The children had two Humpty Dumpty challenges this week. One was to build a wall, out of various wooden blocks that would hold Humpty. Humpty found it very challenging to balance, and he fell off most walls, but we looked at the structure of the walls to see if they stayed standing when Humpty fell. Our super K engineers did a wonderful job! The second challenge was throwing and catching eggs outside, trying not to let the eggs break. The children increased the distance between themselves until eventually, all of the eggs met their fate! Thank goodness they were hard boiled and didn't make too much of a mess :)
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STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Each week, the Kindergarten children are given various challenges which incorporate these elements. They are the thinkers, the problem solvers, the engineers, the communicators - and they just love the challenges! Last week, to coincide with the nursery rhyme of Hickory Dickory Dock, the children were asked to design and create a clock. We discussed the different features of a clock and looked at some photos of Grandfather clocks, as in the rhyme. Their design challenge had 3 criteria: It had to have a face, hands, and be able to hold an elephant! (In this case, it was a huge teddy pretending to be an elephant). All of the students managed to meet the challenge where we were so impressed with their independent thinking, their problem solving skills, and their perseverance. We ended up with some very unique, strong clocks and the students were all so pleased with themselves. In Maths this week we have been making equal groups. We have made farmer's paddocks with equal numbers of animals and rooms with equal numbers of people and we have made pictures of equal groups on the Kid Pix computer program.
During Term 1 we do a lot of work on phonological awareness. This involves identifying rhyming words, identifying the starting sound, ending sound or middle sound of a word, clapping syllables, phoneme addition and deletion (adding a sound or taking a sound away from a word) and segmenting words into the sounds. Developing good phonological awareness sets the foundations for successful reading and writing. We introduce phonological awareness through, games, songs, stories and rhymes.
Class merit awards are awarded each week to students who have demonstrated a particular understanding of the school rules of being Fair, Inclusive, Safe and Honest through their actions and behaviour. They are also awarded for achievement and effort. When your child receives two green merit awards, they will then receive a School Bronze Award at the Thursday whole school assembly. After four awards, a Silver, and after six, a Gold School Award. We will notify you if and when your child reaches one of these special awards so that you can attend the relevant whole school assembly should you wish to. Congratulations to our award winners of weeks three and four!
PMP stands for Perceptual Motor Program. This is where children are experiencing a range of fundamental movement skills along with developing body and spatial awareness. Our PMP time is Monday afternoons where all Kindergarten join together to rotate in five groups. Helpers are always appreciated. Again, the children were totally engaged and moved very smoothly between groups. We were super impressed - yaaaay Kindy!
Each Friday morning, all of Kindergarten join together for a Maths rotation. The children are split into five groups and rotate through various activities focusing on whole number. This week, our first rotation, saw the students learning to write numbers with correct formation, interact with a counting app on the ipads, play "roll and take" with dice and unifix cubes, play dominoes with some Year 6 helpers and roll a 12 sided dice on the parachute with Mr West. We were very impressed with how engaged the children were and how smoothly they moved between each group. If you are ever free on a Friday morning, feel free to pop in and help out with number groups - as you can see - it's a lot of fun!
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Mrs Cathy West, Mrs Clare Dunn and Mrs Natalie Fairweather enjoy sharing learning from the Kindergarten day with you. Please comment so that we know we are reaching you :o) Archives
December 2017
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