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!
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.
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| Initial thoughts and key concepts on the story |
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| Our buckets! |
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| Sorting activity |
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.
After listening to the story, "Tiddalick the Frog," I set up this life cycle activity as an extension to their learning in terms of science.
A Kinder Agreement is something I do at the start of every year. Instead of asking children "what rules should we have at Kinder?" I ask "how can we all be happy in the Kinder room?"
This is an excellent discussion for children to understand the behavioural expectations from teachers as well as their peers.
I love to integrate exploratory, problem-solving play within my program. This tinkers table is an excellent way to do so. It comprises of old electronics, old mobile phone, an old radio that I have unscrewed and allowed the children to look closely at all the different parts inside, take it apart and (perhaps) put it back together again using screwdrivers, hammers, pliars and similar tools. Thank you to my centre director Jessica for giving me a small budget and allowing me to purchase these tools from our local hardware store. The great thing about this area is that I kept out actual hardware tools and not the toy ones.
Children are curious by nature and by providing them the tools and materials to explore you will be encouraging them to become ‘tinkerers’ as well as developing their fine motor skills, problem solving abilities and social skills. Tinkering involves experimenting with authentic tools to help a child understand how things work. Tinkering definitely supports learning through doing and teaches children valuable lessons by helping them develop fine motor skills, problem solving abilities and peer relationships. Tinkering is important because it can help children understand how things are made, enables children to have focused and unstructured time to explore and test ideas, and it’s at the heart of invention.
When one of my young learners brought in some lavender flowers for me from her garden, I thought it would be nice to set up a purple-themed painting area. Here it is!
In Melbourne when the winters are long and harsh, I am always excited for spring time. Here is a space where children can engage in observational painting.
A large part of our early years curriculum is using the child's voice within our program. Here is a dramatic play area that my co-educator Sai and I set up. This space initially stemmed from our Term 1 unit "All About Me". Children spoke about their friends, their families and where they lived. Children talked about which street they lived on.This led to the question: who lives in our neighbourhood? One lovely little girl said "a man on a bike brings us food" She meant Uber eats! Hahah don't you just love what kids say! Another child said that he saw the ambulance drive past. We continued to talk about more community helpers and that is how we set up this Firefighters dramatic play area. We had costumes, helmets, a water hose and lots of buildings on fire!
The benefits of dramatic play include:
As part of my job being a 4yo Kindergarten teacher, I need to incorporate 'school-readiness' skills within my program. Here is one example of an early literacy activity that I have set up. Children need to categorize curvy letters and straight letters. Great to do during Term 1!
My colleague made these beautiful paint brushes with the leaves we found around our Kindergarten. The children painted with them but they didn't last long!
Some may argue not to use food for play. However, I think it provides a different dimension to learning. Here I have used juices and spices like saffron and cinnamon to made paint for the children to explore how we can we colour from plants.
A discussion during group time to begin our learning during Space Week. I circled the keywords and we then made our own class story!
A wonderful activity that I set up during Term 1 revolves around families. This is a great opportunity to explore diversity and teach children about rainbow families. The children then drew pictures of their family members and took them home.
Another lovely space in my Kinder room is this felt storyboard. Children have the opportunity to create their own picture stories.
When one of my Kinder children brought in a honeycomb from her very own bee farm, it sparked a myriad of learning experiences and a month-long project-based learning. We began by setting up this amazing beehive play space. A huge thank you to Sai for painting and setting ALL of this up!
For this event, I just HAD to read the story "The Dot" to the children. It is a beautiful story about creativity, encouragement and not giving up. Here you can see two examples of artowork. One is a collaborative, recycled artwork with bottle caps. The other is dot painting done individually by the kids.
"Find the missing number" is a great school-readiness activity when I was teaching the number line, before/after numbers to my Kinder children.
A fantastic way to incorporate mathematical learning of shapes into play. Here are two examples.
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| Using a hammer and thumb pins on a corkboard |
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| Using magnetic shapes on a whiteboard |
As a result of the aftermath of Covid-19 lockdowns in Melbourne, when children returned back to Kindergarten, I noticed that many of them lacked the fine motor skills that they would have otherwise developed. Therefore, in response, I implemented a program called "Finger Gym" that focused on fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, scissor skills and concentration. Finger Gym was also a valuable pathway towards developing finger muscles and pre-writing skills.
Picking bottle caps with tongs 
Threading beads onto skewers 
Rubber bands and thumbpins
A colaborative activity after I read the story "Dear Zoo" to the children. They each took turns at building a zoo for the animals.
An extension of our dinosaur play area when I heard a child say "my dinosaur is hurt, I need to take him to the hospital." Isn't it great when children direct their own learning?
