Babies

Often we have parents come to Pre School to visit us.  Yesterday Douglas’ baby brother Mitchell was here with his Mum.  We know from past visits that Jake loves babies and he was eager to hold him while Douglas read him the story of Five Little Ducks.  Mitchell is extremely co-operative!

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A special moment where older children have an opportunity to care for younger children.  It is how we learn about the importance of COMMUNITY not to mention practising our ‘reading’ skills!

Maybe this is what prompted the playing in the home corner on Thursday when no one has used it all term!

Learning German

Today we had our first session in German.  We are very lucky to have a parent who is going to come in and teach us once a week.   We know that German is ‘about talking’.  Today we listened to German Nursery Rhymes and learnt the word for ‘mother’ and ‘father’.  We  focused on the rhyming words and the language sounds of a different language.  We also used the pictures for clues as to what the rhyme was going to be about.  (All good strategies for learning to read in the future.)   Each week I will post what we have learnt so that families can keep up with their children.

father         vater         (farter)

mother       mutter     (mooter)

Learning another language creates a formal time where the teachers can become learners with the children and model what good learning looks like.

Thanks Monika.  We are looking forward to our future lessons and to learning all about Germany and its culture.

 

Threading

One of the children brought some threading they had done at home to share.  We decided we would all like to do some threading.  We all love threading and we like to do it around the table altogether.  We also chat as we go – comparing our progress.  Luke said to the other children, “How did you go at the pool?”  He was commenting on how two children went to the pool after pre school last week.

We have threaded foam packaging with needles……….

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We have threaded pasta………….

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We have threaded beads on pipe cleaners………

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and we have threaded cereal onto edible necklaces.

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And tomorrow they want to do some more threading   …… so I am going to google threading for some new ideas.

What we (the teachers) have noticed about having small groups of children this year, is the rate they zoom through the activities.  What we would normally have out for two – three  weeks is lasting only a two – three days!  They are going to keep us busy!

Three Jelly Fish

I inherited this song from the previous teacher.  The children all love it and want to play every day.

We cover the children with see through coloured scarves and sing:

Three Jelly Fish

Three Jelly Fish

Sitting on a rock

Sitting on a rock

One fell off

One fell off

Two Jelly Fish……….

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Workers

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The children all worked very hard to paint the cubby house with water yesterday.  This used to be a favourite activity of last years group.  Cooper (from last years group) came to visit today and inspired a whole new group of painters.  Thanks Cooper!

“We are working very hard.”

“I’ll paint this bit.”

“Can you help me get my bucket up the ladder?”

Some children are reluctant to paint at the easels at this stage of the year but this activity sure gets them painting!

 

 

 

 

Bubble Painting

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe loved bubble painting this week.  It is a great activity to do while the weather is warm outside because it is very messy.  We mixed food dye, detergent and water in containers.  The children then blew through the straw until the bubbles rose above the cup.  Then you put the paper on the bubbles to make a print.  We practised blowing through the straw and talked about the consequences of sucking instead.  No one ended up with a coloured mouth!  Next week we will follow this up with some bubble blowing if the wind stays away.  Blowing and sucking can be very calming activities for children.

Games

We are very tired after lunch and so the teachers organise some board games for us to play in small groups.  We play Snap, Memory, DOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAominoes and BINGO.  We are learning to visually discriminate between pictures and we are learning to recognise many animal names.  We know the words ‘same’ and ‘different’ and ‘pair’ and ‘match’.

Gardening

We have been looking after our strawberry patch this week.  The strawberries that were growing dried out in the extreme heat and the stems died.  We got scissors and cut them off so that new strawberries can grow.  Hopefully we will be able to pick some soon for morning tea.

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Tennis

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Douglas brought a tennis racquet to Pre School this week.  We tied two tennis balls in trees with stockings for the children to hit.  This stimulated lots of ball play.  We tried baseball and cricket.  Lilly played with a spiky ball and Jake loved the velcro ball set.  After we finished playing outside Mrs Grant held the stocking with the ball up high and it swang like a pendulum.  We were counting the swings.  This is great to develop eye tracking skills.

Cuddles the Bear

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Cuddles the bear is very popular.  He goes home each night with a child and has a ‘sleep over’.  The children and their families record what Cuddles gets up to at their house in “Cuddles’ Book’ and we share it with the group each morning.  This is a way for children to share things about their families with the group.  Cuddles will also visit some interesting places during the year and we can mark them on a map.  When we do this we are learning more about the world around us.