Nina Marni little learners and their beautiful families. Welcome to our weekly blog.
Learning Intention: 1
To support children’s expression of ideas and identity through mark-making and collaborative art experiences
| Why: . Mark making simply refers to the creation of different patterns, lines, textures and shapes. Mark-making is not just about early writing; it is a sensory and physical experience which can be enjoyed by all ages and abilities. As well as early writing, mark-making can develop into mathematical representation and creative expression. Making marks enables children to develop their hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills through practicing to hold a tool, deciding what grip suits them best, which hand feels most natural and through making small, controlled movements using the tool. By giving children, the opportunity to explore different mediums of mark making, it engages them in sensory play and allows them to discover new exciting materials. This helps to enhance a child’s critical thinking, brain development and language development, which gives them the ability to build towards more complex learning tasks in the future. |
“Marks are made for the pure physical enjoyment of the activity”.
Throughout this week children have been experimenting their marks of scribbles and quibbles with a variety of expressive tools. Children have found delight in their markings to tell stories and express their feelings through multiple pictures and symbols. The markings have begun to relate a story and stops to re begin and choose to continue with a fresh narrative to be scribed with an inclusion of a teacher. What a wonderful learning experience to be engaged with children where they are intrigued by their own markings and the different writing tools. Observations and problem solving are some of many learning outcomes that children discover helping them make sense of their world around them. Coloured sand for marking, marking our own shadow, and threading beads for sensory, have helped children with their learning development fine motor coordination.
| Learning Intention 2: To encourage children’s expression of ideas through collaborative arts-making experiences in Visual Arts and paints. Why Helps a child’s development enhancing creativity, fine motor coordination, self-expression, creates and builds on imagination, cognitive development, sensory and many more skills of social interactive and collaborative engagement and verbal communication. Explorations of a variety of colours and textures helps children develop their confidence, self-esteem and problem-solving skills. This learning intention will be a collaboration with learning intention 1 of mark making. |
” Stimulating and supportive learning environments that foster children’s curiosity and engagement”
This week we encouraged our children to use their imagination to mix and create colours and designs with nature and man made materials. Our community walks consisted of picking a variety of leaves in different colours shapes and sizes. These nature resources were used in the learning space to blend with colour and create designs using our imagination with a narrative expression of our own stories. We used colours and mixed them with our hands and fingers to feel the different textures blending them together to make a whole new fresh colour.
“Can you guess what colours we made ?
| Learning Intention 3: Sacred symbols are special and important. Why? Doctrinal Insights from the Catholic Tradition that support this Enduring Understanding include:Sacred symbols remind us that God is close to us, and with us.In my Catholic learning environment, I can see many sacred symbols.Candle flames remind us that God is with us.The Bible reminds us of God’s love for us through special stories.The Cross reminds us of Jesus.Water is used for special blessingsSacred symbols are used in my school/ELC and in church celebrations, prayer and liturgy. (CCC1145)Other faith traditions also have sacred symbols The Sign of the Cross is a prayer to God.Doctrinal and Content Elaborations: Doctrinal Insights from the Catholic Tradition that support this Enduring Understanding include:The Sign of the Cross is a prayer with actions and words.The words remind us that God is called Father, Son and Holy Spirit.The actions represent the symbol of the Cross, and that prayer involves our head, heart and body. |
Prayer time in the mornings have been a very blessed moment of engagement with lots of verbal interactions. Children have been entering into prayer with a candle and some flowers. The flowers have been an offering of their prayers that Jesus loves each and every one of us and that we could experience God’s love through caring relationships. Children are now aware of making the sign of the cross at the start of prayer (symbolic) and at the end of prayer where the candle (A sacred symbol) is blown out to symbolise that prayer is finished.
Providing consistent and predictable routines in our learning spaces have helped children to gain an understanding of what to expect Now , Next and Then, with their learning. We are all inclusive and collaborative in our decision making of what we expect throughout the day.
Book reading has been an amazing and wonderful learning experience for our little learners as they created their own space by placing little unicorns ready to revisit the space for more engaging learning. The teachers have been reading to children conversing and interacting with them valuing their thoughts , ideas and their creative imagination. The children were happy to read to each other with some role modelling as the teacher.
Construction and building has been a frequent and regular investigation we revisit during some quiet moments in our learning space.
Dramatic play has been a blissful moment to observe in our learning space as our little learners have been revisiting this famous and amazing hair salon which has been attracting lots of customers. and our home corner kitchen has been very busy this week with lots of delicious cooking.
Community walks have been consistent throughout this week. The MUDLA the playground and the log park were some favourite spaces of interest which the children enjoyed the most. The children had a lesson with lots of questions for Mr.Gerry watching him fill up and empty the tanks with fresh water in the MUDLA. what beautiful patience.
Some very nutritious specs of gold to end this wonderful and exciting week of learning.
hope you all have a wonderful and relaxed weekend.