Nina Marni to all of our beautiful little curious learners and their lovely Families . Welcome to our Blog for term 3 /week 7
This week our little learners have been very busy preparing and crafting their lanterns for the upcoming moon lantern festival. The moon lantern festival aims at promoting reconciliation peace and forgiveness. Our little people were very engaged in creating that special piece of their unque lantern.
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.
This week children have been experiencing how to construct and build incorporating balance. Our structures have been amazing and have had lots of concentration and precision put into these wonderful buildings.
Learning Intention: 2
To support each child to deepen their understanding of measurement. Encouraging children to use comparative language such as big, medium, and small, as well as the terms bigger and smaller.
Why:
- Children become numerate as they develop the understanding, knowledge, and skills to use mathematics confidently across learning areas and in their lives.
- They develop conceptual understandings, procedural fluency, and adaptive reasoning skills to facilitate transfer of their mathematical knowledge to contexts outside the mathematics classroom and this is supported when the mathematical ideas with which they interact are relevant and meaningful.
- Children are showing interest in sorting, measurements, comparing sizes (taller or shorter, bigger, or smaller) and shapes.
- To support children’s understanding measuring, estimating, sorting, noticing patterns.
- Children construct mathematical ideas from birth through a combination of cognitive development and interaction with their environment.
Children have begun to build their learning and understanding of sizes quantity and sorting. Our unique community spaces here at the Holy family catholic school have provided children with the opportunity , skills and tools to build their knowledge on a wide variety of mathematical constructing ideas.
Learning Intention 3
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) 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.
Our chalk boards have been such a wondrous contribution towards our writers workshop. Children have been able to communicate all of their markings by clearly presenting their learning to their peers and Teachers.
Children have been very engaged in sensory experiences helping their teachers create and construct throughout this week. As the season begins to change and we welcome spring, oranges and flowers have been quite a favourite sense of smell and touch. Our little people found these experiences quite engaging and interesting where a small blend of play dough added to the mix helped them experience such wonderful collaborative learning.
Our community visits around the Holy Family school have been a consistency where the children have been able to engage in interactive play helping them build and challenge their learning skills. This week the children were so excited to see a couple of ducks visit our billabongs we well as some turtles near our fish farm.
Our in house dining experience where the children have been provided with agency to serving their own food has been working wonders throughout this week. Children are able to engage and interact building conversations with their peers and Teachers and learn about the nutrtional value in their food whilst enjoying their meal times.
Some specs of gold for this week.
Hope you all have a relaxing weekend.