Little Fish Happenings
Different stages for different ages. There is never a dull moment in our room.
As Educators, we get to enjoy and observe the greatest milestones out of any other age group.
Social interactions, believe it or not begins with our bubs.
It occurs through;
- Group play;
- Waving hello and goodbye;
- Learning to use manners such as “please” and “Thank you”;
- Happily separating from parents;
- Mirror activities;
- peek-a-boo; and
- Singing songs.
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES
The first 12 months are amazing because so much happens.
There are a number of milestones that each baby will reach through their development, in a completely natural and continually surprising way.
In the first three months your baby develops strength in their neck and arms with lots of tummy play, they learn to open and close their fists and move their arms and legs when excited.
At 4-6 months they are learning to reach out and manipulate the world around them. They are mastering those amazing tools…their hands!
At 6 – 12 months they are on the move and you’ve probably been noticing a lot of big changes.
You may be amazed at how fast your baby is turning into an independent little person who is mobile, plays, giggles and communicates in their own unique language.
You should be getting a sense of your baby’s personality by now – quiet or outgoing, calm or adventurous.
An you no doubt have noticed that your baby already has a few favourite books, stuffed animals, toys, songs and game
As we have different age groups of babies in the little fish room, we work on their individual development to encourage them reaching their developmental milestones.
We do this by observing each child, documenting their actions and abilities, their strengths and what challenges they are ready for.
The activities we plan are developmentally appropriate and goals are set for the child to achieve.
This month we are documenting;
- crawling;
- rolling over;
- sitting up;
- tummy time;
- pulling up to standing position;
- walking with walkers;
- balance;
- walking without assistance; and
- self-feeding skills.
Achievements
All our children are on track with the gold coast developmental health check list.
We now have a clever little crawler, two of our bubs are learning to sit up unassisted, holding their bottles and eating more solid food. We have children learning to pull themselves to standing position with the aid of furniture, walking in walkers and first steps were taken unassisted. Yep! We are just as proud as the parents!
We also celebrated three of our children turning ONE!
SELF HELP SKILLS
As the children transition from the high chair to the table we have been encouraging the children to;
- learn how to feed themselves using cutlery;
- washing their hands and faces with face washers; and
- packing away after meal times.
The children love to be independent and do things without educators’ assistance.
Don’t let them fool you at home, they are very capable little humans.
Allowing them to self help, forms solid foundations for confident, successful children.
GROUP TIME
The beauty of our children being different ages is their sleep times differ.This gives us the opportunity to work one on one with the children and do multiple group times throughout the day.
We learn
- body parts and facial expressions through mirror play;
- read stories and nursery rhymes with lots of hand actions;
- encouraging the children to follow along with the action;
- We also learn about colours through flash cards and objects in the room; and
- we count and teach animals with hand puppets and sounds.
FINE MOTOR THROUGH ART
To provide a sense of the weather, we have started a weather wheel inside our room to expand on weather changing with some great involvements from our little friends.
We are learning about different weather changes and we have applied our fine motor skills to create some interesting art for our weather wheel.
Children have enjoyed making clouds, rain drops and umbrellas to decorate our weather wheel.
Throughout this fun-loving , exciting activity, children are developing their fine motor skills, learning to hold paint brushes, by practising the pincher grip.
Shape sorting, eating independently holding cutlery, painting, play dough and grip toys all increase fine motor and manipulative development.
GROSS MOTOR SKILLS
With a lot of the children progressing with their developmental milestones and learning to walk we have been exploring our gross motor skills both on the veranda and out in the big yard.
Veranda play
The children have been exploring a range of different activities on the veranda to stimulate gross motor development, such as
- the balance beam;
- sea-saws;
- walkers;
- stepping stones;
- catching a ball;
- running races; and
- riding bikes.
Big Yard
Out in the big yard the children really get to challenge themselves;
- climbing up and down the fort;
- sliding down the slide;
- climbing in and out of the sandpit; and
- climbing through the tunnel,
Allowing the children to explore the big yard gives them great confidence, builds their independence and develops resilience by being brave.
EVENTS
We have been very busy over the past few weeks with three fun events in centre, we celebrated;
- Naidoc week, which gave us the opportunity to extend on our cultural teachings;
- State of Origin, which opened up games of ball skills and fun bantering between teams; and
- Pyjama Day; a day in your pjs, hanging out with friends.
Acknowledgment of country
Naidoc week celebrations was the perfect introduction, in engaging in a variety of experiences, immersing our little fish bubs in our cultural background.
We created:
- a dot painting fish using red, yellow and black paint;
- sand art drawing;,
- indigenous symbols;
- stone paintings; and
- creating the aboriginal flagwith red, yellow and black paper and hand prints.
Singing and dancing to aboriginal songs preparing for a group performance enabled us to practise hand movements and co-ordination.
Listening to tunes “Inanay” and the wiggles version of “Taba Naba style” repetitively, not only embedded the words for the children but for us as well. Nothing like going home and still singing the tunes, some songs are just so catchy.
Dancing is a fun way of developing gross motor, coordination, memory and confidence.
We joined the older children for a special performance of ‘Inanay’ and I have to say, our little friends rocked it and stole the show.
Until next month, that is all from Miss Nadia and Miss Roshin
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