7th of June 2013

IN THIS ISSUE : Virginia’s Message Dates for your Diary Library News News From the Rooms Edible Magic Dancearama Mighty Mites

Volume 1 Issue 16 Friday the 7th of June 2013

Being Healthy, Safe and Well Reflective practice is the key to making Reddam a wonderful school. We are constantly thinking about our practices and how we can promote a healthy, safe and well community (children, staff and families). Throughout all the stages we support and encourage the chil-dren to be physically active, emotionally literate, socially competent, resilient and mindful. We are fortunate in having Corby Sue (Edible Magic), Laura (Dancerama), Coach Tam (Mighty Mites) and Tom (Stage 4 sport) assist us in being a healthy, safe and well community. Over the last six years our teachers, Debbie Zerbst and Deanne Jacobs have been the driving forces behind our Grace and Courtesy and Mindfulness Programmes. These programmes assist the children to develop the social and emotional skills and strategies for a healthy and happy life within and beyond school. By supporting our practices, parents can help their children to be healthy, safe and well. Our current focus is:

Encouraging independence and resilience Supporting children’s toileting and hand washing practices Encouraging children to use cough etiquette Keeping children home when they are unwell Supporting the school rules eg. walking up & down stairs Giving Back Fun and Success Thank you to all the families who participated in our fund raising for Cystic Fibrosis NSW. We raised $250 from our gold coin drive and as our photos show had a great deal of fun in the process. Vivid Festival The Vivid Festival has lit up Sydney Harbour and is quite remarkable. I urge you all to take a stroll with your children and marvel at the wonder of light. Have a wonderful winter long weekend with your children. See if you can find dragon breath!!!! Virginia Aghan Head of Early Learning

‘ID: #5179 ‘

I am urgently looking for a family to love and cherish, call 02 9606 6118.

Located at Renbury Farm. http://www.renbury.com.au/

http://www.renbury.com.au/


Monday 10th June School closed – Queens Birthday Friday 21st June Term 2 ends Monday 24th June Vacation Care commences Friday 12th July Vacation Care ends Monday 15th July School Closed - All staff Seminar Tuesday 16th July Term 3 Students K-12/ELS Commences

Page 1 Virginia’s Message Page 2 Dates for your Diary/Library News Page 3 Stage 1 Page 4 Stage 1: Photo Gallery Page 5 Stage 1: Photo Gallery Continued... Page 6 Stage 2a Page 7 Stage 2a: Photo Gallery Page 8 Stage 2b Page 9 Stage 2b: Photo Gallery Page 10 Stage 3 Page 11 Stage 3: Photo Gallery Page 12 Stage 4 Page 13 Stage 4: Photo Gallery Page 14 Dancearama Page 15 Mighty Mites Page 16: Edible Magic: Photo Gallery

Contents

Library News

Books never lose their universal appeal with our ELS children, especially those stories filled with rhyme and rhythm. The sounds scatter through the air and challenge our littlest learners to try to repeat the sounds. Whether they are able to repeat the sounds or not pales into insignificance as compared with their effort to do so. I often break long words down and only after 2 or 3 times, the children manage challenging pronunciations. Our Stage 2 learners mastered ‘centipede’ and ‘clickety-clack’ from Underground Dance. Even more delightful were the Stage 1 children who attempted ‘whoosh’ and ‘elephant’ from The Bad-Tempered Ladybird. The Stage 3 children had no trouble saying ‘echidna’ but were a little more challenged with ‘platypus’ and the Stage 4 children are always keen to display their advanced language skills by explaining to me that some ani-mals are ‘nocturnal’ and that worker bees are called ‘drones’!

Happy reading, Michelle Stanford

Dates for your Diary


In Stage 1 the children are increasing responsibility for their own health and physical wellbeing. The children combine gross and fine motor movement and balance to achieve complex patterns of activity, including dance, creative movement and drama. The children use their sensory capabilities and dispositions with increasing integration, skill and purpose to explore and respond to their world. The children demonstrate spatial awareness and orient themselves, moving around and through their environments confidently and safely. BELONGING, BEING & BECOMING, The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (2009) Gross motor skills are those involving the use of the large muscles, as characterised by the whole body movements in running or jumping. By two years of age the basic skills mastered by a toddler are becoming smoother as the physical changes of the preschool years begin. Exposure to different gross motor skills and encouragement from significant adults will greatly affect skill development at this age. Skills developed at this age include balancing, galloping then skipping, briefly standing on one foot, copying simple dance moves, catching and throwing balls. We have been making great use of the wonderful weather. During the week we have spent a lot of time outside in 'the big playground'. The children have had running races, sometimes pretending to be planes, birds or other animals. This is not only great for their imagination but for balancing skills. We climbed up and down the stairs to the equipment, slid down the slippery dip, walked over the suspended bridge and climbed up to the tunnel slide. Climbing is a great way to improve balance, pelvis and knee control. It also helps the children with spatial awareness. We have been working on our muscle tone and handgrip by pulling ourselves up on the monkey bars. The children played many different ball games from rolling, throwing, kicking and catching the ball (which are also great balancing exercises). Thank You Thank you to the Thursday/Friday group for supporting Cystic Fibrosis Awareness week. We had great fun in painting the room red. Stage 1 Team, Petra Wright, Siobhan Brantes, Emma Vanos and Monika Ranjitkar

Stage 1: Staying Fit


Stage 1: Photo Gallery - Strength and Ball Skills


Stage 1: Photo Gallery - Seeing Red!


Crazy Hair Day to raise awareness and money for Cystic Fibrosis has prompted an interest in creating crazy hairstyles everyday. We have set up a hair salon and there are always numerous clients who want their hair brushed and blow dried and hair clips added. We would love to expand this interest by adding more resources, so if any anyone has some wigs or a “head” that we could borrow we would really appreciate it. Our Social World Have you noticed how much your child talks? Everyday your child’s language is being consolidated and extended with the conversations they are engaging in. Some of these are with other children, some with teachers and others by themselves. They are continually increasing their word banks, think of it like a building site where words are the bricks and you are building a wall. The telephones have been very popular and there have been many calls made to mums and dads throughout the day. If you have any old phones lying around we would love to add these to our collection. Team Work Our self-help skills this week have extended to ‘tidying up and packing away’ our classroom environment. We have been encouraging the children to all be involved in packing away the room and all the toys they have been playing with, as well as helping to clean up any spills or things that are dropped during mealtimes. There have been many positive responses to this and the children have been actively involved which is great to see. We will be further promoting the importance of packing away and keeping our room clean and tidy, as well as the benefits of working together as a team! ‘Children demonstrate a sense of comfort and belonging in their environment.’ (EYLF, 2009) Exploring Colours Many of the children have been talking about colours and naming the different colours of objects around the environment. They have also been noticing the colours on the clothing they are wearing and expressing what their favourite colours are. Therefore, we are introducing colours as a new emerging interest and next week will be creating a rainbow art project. If you have any recycling materials at home that you could bring in for this, such as bottle caps, small containers or packaging boxes it would be very helpful. We have started playing some games such as ‘Eye Spy’ and ‘Witchery Jambery, guess what colour?’ (where we needed to all go and touch something that was blue, red or yellow, etc). ‘To children, colour is one of the most attractive qualities of the visual world, from the subtle colours of the natural world to the bright colours of their toys, clothes and books. They need lots of opportunities to observe colour in the environment, to notice how artists use colour and to use colour expressively in their own work’, this will allow children to use colour both imaginatively and descriptively’. (Google Search – Curriculum on line; Approaches and Methodologies) Stage 2a Team, Daniella Gosty, Polina Rodov and Christina Mandalidis

Stage 2a: Crazy Hair


Stage 2a: Photo Gallery - Children Leading the Way


Stage 2b: Independence Skills

It is very important that children are encouraged to complete age appropriate tasks on their own and from time to time be challenged to attempt more complex tasks. In the Stage 2b room the children are encouraged to wipe their hands before and after meal times, clean up their plates after morning/afternoon tea, wipe their noses (getting the tissue, cleaning their noses and placing the tissue in the rubbish bin) and to put on and take off their socks and shoes.

The other thing we have been working with the children is to organize their belongings in their lockers, putting their hats and lunch boxes away and then at the end of the day carrying their bags upstairs to the main ELS building where they are going to finish the day. It would be much appreciated if you could support our initiative by keeping in your children’s bag with just the essentials for the day: a change of clothes according to the season, hat and lunch box. This makes it possible for your child to “do it all by themselves!” Happy Birthday! Hooraaaaayyy! This week we celebrated Elias 2nd birthday. Happy Birthday Elias! Adventures in the Jungle This week Sofia Leibman shared with her friends a book from home called Noisy Noisy Grrr! By Ronne Randall. The book reinforces the noises the animals make such as parrots, tigers, crocodile, hippos, monkeys, elephants, gorillas and the king of the jungle, the lion! Hayden Lorentz also brought a book to share with his friends about the movie “The Lion King”. What do Stage 2b know about Lions and Leopards? During our group times we have been talking about the main characteristics of lions and leopards, the children’s favourite animals from the jungle. Lachlan said that the “daddy” lion has a big mane and the leop-ard can climb trees. Hayden said leopards have got black spots on their bodies and they like to sleep up high in the trees. When we played in the playground this week, the children enjoyed taking the animals to the garden around the tree and helped the animals to climb all the way up. Stage 2b Team, Christina Mandalidis, Karla Cabezas and Yana Bekman


Stage 2b: Photo Gallery: Exploration


This week the children had the opportunity to fully embrace Reddam’s motto ‘We shall give back’. The aim of the week was to educate the children about personal health and hygiene as well as to raise awareness of a particular cause – Cystic Fibrosis. 65 Roses Day and Crazy Hair Day are the main fundraising events held annually for Cystic Fibrosis NSW. For our fundraising event, we incorporated both of these events and created our own ‘crazy hair red day’. All week the children have been having lots of fun pretending to be hairdressers and creating new hairstyles for themselves and their friends. During group time the children have been learning a little about Cystic Fibrosis. The purpose of this group time was to assist the children in understanding why we were asking them to donate a gold coin for our fundraising days. During this

session we talked with the children about their lungs, where they are located in their bodies and their purpose. We also talked about children with Cystic Fibrosis and how sometimes their lungs do not work as well as ours. The children practiced taking big breaths in and out using their healthy lungs and then had a turn breathing in and out through a straw to help them understand what it might be like to breathe like a child with Cystic Fibrosis. We discussed how important their gold coin donations are, as the money we raise will go towards helping these children. Group time this week have also honed in on Grace and Courtesy in relation to health and hygiene. The cold winter season has graced us with its presence and with the cooler weather also comes the spread of germs through the common cold, coughs and flus. The children have spent group times learning about how germs can spread through coughing, sneezing and not washing hands regularly. This session has given the children the opportunity to practice scenarios of what would you do if: You need to cough/sneeze, you do so into your arm. Your cough/sneeze catches you by surprise and you

cough into your hand, you go to the bathroom to wash your hands.

You feel your nose starting to run; you get a tissue, blow your nose, put the tissue in the bin and then wash your hands.

You are eating a meal, you go to the bathroom to wash your hands first. This was followed by a trip to the bathroom were the children practised their hand washing etiquette. Each child took one blob of soap, counted to 15 while washing their palms, fingers, thumbs and tops of hands and then patted their hands dry with a paper towel before placing it in the bin.

These Grace and Courtesy skills were reinforced when the district nurse came to visit us. She spoke with the children about germs and how to stay healthy. On Monday and Friday we held our fundraising days and the children arrived to school with some of the craziest hairstyles we’ve ever seen and dressed in their beautiful red clothes. The children had lots of fun at the hairdressing station trying on wigs and adding curlers, clips, glitter and red hair gel to their already crazy hair. Thank you to all of the children and parents for embracing these special Cystic Fibrosis awareness days and for donating your sparkly gold coins. The Stage 3 Team, Anita Martin, Jane Pledger and Melanie Elderton

Stage 3: Being Healthy and Well


Stage 3: Photo Gallery - Awareness


A rich learning environment incorporates a differentiated curriculum and multi-layered learning opportunities. Put simply, this means children engage within an environment that provides for individual needs, learning styles, interests and developmental levels. This occurs in a variety of ways with careful planning and consideration.

Guided learning experiences are thoughtfully planned to ensure they are ‘multi-layered’, that is, all children are learning at their individual levels within the same experience.

One regular activity when children visit the Atelier of Arranging and Pattern Making, involves the simple activity of counting how many children there are altogether in their group on that day. One child is chosen to count the number of girls in the class. This consolidates one to one correspondence for children and provides the opportunity to further develop the skill of ‘careful counting’. Another child is then asked to count the boys. Once the boys and the girls have been counted we calculate how many children altogether are in their group that day using early addition strategies. We then indicate using our fingers how many children there are altogether, allowing for children to demonstrate knowledge of rational counting. From these observations the teacher can identify children requiring additional support with any of the fundamental mathematical skills and those who are developing beyond.

Another teaching strategy implemented to scaffold higher-order thinking includes encouraging children to be ‘the teacher’. This occurs in ‘Morning Circle’ where children take turns to identify the day and date on the calendar then illustrate the weather alongside. There are many other opportunities to be ‘the teacher’ including Show and Tell , I Spy and Secret Cylinder where children choose a secret object from a cylinder and give clues to their classmates to guess the object. This week Isabelle, Allie and Naomi were amongst the first children to be ‘storyteller of the day’, reading an early reader from the book basket.

For ‘Self-select’ time activities are thoughtfully chosen to support children in their learning of new con-cepts; engaging to encourage repetition and therefore consolidation, and challenging to extend and expand thinking skills. Puzzles available for selection vary in subject matter; including both 2 and 3 dimensional and range from 12 to 300 pieces. To encourage patience and persistence spaces are made available to allow for children to revisit, problem-solve, persevere and successfully complete more complex activities, projects or puzzles.

‘Self-select’ time also allows for children to engage in individual interest-based projects. One long-term project initiated by James Young is ‘The Titanic’. James, who often takes on the role of ‘project manager’ has created an interest amongst some of his classmates which has resulted in much research and sharing of information. James’ ongoing project is on display in the Kandinsky Room. In the Atelier of Communication, Kelly, is currently working with individual children to create narratives. In the Atelier of Possibilities, Debbie, has been scaffolding a few individual projects over the past couple of weeks. Last week Nathan Myers made some tap shoes which sparked an interest with some of his Picasso friends and this week Cameron Little-John created a tripod and camera from cylinders after our film making session with Jacqueline.

Overall each area is created with purpose, allowing the environment to be the third teacher. Children will naturally gravitate towards something they are interested in and feel that they can achieve. Ongoing observations of and reflecting on children’s choices during self-select time help to indicate ‘where children are at’, if they need further support, consolidation or have a solid understanding and needing to be introduced to more complex learning opportunities. Stage 4 Team, Cheryl Freeman, Debbie Zerbst, Kelly Nance and Deanne Jacobs

Stage 4: Differentiated Curriculum and Multi-layered Learning


Stage 4: Photo Gallery - Learning Choices


Stage 2: Spiders The children sung and acted out Incy Wincy Spider. Used their body to move around like a spider. Crawled under the spider’s web that we created from string and a piece of apparatus, feeling the

string as they went through. Used a number of key elements within the early childhood curriculum including: The shape of a

spider, the number of legs it has, the letter S and spider colours. Stage 3: Goldilocks and the Three Bears After reading the story, the children discussed what a fairy tale was and what senses Goldilocks

and the 3 bears used throughout the story (e.g. smell, touch, etc). The children used their body to create objects, including a chair and a bed which we later used to

re-enact the story. Discussed what emotions are used in the story and applied them when acting out the story. Danced to the Goldilocks song using our body to show her eyes, the chairs, the beds and the

bears. Used the microphone to speak like the bears (deep voice for the dad, higher pitched for the mother and crying for baby) and listened to the echo sound that it made. For more information about Dancearama, contact Laura: 0431 1361 77/[email protected]


This week in Mighty Mites

The Stage 2’s:

Warmed up their muscles and explored their creative side when they went on an adventure into outer space.

Discussed the health benefits of swimming and how fun it can be. Developed their jumping and balancing skills as they each had a turn jumping over the waves of

the parachute!

The Stage 3’s:

Went on an adventure into outer space while working on their gross motor skills in the form of running, jumping, hopping, marching and skipping.

Spoke about another physical activity Mighty Mite loves - bike riding! Continued to build their SkelyMite skeleton. Today they learnt about the bones in their arms, the

humerus

This week in Mighty Mites we had lots of fun with our large, colourful parachute! We really focused on our jumping skills and performing them in a controlled manner on the parachute. The parachute creates an uneven surface for the children, thereby developing their balance and sense of control during their take-offs and landings. For more information visit: www.mightymites.com.au or call us on (02) 9460 1100

http://www.mightymites.com.au/


The Edible Magic provocation continues to expand the children’s thinking. The children have been challenged with a question. “Can a vegetable be sweet?” The photos below reveal their exploration of this question as they investigate raw ingredients and the baked end product. Why not ask your children to explain their findings. Happy Eating and Baking Corby Sue

Edible Magic: Photo Gallery - Is it Sweet?

volume 1 issue 16 friday the 7th of june 2013 › pdf › news2013 › els ›...

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