We would like to welcome back all our families to Term 2 – and we look forward to another term full of exploration, creative thinking, socialisation and most importantly FUN!
I would like to say thank-you to all our families who attended the extraordinary working bee and assisted in the general tidying of the grounds, cementing in our new blackboards and moving the veggie beds. We are thrilled with the end result and it was wonderful to see our kinder community so actively involved in the continual progression of our beautiful grounds renovation.
What a busy last week of term we had with a very exciting visit from the Easter bunny. The children loved working cooperatively in order to discover all the plastic Easter eggs that the bunny hid around the yard for us to find. It was with great surprise and excitement that we also discovered he had left each of us a special treat in our decorated Easter baskets. It was fantastic to observe the children working together and supporting each other to discover the plastic eggs. This experience while fun (and yummy!) also assisted the children to explore concepts such as working as a team, sharing and verbalising their ideas and observations as they hunted together.
During Term 2 we will continue to support newly emerging social groups, friendships and interactions. Our focus will be on assisting the children to settle and explore experiences together and to continue exploring their developing negotiating and turn taking/sharing skills. We continue to link these concepts and experiences back to our Term 1 exploration of friendship and ‘the rainbow fish.’ We continue to encourage the children to actively use their verbal expressive language skills to ask others if they can join their play or subsequently to invite others into their play. Based on our observations and discussions with the children we will also explore the concepts of identity and self throughout the term. We will used a variety of mediums to explore representing ourselves and exploring the similarities and differences we discover in our community.
Throughout Term 2 the children will also participate in a term long yoga incursion each Thursday afternoon which will be taken by Kathryn from ‘Melbourne Kids Yoga.’ This is the third year Kathryn will be working with our kindergarten and she brings a lovely mix of fun, stretching, relaxation and calm into her program. We also look forward to continuing to include these concepts and experiences into our general program.
Term 2 is once again shaping up to be a busy period for all the teaching team at Elonera. We have a strong belief in the concept of ‘life long learning’ for our individual and team teaching practices. I will be attending a professional development session run by the Department of Education and Training in regards to the ‘Transition to School’ process and changes that have occurred in the relevant processes. I will also be participating in a 2 day mentorship program with the Victorian Institute of Teaching which is designed to extend my skills in mentoring provisionally registered graduate teachers to move to full teaching registration. We are lucky at Elonera to have two very passionate and engaged early childhood graduates in Ellie and Kaitlyn and they have both been a fantastic addition to our teaching team. It is an extremely time consuming and challenging assessment the graduate teachers must undertake to move to full registration and I am honoured and looking forward to supporting Ellie and Kaitlyn throughout this period. Lynne continues to immerse herself in her passion for music and movement in early childhood and is engaging in a variety of courses and theory based practice. Joanna also continues to undertake her Diploma and the feedback from her trainer is always overwhelmingly positive, and we are all proud of her hard work and achievements.
For more detailed descriptions and photos of the children engaged in their play and the specific experiences we are exploring please refer to our floorbook. Please also feel free to approach Lynne or myself at anytime for a chat or to discuss the individual learning and development of your child.
Thank-you, Gina
