Nina Mani welcome LDC B families and children to our week 6 blog.
Learning Intention 1: To develop and embed sustainable practices as community, fostering a love and appreciation for God’s world.
ILP’S: ALL
WHY:
- As part of the catholic ethos, we aim to support children to develop a love, respect and appreciation for all of God’s creations.
- Practicing sustainability empowers children to construct knowledge, explore values and develop an appreciation of the environment. This lays foundations for an environmentally responsible adulthood.
- Through hands on experiences and relevant educator pedagogies, children can explore and learn about their local contexts and environmental issues.
- Children can develop the creativity and critical thinking skills necessary to make informed decisions for change, improving the quality of their lives and those of future generations.
What provocations and experiences we did this week :
- Planting with Archie
- Spending time in out outside learning environment
- Group times discussing our community and what we have to do to keep it safe
- Checking our poppy seed we grew ( we are incredibly proud of our little garden project)
Chilren’s voice:
Sofia: Look Millie the flowers grew big
Adriana: Can we help pick up rubbish with Anne?
Tyler: We have to be gentle and quiet in the fish farm
Sebastian: No climbing trees
Winnie: We need to water the plants Millie
Here at Holy Family ELC we believe that teaching children about our environment, community ( Gods world we live in) is vital for their learning and something advocate for. Which are two areas of our mission here at Holy Family ( see the link below to visit our mission here at Holy Family and three areas included )
Following this intention we are teaching children to develop sustainable habits that are likely to stick with them as they grow up. Even small actions have large impacts over time. Learning about the environment is super important. By spending most of our daily routine outside in our outside learning environment learning about the natural world, our children can develop a life-long appreciation for nature, understand its value, stay healthy, and become an important part of community not only in ELC, but our school community too.
Some simple sustainable habits and goals we have for our room / centre for the rest of this term and potentially next term are:
Looking and feeding our worm farm on a daily basis
Helping Pre school with our veggie and herb garden
Watering our plants in our room with recycled water
A recycling inquiry
Creating moments in our routine for more loose parts play and outdoor play
https://www.holyfamily.catholic.edu.au
Learning Intention 2: To support each child to recognise and communicate their bodily needs.
Why:
- To support children in building a strong sense of wellbeing.
- A strong sense of wellbeing provides children with confidence and optimism which maximise their learning potential.
- To encourage the development of children’s innate exploratory drive, a sense of agency and a desire to interact with others.
- To remain accessible to others at times of distress, confusion, and frustration.
- To support them to stay happy, healthy, safe, and connected to others.
- To develop increasing awareness of healthy lifestyle and good nutrition.
- Educators have noticed and reflected on children’s discomfort and their own ways of expressing their needs.
- To support children in building their confidence, share their ideas in group settings.
- To nurture children’s engagement in everyday experiences.
- Enabling them to be active participants in routines and interactions.
- Maintaining high expectations of each child’s capabilities.
ILPS: ALL
Continuing on from our previous learning intention around positive education, we have placed our focus on children processing and communicating their needs in aim to support children to self-regulate and ground themselves. Our senses collect information from the world around us, as well as our interactions within it. This information is then processed in our brain, forming the basis of our learning, wellbeing and secure interactions with others. Knowing this information we knew this was something big we needed to support some of our children with and have found and followed strong strategies in helping to achieve this intention.
Some areas that have helped us in this intention were:
NATURE:
Nature provides a learning environment full of sensory enriching opportunities for children. The sandpit has been a particular point of interest for children to work collabrotely in they cooking endeavours.
OUR OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENT:
Spending time playing outside in our outdoor learning environment and enjoying God’s world around us can help us to be physically and mentally more healthy and improve our motor developments, team work skills and emotional development.
VISUAL ARTS:
Visual arts for many children is a form of meaning of which they can explore and share their perceptions of their world around them. Here in LDC B we have noticed that this area of learning can help children to communicate verbally their ideas, interests and needs through.
BOOKMAKING:
Similar to visual arts – book making or mark making has really helped our team with achieving this intention with children. This learning area allows children to express and communicate with others without physically communicating ( and that’s okay not too). Having our book making stations on offer everyday throughout our day with handmade books gives structure, “architecture for the imagination,” and entice them to fill their books with original ideas and stories – creating extensions of themselves, which is amazing to see and helpful for our team.
Bookmaking
Spotlight Term 3:
‘What’s your book about?’ – supporting children to choose Themes for their stories and encourage writing
This week we have taken a step back from our spotlight and focusing on mark making in different ways. The biggest way of helping children to achieve, understand and have a found love for book making is reading. This week we allow children to read amongst each other and read with us as much as we can and we definitely saw changes within our space.
In LDC B our book making station is one of our busiest and most loved areas in learning environment. This amazing to see children create and become authors of their own. Allowing children to use different medias and resources we wanted to help support them back into creating themes for their stories and following our spotlight.
We have certainly achieved this and can’t wait to continue with our little authors next week.
