Niina Marni preschool children and families and welcome to the end of week 3!
We’ve noticed during rest time this week the children and staff have all been deeply engaged in the experiences on offer! It’s so beautiful to walk through the room and hear the noise of busy chatting, learning through language and play and notice that all children and staff are engaging with each other!
Learning Intention 1
To Establish Berry Street Principles within our preschool, focusing on developing self-regulation strategies and positive dispositions
Why
Teachers and some educators undertook training in Berry Street this week, and have had the opportunity to develop deeper understandings of the importance of wellbeing in a child’s learning.
As a team we have established immediate points of action to support our community in their holistic development
Holy Family follows the Berry Street Model, therefore it is important for us to lay the foundations to maximise the opportunities for children throughout their ongoing education.
Some of the Berry Street Principles include:
-Recognise the importance of the mental state and perceptions of the child
-Acknowledge their ability to build social networks of support, feel confident as learners, and manage the challenging emotions that will arise when facing the unknown
-fostering willingness and build self-confidence, enjoyment of learning ad minimise the fears around taking a risk to learn.
-BSEM (Berry Street Education Model) strengthens the art of teaching. It recognises the critical importance of relationships, perception of self and the mental and emotional states of complete engagement.
Through the implementation of ‘pulse check ins’ in the morning circle time, educators have noted who is not feeling great that day and makes sure to check in with them once circle time is over. This creates an opportunity to understand what is happening in each child’s life and ultimately leads to greater understanding between children and adults. We have been so happy to see so many smiling faces this week!
We have also begun passing on knowledge gained through the training sessions with all staff to support them with their practice and approach to relationships with the children and how to support them through difficult feelings and times of stress.
Learning intention 2:
Celebrating the creations shared by children and promoting deeper thinking through discussions about the process behind the product.
WHY
-Educators have noticed a strong interest in constructive and creative projects.
-children seek to share their pride with others when they have completed their projects
– We value the process, equally as much as the product and aim to support children in celebrating their achievements
-Facilitating discussions about the process behind projects incorporates numeracy processing including: noticing, wondering, communicating, reasoning and comparing.
-providing a variety of open-ended materials for constructive and creative projects fosters the numeracy indicators: creating and making meaning, communicating and reflecting critically
This week the children have shown an increased interest in making! From art and craft making, to box making, to construction with Lego, Mobilo and building blocks!
As educators are focussing on supporting children to enjoy the process and not be too worried about the end result being perfect, we have created a ‘work in progress’ shelf to display their work when finished or unfinished.
The greatest joy of working with children is taking the opportunity to sit and observe their way of thinking and knowing using the resources available to them!
Bookmaking
‘Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus!’ by Mo Willems has been an absolute hit this week! And teachers have used this to support children to understand the use of speech bubbles. Later that day after reading the book during circle time, Ewan came up to Laura and asked her to help him do a speech bubble for his bird in his book!
After some training with Matt Glover last week we have also made sure there are informational texts available to the children alongside narratives to support their emergent understanding of different genres and the different ways authors write books for their audiences.
We’ve noticed that bookmaking has been increasingly engaged with this week so have created a larger space for it so ensure all children are able to access the learning as well as offering this experience outside!
Inquiry project:
We begin our term with an inquiry into the natural world. We wonder what pathways we will take?
What we know
-leaves change colour in Autumn
-Autumn is referred to as fall is some countries
-there are more bugs in our environment in Autum
What we want to know
-do all plants/trees drop their leaves
-do all leaves turn red/brown orange
This week the children were given iPads and supported to take photos of the many different trees within our school community and made a big discovery! Whilst they noticed the different colour leaves and that a lot of our trees were dropping them they also noticed that the orange trees leaves were still green, not dropping AND, they had oranges growing on them!
Can you believe the children took all of the below photos of the trees! Seeing the pure wonder at the natural world through a child’s eyes is genuinely inspiring and amazing!
This led to a visit to our community garden beds where the children engaged in explored what was growing using all of their senses (especially smell!).
Arlo: “I think that’s corn!”
Asher: “This one is not good. This is a small one, this is a biiiiig one! It has dangerous leaves”.
Amelia: “I think this one is lettuce!”
Arlo: “I like lettuce.”
Junior: “It smells. It smells like mint”.
This also led to a few visits to the MUDLA to check on our other living beings within the community.
Trajectories:
- The interest in the trees, bushes and veggie gardens is leading the inquiry project down an ecology focus – we will speak to Gerry McCarthy about the veggie gardens, how they are grown, what is done with them and discuss if we can plant some of our own veggies or herbs for our chef Angela to use in her cooking
- Bookmaking possibilities – focus on other areas of illustrations including emotions and movement lines
- Focus on self regulation strategies that suit of environment
- A visit on Friday from school students was a highlight for the children – look at more involvement with the school students as well as possible incursions/excursions
I think you have some future photographers with those beautiful images!
Harry has been speaking about autumn leaves this week, particularly when we drove down Frome Road near the Uni’s where all the leaves were dropping.