Where do crocodiles live?

One of the children asked me this after I read the story “A star-faced crocodile”. A great question to spark discussion amongst children. So I set up a small world play as an invitation to find out about crocodile habitat. 

Dinosaurs

Today the children had a visit from Melbourne Museums. They had the opportunity to observe , touch and feel life-sized replicas of dinosaurs. There were lots of conversations about how dinosaurs went extinct, what a paleontologist does, and the different names of dinosaurs. As an extension of this visit, my colleagues and I set up a dinosaur-themed play space for children to further expand their social construction of dinosaur-related knowledge. 

Face painting

One of my (many) talents is face painting! Although I’m not a professional, I love to do face painting for community events. This Easter I was invited to my colleague’s Kindergarten centre to face paint the children. Here are some photos of my designs.

Buddy Portraits

 At the start of the year, I mostly find that children need to get to know their peers and initiate new friendships. This is a lovely drawing activity that I did in 2021 and 2022 by pairing up two children who don't know each other. I have them sit across the table, facing each other and:

 1) tell each other their name 

2) tell each other their favourite colour 

3) draw their peer's portrait

Just a simple black sharpie and cardstock - what great results!

Have you filled a bucket today?

 As part of my journey to becoming a fully registered teacher in the state of Victoria, I had to conduct, evaluate and present an action research project. I chose to focus on social-emotional skills as many children required support in this area post covid. I selected the book "Have you filled a bucket today" as my focus book and consistently implemented the same language of "bucket filling" and "bucket dipping" to facilities children in understanding how their actions and words can affect others. We also created our own buckets and I set up a sorting activity where children identified bucket filling/dipping behaviour. Thie concept of the book is very simple and easy for children to understand. It was a 6 week teaching sequence - I did the project in Term 2 and continued the language for the rest of the year.

Initial thoughts and key concepts on the story

Our buckets!

Sorting activity

Drawing table doodles

 

The Calm Down Corner

 A large part of my early years curriculum focuses of social-emotional wellbeing for young children. Therefore, at the start of my career as a Kindergarten teacher (2020 - the year of covid!), I implemented "the calm down corner" as a space for children to go to when they were angry, sad, or upset. It took me a long time to teach the children the purpose of this corner but after about 3-4 months of consistency, they finally got it! I used lots of visual images, real-life examples and discussions at group times. This was a great way for me to teach emotional regulation and wellbeing. It is also a fantastic pre-cursor to school-readiness.

This space has books, a drawing board, fidget toys, soft cushions and sensory toys.