Nina Marni to all our beautiful curious little learners and their lovely Families . Welcome to our Blog for term 3 /week 6
Learning Intention 1:
To challenge children’s construction skills by providing loose parts and STEM experiences.
Why
- STEM education in early childhood allows children to begin to learn and retain a knowledge base that they can build on as they get older.
- Loose Parts play encourages children to make, create, problem solve and hypothesize. Loose parts have no instructions and no predetermined rules.
- The concept of ‘loose parts’ supports children to become critical thinkers as they use these open- ended materials to plan their work and create whatever they want to without an adult telling them what should be done. It helps children to be imaginative.
- Loose parts give children the freedom to arrange and rearrange, essentially using the parts to create their own rules and designs, which allows the focus of the experience to be on the process rather than the product. Fine motor skills are developed and strengthened when children grasp and pick up small objects.
Curiosity enthusiam and investigation blends in with a bit of hands on inquiry in to the marvellous world of construction. Children are their own designers and creators of their own constructive structures. Language and communication are very frequently used within this space to negotiate and communicate expectations. Children are also able to encounter a variety of recyled materials and produce these to express their creativity of their internal vision towards constructing their projects.
Construction , building, scissor cutting collaborated with loose parts and recycled materials, offer and help children experience and stimulate imagination and creativity.
Learning Intention 2:
Book making
Weekly focus
- Starting from scratch
- what is a book?
- What is the purpose?
- Who reads books?
- Who writes books?
- What do they look like?
- Teachers will use information gained about prior knowledge to decide next steps.
Mentor texts
- Explore a range of Mo Williams (Pigeon books) and Matt Cosgrove books during morning/ Afternoon group times (Term 3)
- discussions and questioning to follow.
- Educators to find moments to read to small groups of children and using these moments as an opportunity for self-regulation and grounding
Children have had the opportunity to explore and extend on their writers workshop skills through chalk boards and regular community visits to the MUDLA and fish farm. They have begun to build and develop their fine motor skills with pencil and paper to create their own story’s through the study of author text. Children were also able to put into context of what they saw and heard when they visited the MUDLA and presented their creativity/mark-makings to Strawberry the turtle.
As an Early Learning community this week we have been focusing on our meal routine embedding the saying “present in the dining room” sitting with children engaging and encouraging them to serve food themselves. This helps support and create a community dining experience. Teachers build communication and engaging pathways of introducing different food and helping children to experience the taste smell and touch of a variety of different food. Talking about the nutrition textures and colours in each of the food has been some of our most favourite topics.
Our concept of embedding sustainability throughout this term has been quite effective as children have grown accustomed to taking responsibility of their own learning environments.
Father’s day will be celebrated this year on the first Sunday of September. Our little Learners were very busy making that special gift for that special honurable figure in their lives.
Utilising our unique spaces through frequent community visits here in our Holy Family School have been quite effective this week as children were able to explore and experience a world of wondrous interactive learning.
Some specs of gold for this week
Hope you all have a relaxing weekend.