Prep | Pre-Kindergarten News

Unit of Inquiry

We continue to explore the Unit of Inquiry ‘Sharing the Planet’. We have been exploring three lines of inquiry:

Living things grow and change over time (Change)

Relationships between living things and their environment (Connection)

Our responsibility towards living things (Responsibility)

In the past few weeks, we have been exploring the living things in our environment. The boys have designed and planted their own ‘Pre-Kindergarten Vegetable Garden’. While engaged in this process, they made predictions about how the plants would change over time, thought about what our responsibilities are for our garden (including sustainability with water) and how we have an impact on our garden. Our garden has also helped us develop new vocabulary such as: sustainability, seedling, roots, and trellis. After we finished planting, the boys were responsible for creating labels for the garden so that we could remember what was going to grow in each place.

We are encouraging each student to reflect on their own responsibilities in the environment and how they can take action to care for living things.

Literacy

We have been thinking about the beginning sounds /d/, /o/, /g/, /r/ in words such as dog, rain, gap. The boys have been listening to spoken words and identifying which beginning sound it starts with. When looking at the pictures, the students have been able to:

• Identify the picture
• Stretch the word out into individual sounds
• Put the sounds back together into a word (blend the three sounds together)

Some of the words that we have been stretching out and blending back together include dip, rat, bat, mat, jog.

The students were introduced to the letter sound /l/. They practised Identification of /l/ as a beginning sound. Following this, students have been learning to identify the end sounds /g/ and /t/ and linking the sounds to corresponding letters with the aid of pictures.

Our focus picture books have been: Noni the Pony Goes to the Beach and Pig the Pug. These stories allow us to explicitly teach key vocabulary, written print knowledge and our comprehension skills.

How can you help your child to consolidate these skills?

• Read a variety of picture books each day and ask your child to retell the story (what happens in the beginning? What happens in the middle of the story? How does the story end?)
• Play games that involve rhyming words – this will help your child to think about the sounds that are in different words and how words work
• Encourage your child to identify the initial sound in simple words

Father’s Day Celebration

On Monday the 5th of September we welcomed the Pre-Kindergarten Father’s for a special picnic lunch and activities in our learning environment.

Some of our favourite parts of the celebrations were:

Josiah: “Daddy played with me with the straws. We made the Eiffel Tower. It was bigger than me. It was nice to have dad here.”

Andreas: “I liked to make the gingerbread man with my dad because it was so fun. I made a monster cookie. I used buttons and some melting chocolate.

Charles: “Eating food from my home. We had a different kind of croissant and he bought juice and a banana. We played in the sandpit.”

Marcus: “Making a tie so daddy could wear it to work. It made me happy because he played with me.”

Declan: “I played soccer because it is fun. We make a tie, I drew my dad and decorated it with silver paper and put a fluffy thing on the top.”

Joseph: “Making a paper aeroplane because we are going on a aeroplane. I liked drawing the car.”

Thank you to our wonderful dads for spending the afternoon with us!

Still Life Drawings

“In creating still-life portraits, children form an intimate relationship with their subject. They spend time looking closely, aligning themselves with the subject of their work. They then translate their understanding of the subject to paper, first sketching with a black pen and then adding colour.” Ann Pelo: The Languages of Art Inquiry based Studio Practices in Early Childhood Settings.

One of the regular learning experiences offered in Pre-Kindergarten is still-life drawings. A variety of items connected to our unit of inquiry are displayed for our young learners to investigate. They are encouraged to use their senses and observational skills carefully to look at the form of the object and to verbalise their thoughts.

Engaging in this learning experience can

• help strengthen memory
• develop fine motor skills
• develop spatial awareness
• develop concentration and focus
• develop observational skills
• develop visual communication skills
• help grasp concepts such as depth and scale
• help understand the outline, structure and form of objects

During our open classroom, the boys had the opportunity to invite their parents to join them in this learning experience.

Darwin: “They look like sunflowers, but smaller.”

Andy: “Inside they are orange, outside they are yellow. Some are different.”

Milan: “I can see circles and star flowers.”

Music

Pre-kindergarten students have continued their inquiry into the stand alone unit of inquiry presented by Musica Viva called Timmy and the Breakfast Band.  They have made connections between music and emotions, music and movement and folk music using the Musica Viva stimulus material. Together we have explored the concepts of connection, change and perspective. Together we have made connections between instrumental tone quality and sound effects to create a scene as a Foley Artist. Through movement activities they are developing their ability to demonstrate the Music Elements of Beat, Rhythm, Tempo and Dynamics. They are continuing to develop their singing as we begin to learn repertoire for the Christmas Service.