Group 1

In our youngest group, we laugh, we whisper, we sing, we scream, we sit, we jump, we eat, we learn, we play. We love!

What happens in Group 1?

We have introduced JAM into Group 1 – which stands for ‘Just a Minute’. JAM is a time where the children can sit or lay down for one minute in complete silence (we’ve pushed it to three minutes on the children’s insistence, as a compromise from their demands of fifty minutes or even the entire day being in silence!) After an exuberant and energetically spent out-time, it’s a great way for the children to calm their minds and bodies and makes an easier transition into the calmer needs of in-time.

Maths

Our focus for maths this term is to represent numbers in a range of ways and recognise the relationship they have to our everyday life. This includes measurements in both cooking and creative arts, as well as our everyday activities.

We aim to make visible to the children the strategies they use to solve problems in order to understand that there are many ways to arrive at an answer, that also relates to our theme.

Through our maths experiences, we aim to promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Our groups are often small and we will continue to use our (non-competitive) maths games from last year as well as new ones.

English/Literacy

We have continued our reading in the mornings, which is a fantastic opportunity for parents to connect with their children’s leaning and to mingle with other families.

Each day we will separate into two literacy groups with Bea taking the younger group to practise letter recognition and phonics games, while Andy’s group will be developing our blends through writing and games. These groups are frequently split into two again to accommodate for all the children’s stages of development.

Arts and crafts

It is a lot of fun working with children and art. We have been looking at perspective and intention of artists.

We have developed our pictures to be more intricate as we look at art and look at how many things are represented in such detail. We also discussed how an artist may evoke the audience to use their other senses such as smell, taste, touch and sound.

The whole group worked extremely hard and produced works of art that had us smelling everything from spaghetti bolognaise to flowers.

Cooking/HSIE/Science

With our new classroom comes a fully functional stove and oven! Cooking will be part of our planning for each week as we follow the children’s interests, which seems to be lemonade this week!

We are introducing literacy and maths into the process as we record procedures and measure our ingredients.

Music/HSIE

We are singing with the children everyday, to bring them together and build confidence within the group.

We aim to introduce concepts such as the colour of music and using music to communicate as part of our theme.

Group challenges

For group challenges we tried to make our way over the grass using two planks of wood, three paint tins and one pair of stilts. This proved difficult as the whole group had to work together without stepping on to the grass.

The group worked well together to improvise and figure out the best strategy. This was an extremely difficult task and I was proud of everyone that gave it a go.

Projects

Recently group one started their own restaurants. The process of these restaurants evolving has been a fascinating exercise in dreaming, implementing, compromising, trialling, sharing, chatting, building and collaborating ideas.

Some ideas worked and some are a work in progress, some just didn’t work at all. The process however is all that seemed to matter.

Excursions

Group 1 ventured to the Royal Botanic Gardens in the city for a day of Dr Seuss’ ‘The Lorax’ exploration. We drank and played at the huge fountain and bubblers; ate morning tea underneath some beautiful trees; we spotted a blue tongue lizard sunning himself. Even the walk to and from the toilet was an adventure, with a strip of stunning, scented flowers lining the path.

Then our tour guide Philippa arrived and off we sat to read The Lorax. Sat? Not us, we acted it out! There were the Truffula Trees (standout performances by Paul and Katerina); the brown bar-ba-loots headed by Chief Bar-ba-loot Andy; the humming fish led by Jenny; the Swomee Swans chiefed by Brooke; Owen played the Once-ler and Hannah was the Lorax.

What a treat for the business people on their lunch breaks to see us swaying, stomping, flapping and acting!

How does Kinma prepare preschool children for the move to primary school?

Please see our transition from preschool page