Nina Marni Preschool Families,
Welcome to our Week 1 Blog!
To nurture each child’s wellbeing as they start their journey in preschool and re-connect as a community after the holiday period
We have been thrilled to welcome new families and welcome back our existing families after the holoiday period. It has been wonderful to see children settling in so well, showcasing their existing agency and sense of identity. We are also so happy and blessed to have Mrs Farah join our community a the new preschool teacher! Farah will be working every day (except Mondays) in preschool, and I will be there every day except Thursdays.
We have focused on getting to know each child through one-to one and small group and whole group interactions. Group games and music and movement have provided valuable opportunities to learn each others names, and deepen our sense of belonging to preschool. Community visits (to the library, log-park, playground, MUDLA, fish farm and assembly) have cerated opportunities to get to know each child’s interests and dispostions. We plan to embed daily community visits, to utilise Holy Family’s rich learning spaces and to support seamless transitions to reception.
Our scheduled Community Visits this term are:
Monday: MUDLA 10:30-11:30
Tuesday: Playground & Library 11-12
Wednesday: Billabongs & Garden beds. 10:30-11:30
Thursday: Oval/Basketball courts 10:30-11:30
Friday: Assembly(AM) Library (PM)
Organisation
You will notice that each child has a dedicated locker space. If you arrive to preschool after 8:30, please support your child to:
- Sign in with their name stone
- Place bag in locker
- Unpack drink bottle
- Hang coat or hat on clothes rack
Inquiry Project
Continuing on from our centre’s focus on embedding sustainable practices, and following our communities interest in living beings, we have started our inquiry into our natural world. We have shifted the focus from recylying onto the role we can play in preserving and contributing to a thriving natural world.
We discussed what it means to be living and compared items to provoke deepr thinking into this topic. We were very impressed with the ideas shared by our learners:
Jack- birds are alive, they fly
Livij: fish are alive, but some can die
Austin: people can be alive
Are plants alive?
Maddi: no they don’t move!
Asher: yes, they grow bigger and bigger
McKayla: we can water them
From our discussions, we discovered the following ideas and wonderings:
-do all living beings move?
-all living beings need water and food to survive
On Wednesday we started to collect data. During our community visit to the vegetable gardens and fish farm, children were invited to utalise digital technology (ipads) to capture what is living and non-living in our wider environment. After discovering some tomotoes and cauliflow in the gardensm we wondered what food we could grow?
What a wonderful opportunity to deepen our appreciation for living beings through this food harvesting experience. Some fresh celery from the gardens handed to our wonderful cook Angela!
Reminders
-if your child arrives prior to 8:30, please hang their bag on the hooks outside of preschool
-if your child is under 4 years, please check their booking to determine which room they are in. For example: if your child attends more than 2 days per week, they will have a set 2 days in preschool and will have their remainder bookings in one of our Long Day care rooms. You can check this on your Xplor app and ask our educators if unsure!
Trajectories:
-focus on the need for trees, plants.
-bean in a bag experiment
-self-portraits
-group/name games
-community visits