The forest is a special place which has become deeply rooted in the identity of the Early Years Centre learning community. Each class spends weekly time dedicated to exploring the outdoor environment where children are able to learn with and…
As a class we read and enjoyed Julia Donaldson’s picture book ‘Stick Man.’ The rhyme within the text is simple and repetitive, allowing the children to join in with the ‘reading’ and predict and identify rhyming words within the story….
Within our year-long unit of inquiry, Sharing the Planet, we are inquiring into the different animals in our lives and our responsibility in caring for living things and the environment. Last week the children were given some recycling materials and they began…
In our year-long unit of inquiry, ‘How the World Works‘, we are inquiring into how life is affected by the seasons. We set up a learning experience for the children connected to this unit, which was to make window hangings…
To invite close exploration, investigation and imagination we invited the children to look at some natural materials and beautiful sensory jewels. It was wonderful to observe the creativity and creative expression when the children worked together, representing their ideas with the objects provided on a large mirror.
Natasha: I’m making an island, a big island.
Mats: I’m making a pattern.
Inga: A red heart and a green heart, there you go Natasha. This one is so pretty, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …. Do you need this?
Natasha: Yes I do, I like that one. There is much room here on my island, look I’m making a big island.
The children became inspired by such intriguing objects and it was fascinating to observe how they used their developing language skills to communicate and work together to share ideas and solve problems.
For Joao this was a valuable opportunity to count the objects in English and to sort them according to various attributes. The children used mathematical language in their play like ‘big’, ‘small’ and ‘pattern’.
Natasha, Inga and Mats were able to tell their own stories about the objects and what they might represent in their imagination, providing them with a rich language experience.