Snakes Room Happenings
Firstly, a warm welcome to the Jomgwong room, we have an exciting year ahead.
Starting with the launch, of our Acknowledgement of Country, ‘Empowering our Youth” program. This program will be embedded throughout our curriculum, so you will be hearing and seeing the Aboriginal dialect Yugambeh throughout the entire centre.
The first word you will often see is, Jomgwong, which means Snakes and if you hear your child say Jingeri, they are saying hello to you.
We will be preparing for our future learning, as well as extending further on what we learned in the dolphins (gowonda) room, last year.
Group time
We break up our learning group times for focus purposes.
Our first session focuses on greeting our friends with Jingeri as we mark the roll, as well as a letter, number, shape and colour recognition for the fortnight.
During this group time, I will begin to focus your children by asking them to sit still on their bottoms with legs crossed and hands in laps…. Good luck, I hear you say. Well, we have to start somewhere and it will become second nature for the children while sitting on the mat.
For our second group time, about 10 minutes in length, we will discuss our mornings play, focusing on some of the good and poor choices made during our free play. The children love a good story to finish up our mat time together. We use the strategy of the Aboriginal 8 ways of learning pedagogy Framework, where Story telling is conversational and engaging.
Resilience
Our ‘mindful Kids’ resilience program is embedded in every room.
We focus on emotions in this room ;
- Understanding them;
- Regulating them; and
- How our choices can impact on others.
The easiest way to teach the children what fills our heart with joy and what breaks our heart and creates a feeling of emptiness is with an invisible bucket. The bucket is symbolic for our hearts and is an instant visual response to our actions. Good and bad.
When someone is kind or does something thoughtful we feel loved ( the bucket is full of pom poms).
When someone does something mean or hurts us, we feel empty ( the bucket is emptied)
The children relate this to their actions and choices.
It’s important to teach children to own their choices and take responsibility, but not to blame.
(keep an eye out for our parent seminar later this year on the resilience program)
Importance of State of Mind
The Environment and Our state of Mind is everything, when it comes to retaining knowledge.
Learning through play helps develop children’s brains through imaginative, innovative, whole body experiences because we don’t learn through consumption, we learn through creativity.
Extending learning at home, engaging families, helps to consolidate teachings and is key to sustainability. Ask your child to teach you what they learnt that day.
We are consolidating the Alphabet letters at the moment, through the mystery, mobile letter box. The box is placed in a child’s locker for them to find upon leaving that day. The children are asked to find an item at home that starts with the letter coinciding with the letter of the week and place it in the box. During group time, the following day the child shows their friends what they found.
The lockers are adorned with the children’s photos, so they feel a sense of belonging and accompanied with their name for name recognition. We encourage you to aid your child to find their name and ask them to recognise the letters in their name.
Fine and Gross Motor skills
Fine motor activities in this room are enhanced through pincer grip art activities.
The children are loving the climbing challenges on equipment for balance and ball catching for hand and eye coordination.
That’s all from Mr John, Miss Sally and the Jomgwongs
See you next month for another exciting update on our learning.
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