Monthly Archives: August 2019

Our Week of Learning – Literacy and Numeracy

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We believe children have the right to be supported in their learning in all areas of their development –  physically, cognitively, emotionally, socially and spiritually. We see children’s learning as integrated and connected. Learning is a social practice and through interactions and play experiences children develop their literacy and numeracy skills.

This week we have observed many examples of children’s literacy and numeracy understandings. We will use these observations to plan and program provocations to build and grow our children’s literacy and numeracy.

We do this with the support of the Government of South Australia Department for Education and Child Development Indicators for Literacy and Numeracy in Pre-School. The indicators have been developed to support teachers to extend and enrich every preschool child’s numeracy and literacy learning.

NUMERACY

Indicator: ‘I analyse, read and organise the data in my world’

One of our provocations this week was a table of different seeds and beans for the children to explore. Initially designed as a sensory experience, it also emerged as a wonderful numeracy activity. The bowls of beans and seeds got mixed up over the week and the children began to sort them.

Will

Will: I put the black ones in this bowl

Nicole: Why only black ones?

Will: So they not all mixed up. I’m still working on these.

Nicole: What if I put these in this bowl?  If I put these in here what else would you add?

Will:  Just those ones

Arabella

Indicator: ‘I analyse, read and organise the data in my world’

Arabella joined Will at the sorting table. She had some white beans and put them all in a bowl.

Nicole picked up an orange lentil and asked if Arabella if she would put that in the bowl with the white beans . Arabella said ‘no it’s not white’.

Shruti and Aicha

Indicator: ‘I analyse, read and organise the data in my world’

Nicole: The seeds got all mixed up and now we have to sort them out.

Shruti starts putting some seeds in a bowl.

Nicole: Why are you putting those in there Shruti?

Shruti: These are white

Aicha: I’m putting the white inside

Nicole: What about this bowl?

Aicha:   Black

Nicole: And this bowl is empty, are there any seeds you could put in here?

Aicha:  Orange ones.

Aicha: Look how many I have

Nicole: How many are there?

Aicha started counting. She counted to 13. We counted together demonstrating 1 to 1 correspondence. There were 18 seeds.

Tesi and Arielle

Indicator: ‘I quantify my world’

During outdoor play, Tesi asked for a little basket so she could collect ‘treasure’ Her and Arielle wandered through the yard collecting natural items from the gardens.

Tesi: Look Nicole, this is our first treasure.

Arielle: the second…. more treasure.

Nicole: How many have you found?

Arielle: 2

Tesi:  Let’s find some other…. look treasure.

Arielle:  It’s too big.

Nicole: Let’s look at our treasure.

Tesi: There’s bark and rock

Nicole: How many do you have?

Tesi:  1…2…3…4…5

Nicole: How many pieces of bark do you have?

Arielle: 4

Tesi: And 1 rock. 4 and 1 makes 5.

Tesi: Nicole look more treasure; a leaf

Nicole: A big leaf

Will, Tavae and Tesi

Indicator: “I measure and compare my world”

Indicator: “I quantify my world”

In a patch of our garden, will found a number of feathers of different colours, sizes and textures. Tavae and Tesi were intrigued and together they all collected some of the feathers in a bowl.

Will: There was an emu here

Tavae: I found one. Oh! it’s not going on my hand .

Will: There’s a lot of feathers Tesi. I’m just collecting them.

Tesi: I got one Nicole. It was there. Hey look! Feather!

Will: Guys an emu has maybe been here because these feathers are bigger. Got any more feathers? I been selecting them.

Nicole: How do you think the feathers got here?

Tesi: The birds.

Tesi: I think bird has wings and they can flap their wings and fly.

Aicha: They came from up that tree and then came here.

Will: I don’t know how it got here. They came in the night and I wasn’t here. Maybe the wind got strong and it got colder and the feathers blew off.

Tavae: I think the bird got died.

Arielle: The birds died.

Tarun

Indicator: “I quantify my world”

Tarun spent time matching the number stones to the number cards.

 

Tavae

Indicator: ” I explore and understand my place and space in the world”.

Tavae is very interested in turtles and loves caring for our turtle, ‘Strawberry’. He was drawn to the turtle puzzle and concentrated and persisted for a long time to complete the challenging puzzle. He flipped and rotated puzzle pieces to fit them together.

Tavae: You help me Nicole.

Nicole: You have a go and do the pieces you can and then I will help you if you need me.

Tavae: Look Nicole this big one it go here see? And this one? 

Nicole: What do you think Tavae?

Tavae: I can’t do this.

Nicole:  Let’s try this.

Tavae:  Oh look it does work.

Nicole: Oh but there’s a little gap, they all need to fit together remember.

Tavae:  Hmmm I think this one goes this way, no that way. No. Hey look! It goes this way.

LITERACY

Tesi

Indicator: “I represent my world symbolically”.

Tesi has been learning to write her name. Tesi knows the different letters of her name and can write some of the letters. To scaffold the process of writing her name, we have been using tracing dots to form the letters. Tesi is now drawing the  tracing dots herself to support herself in writing the letters.

Arielle

Indicator: “I engage with texts and make meaning”.

Arielle: I made a book

Nicole: How wonderful! Tell me more about your book.

Arielle: I use the paper to make the book. The book is about me and Tesi.

 

 

 

 

Our Day – Monday 26th August 2019

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Today we enjoyed a wonderful day of belonging and learning.

MUSIC

Outside, we enjoyed playing various instruments including xylophones, tambourines, castanets, clapping sticks and egg shakers. We practiced different beats and playing music fast, slow, soft and loud. We enjoyed singing various songs such as ‘Twinkle, twinkle Little Star’, ‘B-I-N-G-O’, ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs’ and ‘1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a Fish Alive’.

BELONGING – WHAT IS A FRIEND?

We continued to develop our understanding of ‘belonging’. We watched the following Sesame Street song and then discussed ‘what is a friend?’

Tesi: Share his favourite toy.

Will: Share the food.

Joel: We share the cookie.

Liam: Share his favourite ice-cream.

MORNING TEA – BELONGING

With such beautiful weather today, we had a ‘picnic’ morning tea outside. It was a lovely opportunity to sit together, eat together and demonstrate our belonging. We also took some time to ‘look up’ – and we admired the trees, sky and sun as we listened to the many sounds of the birds that live around us.

KITCHEN SCIENCE – RAINBOW EXPERIMENTS

Today, we continued our investigation of colour and rainbows with another experiment.

On a plate, we poured some milk and used the pipets to drop food colouring into the milk. We then dipped a cotton bud into dishwashing detergent and placed this in the middle of the milk and food colouring mixture. We were amazed by what happened.

Arielle:It moved

Joel:The colours splashed and the colours mixed to purple and blue and it make a rainbow experiment.

Max:It made a rainbow and it was beautiful

Simon:It push it

SPECKS OF GOLD

Arabella:Going outside.

Arielle:Playing with Tesi.

Omelia:Playing with Tesi and Xavier.

Simon:Having fun playing with my friends. I played hide and seek.

Charlotte:The rainbow.

Xavier:Playing outside with Tesi.

Max:Mummy and daddy and playing together. Playing with you (Nicole)

Eamann:Playing outside.

Tesi:Playing with friends, playing doctors.

 

Book Week 2019

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On Friday, we had a wonderful day celebrating ‘Book Week’. We had so much fun dressing up as our favourite character from a story and enjoyed viewing the ‘Book Week’ assembly at the school.

 

CLARA Learning Powers – Belonging

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This week, we began to introduce the CLARA (Crick Learning for Resilient Agency) learning powers to the children. The CLARA learning powers describe the qualities, skills and dispositions of a lifelong learner. These learning powers are not fixed or static and like a muscle, we can grow and develop them with practice.

The learning powers also give children a language to describe and discuss their learning and themselves as learners.

We had a new friend join us at ELC this week – Tamoo. Tamoo’s super learning power is belonging. We all have this power too and Tamoo is here to teach and guide us on how to grow our belonging learning power individually and as a group.

We loved meeting Tamoo!

We discussed the people that love and help us and during our play investigations, some children chose to draw the people that support them most in their lives.

BELONGING AND THE EARLY YEARS LEARNING FRAMEWORK

BELONGING
Experiencing belonging – knowing where and with whom you belong – is integral to human existence. Children belong first to a family, a cultural group, a neighbourhood and a wider community. Belonging acknowledges children’s interdependence with others and the basis of relationships in defining identities. In early childhood, and throughout life, relationships are crucial to a sense of belonging. Belonging is central to being and becoming in that it shapes who children are and who they can become.

 

 

 

CLARA Learning Powers

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CLARA (Crick Learning for Resilient Agency)

CLARA describes the qualities and dispositions (known as the 7 dimensions of learning power) that enable people to become aware of the way they learn and to take responsibility for their own learning journey. In R/1TB and R/1G, the children will learn about the dimensions of learning power and use this language to identify their strengths as learners, to reflect on their learning processes and to develop strategies to improve their learning further.

The seven dimensions of learning power are:

Mindful agency: being aware of my thoughts, feelings and actions as a learner and able to use that awareness to take responsibility, to plan and manage learning processes; the opposite of being ‘robotic’.
Hope and Optimism: a sense of myself as someone who learns and changes over time; the opposite is simply ‘stuck and static’.
Sense-making: making meaning by making connections so that learning ‘matters to me’; the opposite is simply ‘accumulating data’.
Creativity: risk-taking, playfulness, using my imagination and intuition in my learning; the opposite is being ‘rule- bound’.
Curiosity: the desire to ‘get beneath surface’, check things out, find out more about them, ask ‘why?’; the opposite is being ‘passive’.
Collaboration: learning with others and also able to learn if they’re not there; the opposite is either being ‘isolated’ or ‘over-dependent’.
Belonging: knowing there is someone to turn to because I am part of a supportive learning community; the opposite is feeling ‘alone’.
Orientation to learning: being open to new ideas and challenge and having the inner strength to cope with it; the opposite is either being too ‘tough’ and rigidly persistent to learn well, or too ‘fragile and dependent’ to go on learning when things get difficult.

Book Week 2019

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Dear parents and families,

Alive ELC invites all children to come along and dress up as their favourite book character to celebrate Book Week! Our school assembly is on Friday 23rd August from 9 -9.30am. A friendly reminder that if Friday is your child’s day, then they need to be at the centre at 8.45 am to be ready. Everyone is welcome, however all other children will need to be accompanied by their parent and meet us at the school hall for assembly. We look forward to seeing you all there. Happy reading and creating!

 

Thursday 15/8/19

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Wow! what a busy day we had at ELC today…

Log Park– We all started our morning exploring in Log Park, allowing the children to engage, interact, run, climb and laugh. The children were busy creating houses. Joel said “Tesi come to me house, come in Tesi”. We had amazing team work climbing the tree. We also had lots of creativity and collaboration as the children engaged in balancing games.

Ecology– Our children have been very dedicated to looking after Strawberry. Today we decided to celebrate the beautiful weather and take Strawberry to the oval. This learning opportunity saw Simon from HFCS join us. We were able to hold and observe the large long neck turtle from our MUDLA room. We also had the opportunity to feed the fish in the Fish Farm.

Investigation Play- We then engaged in play-based investigations, showcasing our ongoing learning powers of belonging, creativity and collaboration.

Mass- We attended the Assumption Mass with the whole school.

Afternoon investigations with R/1MC- It was great to children actively construct their own understandings and contribute to each others’ learning. They recognized their agency, capacity to initiate and lead learning. The children were able to further extend their learning, building on and challenging their ideas.

Specks of Gold

“My speck of gold is carrying the turtle”- Liam

“My speck of gold was patting the turtle and going to church”- Aisha

“My speck of gold was going to the Fish Farm and seeing the fishes and going to the log park-” Joel

“My speck of gold was school”- Arabella

“My speck of gold was going to church and my sister sitting next to me”- Aicha

“My speck of gold was sitting next to my sister at Mass”- Tesi

“My speck of gold was playing with all my friends”- Ellara

“My speck of Gold was patting the turtle and going to my class”- Ambrose

“My speck of Gold was Tesi and me was drawing on paper” – Omelia

“My speck was patting the turtle”- Arielle

Rainbows and Colour

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Our inquiry learning over the last couple of days has focused on colour and rainbows as per our learning program and intentions.

We have been singing some songs about colours and the rainbow during morning group time.

RAINBOW EXPERIMENT

We also went to Home 2 with some friends from the school set up a rainbow experiment for us to do.  We lined up skittles around a plate, added some water and waited and observed.

Liam: It will make a rainbow because all the colours will come out.

Arielle: It will be rainbow colours because I saw it on my iPad.

Tarvae: It’s a circle.

Alana: It’s yellow.

Krisha: Rainbow

Simon: Rainbow. The colours came out.

COLOUR MIXING AND PAINTING

PRAYER

In prayer, we sang our favourite song ‘Rainbow’ by Michael Chinn. We then shared our own special prayers about rainbows.

SPECKS OF GOLD

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Day – Monday 12th August 2019

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We hope all families enjoyed a beautiful weekend. 

SEEDS AND PLANTING

During our morning group time, we explored a variety of seeds using our senses of sight, touch and smell. The seeds were of various shapes, colours and sizes.

This afternoon, Brianna worked with a small group of children to observe and analyse the seeds further.

Omelia: Beans. These are nice. This is pineapple
Joel: (smelt the seeds) cheese, it’s beautiful.
Xavier: pumpkin seeds
Ellara: These feel like sausages, I love sausages!
Omelia: They’re like lemon, lemon pumpkin!
Arabella: Lemon is yellow

This morning we had some friends from year 4 in the school help us plant some strawberry and flower seedlings in pots which we will sell at the Spring Fair in October.

We planted flowers and strawberries as the children decided a few weeks ago that this is what they would like to grow. We will also be growing some carrots from seed.

CONSTRUCTION WITH WOODEN BLOCKS

We have borrowed some construction blocks with pegs from our friends in the school. These blocks enabled some wonderful collaboration and creativity.

Joel, Liam and Will were building with the outdoor construction blocks.

Will: I know what way.

Liam: Well this is the engine right?

Will: What are you making?

Liam: An engine. You put a engine into your car.

Liam was rearranging the blocks, placing them on top, taking them off and manipulating them.

Liam: I don’t need this one.

Joel: Yes, you don’t need this one.

Liam: Come here! (he takes off another block and replaces it with another block).

Liam: A engine, I making a engine.

Joel: I love engine.

Liam: This engine is going to look cool.

Joel: Cool, super, super, cool.

Nicole: How are you going with your engine?

Liam: This engine makes stuff work.

Nicole: Tell me more about how it makes stuff work.

Liam: That’s the turn off button.

Nicole: What does the engine do?

Liam: It turns on and makes this sound ‘pish’.

PRAYER

Our prayer today was about caring for plants.

Children then shared their own special prayers.

 

SPECKS OF GOLD

OUTCOME 1: CHILDREN HAVE A STRONG SENSE OF IDENTITY
• Children feel safe, secure, and supported
• Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect

OUTCOME 2: CHILDREN ARE CONNECTED WITH AND CONTRIBUTE TO THEIR WORLD
• Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation
• Children become aware of fairness

OUTCOME 4: CHILDREN ARE CONFIDENT AND INVOLVED LEARNERS
• Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating

• Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials

Special Visitors from the Archdiocese of Adelaide

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This afternoon we had some special visitors from the Archdioceses of Adelaide. Father Phillip Marshall, Teresa Lynch and Denise Ritzena had a tour of our beautiful centre and then joined the children for prayer.

We sang our welcome prayer song ‘Join the Circle’, set up our prayer space and then viewed a slideshow of our learning from the week. Children then shared their specks of gold.

Liam: Join the circle song.

Arabella: Join the circle song.

Aisha: Playing with my friends.

Joel: The plants and the trees.

Tesi: Making the scones.

Our visitors then joined us for afternoon tea. We enjoyed the scones that Brianna, Tesi and Aisha made with jam and cream.

It was a wonderful opportunity to share the community and belonging we are building at Alive – Parafield Gardens.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone 🙂