This week the children have continued to develop their connections to the Holy Family School Community. This has included visiting the Log Park, participating in Spanish class as well as joining year 3 for ‘investigate play’ time on Friday morning. We see these visits as valuable opportunities for children to engage with and develop a sense of belonging to the School Community. Thus, providing authentic learning engagements that will help children to build connections and partnerships that support them in feeling confident in their transition to School. The social and varying contextual aspects will contribute to the transitions of all children including those moving on to Holy Family or to a school on a different site.

We look forward to building further connections with Holy Family over the course of this year and beyond.

Over the course of the term, the children have been introduced to a range of new and exciting resources to play with. This week, there was a specific interest in the ‘coloured walking platforms’ which involve children using the plastic base platform, foot bands and ropes to integrate whole body movements.

The ‘coloured walking platforms’ encourage children to develop fundamental movement skills such as balance, control and co-ordination, as well as crossing the midline and maintaining core strength and stability. Throughout the week, the children demonstrated their perseverance and resilience whilst problem-solving how to use the resources. This also enabled children to make connections between past movement experiences and to integrate similar thinking in their engagements.

Furthermore, having ongoing access to the walking platforms seemed to support the children in exploring positive social skills and behaviours. Many children were observed inviting others to use the walking platforms as well as role modelling and instructing their friends on how to use them effectively. This also included embedding themes and ideas from familiar stories into imaginative play opportunities.

Exposure to a variety of resources will continue to promote children’s evolving sense of pride and responsibility towards their environments and the objects within them. We will use this to emphasise the need to care for and respecting our shared resources and possessions so that we can enjoy them together both now and into the future.

As part of our inquiry for term 3, the children have been encouraged to observe and investigate aspects of the world around them. Over the past fortnight, several children have demonstrated their evolving inquisition towards the quantifiable attributes of objects such as their height, length and weight. This has coincided with exposure to our new measurement resources, such as metre rulers, tape measures, 30m winding measure and formal weight scales. The children have extended their theories and meaning making in collaboration with their friends.

Certain investigations have included, exploring the weight of small bears in comparison to counters, working out how many blocks their are in a metre ruler,  finding out how many blocks for fit on a scooterboard, as well as lots of measuring of ourselves.

This has raised some interesting ideas in relation to the concept of measurement:

Xavier – “This is heavier (counters) then those (bears).”

Mason – “That one (ruler) is longer than that (block).”

Jon – “This is very heavy (blocks).”

Tavae – “Mine is even heavier too (blocks).”

We will continue to scaffold children’s learning by embedding relevant language and drawing their attention towards possible comparisons that can be made between objects. This will support them in developing further understandings about measurement as well as the interconnectivity between themselves, their resources, their environments and the world around them.