Nina Marni Long Day Care B Families, welcome to our first blog as the newest room for Holy Family ELC 2023.
We have had such a wonderful and busy start to the term and have felt so blessed to connected and shared very special moments with all the children.
Learning Intention: To continue working towards embedding consistent daily routines and rituals across our team and learning environment.
There has been a strong focus this week on supporting our children to understand the routines, rhythms and rituals of LDC B room. Daily rituals such as unpacking bags, hanging up hats and jumpers, applying sunscreen and our group times have been encouraged and supported by our team and will be continued to do so on a daily basis.
We have shared many discussions around the expectations of our environment, with the main focus being on the physical environment and the purpose of each our spaces. Together we looked at each space in our indoor environment and together the children looked at what type of play would be best for each space.
Hannah – For cooking ( home corner )
Hugo – This is the play dough table Millie
De De – Painting over here
While establishing our routine and working on this learning intention this week, we explored another focus on children finding their sense of belonging and identity. Considering the communities that we belong too ( a potential inquiry project). Some of these communities that children belong to are of course their families and our ELC community. During group time Millie showed some photographs of some special people to her and talked about who their are and why their were special to her. We loved looking at the photos together.
We would like to invite the children to bring or send through photographs for their family or special people in their life to share at group time and start / create our Kinship tree. It could be anyone their wish to share – even pets! Millie showed us her pet dog and cat.
** If you would like to send through your children’s photos you can send them to Millie’s email below **
Millie.Harty@holyfamily.catholic.edu.au
Some areas of play we have seen children to be most engaged in at the moment is visual arts ( painting and gluing) and sensory. These types of provocations have been really helpful for children to have a chance to self regulate and also work on their team work skills, creative, imagination and motor skills. Educators have also loved setting up new and fun environments for children to grow and learn in.
Learning Intention: To start our literacy inquiry and embed ‘book making’ practices starting with ‘mark making ‘ with the training and mentoring of Lisa Burman
We were so fortunate that our Senior educators for our LDC rooms ( Millie and Farah ) have been undergoing mentoring from Lisa Burman over the few weeks about a literacy program focusing on ‘book making’. LDC B have created and developed the intention showed above for this term, which later will be created into a spotlight for the rest of the year.
Doing many group times starting off with asking questions and showing different types of books.
Tyler – Look its Macka!
Sofia – That’s a book
Niya – We can turn the pages to read the book Millie
Elijah – I like reading with my friends
Starting of with creating a book making space for our environment ( seen below) having it available for children at all times throughout our day ( rest time being the most busiest time) and using this time to sit with children and encourage them to become writers. Using different medias and resources such as drawing, painting for mark-making and book-making experiences enjoyed by all the children in both our indoor and outdoor environments. They are encouraged to draw on purpose, with a variety of resources and materials.
We are hopeful that you may begin to hear your child using language such as ‘writer’, ‘title’ and ‘author’ and encourage to actively seek to try and make meaning of books that you read at home. For example to extend on our book making intention we have included our first Author Study on Matt Cosgrove who you may know for his famous book ‘ Macka the Alpaca’. This is a class favourite in the LDC B room. Making it very easy to use as our first class study.
Extension of Learning:
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To support each child to recognise and develop self-regulation strategies, focusing on a strong sense of wellbeing.
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To support children’s participation in reciprocal relationships, expanding their skills of cooperation and negotiation.
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Focusing on establishing a sense of belonging within our room
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Using set and spontaneous times throughout our day to help children in their confidence to be authors
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Growing on our learnings in our author study and our potential inquiry project
