NURSERY
Nursery have had a very busy week. Opportunities for children to work on their social skills were abundant and ongoing throughout the week. Indoors and out, our program enabled children to engage with one another, whether it was with one child or in small groups. In working with the children, teachers served as role models in various situations. Teachers are supportive and protective of all the children as they learn and grow. Children must have ongoing opportunities for social experiences as well as time and space to play alone if that is their choice. By respecting children's choices within our environment, they are learning to take responsibility for themselves and develop inner controls.
Our focus story this week was “The Kissing Hand” by Audrey Penn. It is a story about a raccoon named ‘Chester’. Chester is afraid of his first day at school. This is where Chester’s mum comes to the rescue. Chester’s Mum kisses him in the palm of his hand leaving an imaginary heart in his palm. This heart travels up his arm and his Mum’s love and protection settles in his heart. From then on whenever Chester felt scared he remembered the kiss on the palm of his hand.
When Chester’s Mum looked sad after dropping him off at school he ran back and kissed the palm of her hand and gave her the same message.
This is a delightful story that nursery children can engage with and relate to. Please enjoy some of the activities we did this week with Chester and “The Kissing Hand”.
RECEPTION
It has been wonderful, this week, to see how eloquent the children are becoming at recognizing and sharing with us how they feel. They begin each day by placing a coloured spot on our self-registration board and most children are coming to school telling us that they feel calm (green), happy (yellow) or full of love (pink). They have even begun to change their coloured feelings spots during the day, showing us if something has upset them or they are no longer sad and feel happy once again. It has been wonderful to watch them become so confident at naming their emotions.
Our focus story of the week has been, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By Carol McCloud. We have had some wonderful conversations with the children over the course of the week about the importance of kindness and compassion. They had lots of fabulous ideas about how to fill their buckets by carrying out acts of kindness. These are a few of their ideas:
- I helped a friend in the nursery because he was scared. I held his hand so he’s not sad (Alexia)
- I will make a car out of paper and give it to mamma (Mark)
- I will give mummy a hug (George)
- I will give baby a kiss (Tsubasa)
- Yuto said thank you to Miss Nastya for helping him on the bus when he did not feel well (Yuto)
- (Andrei) I say hello to Igor (his security guard at the apartment block where he lives)
In Mathematics this week we have been learning the language of capacity by filling containers. It has been so much fun! The children are beginning to tell us whether the containers are full, nearly full, half full and empty. Their favourite capacity word this week has been, overflowing! There were many squeals of delight as beans and rice spilled over the rims of their containers.
The children have done a lot of mark making over the last few weeks and this week they have suddenly become interested in writing their names in English using their name cards. We are working hard on correct letter formation and the children have been so proud of their achievements and have been placing their work all around the classroom for their friends to see. The children have also enjoyed exploring the different sounds made from our percussion instruments. Timur made the most wonderful conductor as they played.
Another exciting learning challenge this week came in the form of creating a robot from cardboard boxes. The children worked so cooperatively as a team, working together to solve problems such as how to attach the head to the body and creating the perfect sized hole to allow them to wear the robot as a costume. Lots of mathematics was involved as they measured lengths of tape they needed to attach the various robot body parts together. Our robot has now become a firm friend in the class and the children treat it gently, taking turns to wear it so that it does not break. Miss Kristina and I could not be prouder of them!
