Friendship

               
Friendship is a major part of all our lives, it can begin as early as preschool and last a lifetime.Today as I observed the children I noticed many special friendships that clearly increase the happiness and strength  of those within the friendship. When we have our friend close by we feel confident and excited by the world. We take chances, look for fun and share our true selves. Here we can see Asher and Sam putting themselves out there together and dancing in front of the whole group (24 children). How confident and happy they seem together....
  
                          


Another friendship that is quite noticeable is that of Aiken and Gracie... these two characters are best buddies. They know a lot about each other and thrive in small group settings when they are together. They support each other during rest time and can be heard throughout the day engaging in reciprocal discussions about many interesting topics including.... but not limited to... the benefits of having a pet Piccachoo, how awesome Nerf Guns are and the characteristics of lions and tigers.

Friends are why most children look forward to coming to preschool,. in many ways preschool is all about navigating and building relationships... In the mornings Amelia can be heard talking about all the friends she hopes to see that day... Tegan, Tilly, Summer, Tamryn just to name a few. Friendships do not happen easily and require each person to give a lot of themselves to another, as a friend you are expected to listen, lead and be lead, comfort, support, encourage, trust, share and of course take turns at being the mummy/daddy/baby, policeman/fireman, pirate/fairy and/or good/bad dinosaur. Friends know each others favourite games and toys they know how to cheer each other up and make each other so excited that bursting is a possibility...



Finally we can see in this photo one very large friendship group to which each child belongs. We care about each other, support each other, share and know a lot about what games and toys we like most. We especially liked pretending to be puppies today after our visit from an adorable Cocker Spaniel ;-) It was a great feeling to get down with all my friends and put myself out there and sniff the ground...

The Telescope Car Launcher

From our observations of how popular jump cars are and how exciting throwing things of the Fort is we decided to try adding a 'launcher' to the Fort. This also came about from our discussions on Mary Poppins and how fascinated the children are with the Admiral and Chimney Sweeps cannonball battle. This morning I set about attaching this recycled piece of pipe to the top of the Fort rail. Firstly Aiken noticed me up on the fort and said: "Erin why are you up there thats only for kids, your too big" Well to his surprise I decided to slide down the slippery dip. He thought that was very funny... Now where was I.... ok so I am attaching the pipe when Obi approaches and begins climbing up.. with haste I might add... to see what I am up to, he exclaims excitedly 'a telescope, look guys we have a telescope' He then proceeds to look through the pipe, he is happy to find that it moves.




Next Malu and Conan climb up to the Fort with their cars in tow, Malu walks straight over to the telescope and runs his car through it watching as it launches and lands on the ground below, satisfied he slides down to repeat the process again. Conan also runs his car through the telescope...funny how it is no longer a telescope but a car launcher... Conan's car is much larger and has three cars attached so it goes zooming out the end of the 'telescope' and lands with a crash... We all exclaim 'woah' and I race of to get more cars to launch and some bean bags. Obi and Samantha discover that the telescope can also launch bean bags... what a fantastic piece of equipment this pipe turned out to be.



We were all having so much fun launching things out of the telescope pipe that we may have forgotten how to share and take turns, why is it when something is so exciting children tend to forget about those who are sharing the experience and making it such fun? The trouble began with a certain train of bigger faster cars....Conan and Malu, our jump car pro's are such good friends and mean each other no harm but it is hard when they both want the same car and the telescope at the same time..... My oh my.... well we all had to stop our fun while the two friends 'negotiated' and that is putting it nicely.. the outcome was that neither got the car and the telescope was abandoned.... perhaps this will be a lesson they will use the next time we play telescope jump cars...



Play provides children with a safe and familiar context to explore their interests, develop friendships, and build on their understanding of others. Through play children build friendships and learn how to maintain play with others, they build on their ability to share, negotiate and express ideas. Play provides children with skills for life and we as educators can create meaningful play situations for children to explore and develop these skills.



The addition of this simple piece of pipe created an exciting play situation that appealed to several children, they used this play setting to explore their imagination and test out ideas - will my car fit through here? This play experience built on Obi and Malu's friendship and provided Conan and Malu with a safe context to test their negotiation skills.

Mary Poppins

       

        

Recently I was inspired by my cousin, who is also a teacher, to do a Mary Poppins Performance. I was interested to see if children from generation 2000 are still entertained and interested in this classic musical. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they are all very interested....

  

We are lucky to have technology in our preschool, we use the projector and laptop to share images and short films. The large screen is quite impressive to most of the children and often can be a little bit distracting when we are trying to communicate about what is occurring on screen. This was a problem when introducing Mary Poppins, we tried to get the children to engage with the technology and respond to the film through dance and movement. They were so transfixed with the dancing and singing on screen that they did not want to get up and groove themselves.... It was interesting to see some children say: "Look what they're doing now" and then proceed to copy.. this was precisely what we wanted them to do.

 

The song 'Step In Time' with the chimney sweeps is the most popular and we all love dancing to this. We freely practice the movements seen on screen including: Lift your Knees Up, Flap Like a Birdy, Over the Rooftops, Link Your Elbows and Bob your Broom'.... Mary Poppins how ever has a few refined dance moves and for these we need to line up and work with an educator, Helen demonstrated how to do some delicate heel toe movements and bopping with our hands on our hips.

Working towards a clear goal (a performance) as a group gives the children a strong sense of purpose and provides each child with an opportunity to contribute to a project. The final performance gives children a great sense of achievement, increases their confidence and allows them to experience the satisfaction of working as a group. Obviously this performance will allow us to practice many of the creative arts: dance, movement, drama and song....It will also build our knowledge of this era when we explore what tasks a chimney sweep had to do at work, what they wore and where they lived. We also hope to learn how to sing 'Supercalafragalistic' a very fast paced and linguistically complicated song...

Any contributions parents can make to costumes or sets would be greatly appreciated... We need lots of little brooms...

Sun Bear Auction Day

Today saw us Auction of our two very special framed paintings, we began the bidding at $5 and the children went wild: Asher:"50 hundred dollars" They have a great desire to win and after yesterday's practice are well versed in what a high bid consists of.... Conan volunteered his mums money after careful consideration of the proces: "My mum says $10" he even raised the bid to $15.



We had some tough 'adult' competition today and the famous 'Spin Painting' was sold to Sheridan.. for $24... Next we started the bidding for our combined brush stroke painting... We even had a silent phone bidder... how mysterious. The phone bidder April won the 'brush painting' for $20...



Next was the raffle we took turns at drawing a ticket out of the basket and announcing the winner. Several children won prizes however there was not a prize for everyone... this raised some conflicting emotions in some and we found ourselves facing a common dilemma raised within group relations - fair vs unfair... a valuable lesson that we will revisit when emotions are not running so high.

                        

Face painting saved the day...phew, thank you to Nyassa for her mammoth effort in painting each child's face with love and care! We had a preschool full of dinosaurs, princesses, flowers, tigers, birdies and scary skeletons.

Roarrr say's Connan! 

What a great day we had and all for a great cause... we have raised over $220 for the Sun Bears. Thank you to everyone for your support.

Auction Time

Today we attempted our very first auction, we needed to practice for Thursday's big event 'The Sun Bear Auction Fundraiser'... Matilda and I set up the stage complete with bidding paddles, auction items, chairs, tables, auction hammers and value cards...

Summer was our Auctioneer,  she had a 'microphone' and introduced each item to be auctioned. Summer enjoyed making grand gestures and changing the tone of her voice to add an air of excitement... "Let the bidding begin" she exclaimed with a sweep of her arm across the audience. The context of the Auction room supported Summer in her role and engaged the other children in learning about Auctions. 

We as educators aim to provide children with real life experiences reflective of their communities both locally and globally. The Auction gave children a chance to experience an aspect of the 'adult world'. This context also supported children's mathematical understanding in a meaningful way. They explored the value of an item and this values relationship to money. The bidders had to engage with each other to make bids of higher value to ensure they won the item.

Winning the item was very exciting for the bidder and Auctioneer as we can see in the image above, Tegan is very animated. Tegan enjoyed the role of Auctioneer and especially like coordinating the items to be auctioned and passing them on to their rightful bidders. Tegan seemed to feel a sense of confidence when she announced: "to the gentleman down the front" "congratulations" This formal use of language is not expressed often and imparts on a child a great sense of mastery.

It is because we create these fun and meaningful experiences that children develop positive dispositions to learning. They see learning as fun and want to lead their own learning. The Auction experience taught children about the global community, about mathematics and formal language in a context that was fun and will later be easily drawn on when they have to apply such knowledge in another context. When we co-construct knowledge in a situation that produces strong positive emotions we are more likely to retain this knowledge.

Flower Fairy Pictures

The table was set with pretty things, flowers, ribbon, jewels and other trinkets. This was inviting and drew Charlotte and Senita over to the table where today fairies will be made... Helen suggested we go and collect some flowers to add to our fairies so we set of with our tools and found some lovely Dahlia's... Flowers seem to draw out an admiration from us all and Charlotte expressed this straight away, "oh this one is beeaauuuttiful..."



Senita was an expert scavenger and knew her way around the garden, she knew where to hold the stem to cut the flower and displayed a sense of confidence that could only come from experience in gardening... something I know she gets from gardening at home...



Here we are getting ready to draw our fairies, I guided the children on how to draw a round shape for the head, a long shape for the body, two small circles for the eye's and eye lashes of course. This demonstration gave the artists a starting point without limiting their creativity. Each fairy looks unique and has special features symbolic to the child and how they draw.



The Fairies evolved into dainty flower fairies with the addition of colour from shading with pencils, gluing: pettles, buttons, ribbon, pollen and even a few stems... The children took time and care in creating their fairies and enjoyed the whole process from start to finish. By combining drawing, colouring, and collage we are creating a multi-layered experience that reveals to children the vast array of possibilities available for expressing ideas and making meaning.

                             

Milly's Flower Fairy: Milly was very particular about her drawing and took 5 turns to get the head and the body the right shape. She carefully glued individual pettles on for the skirt and layed the hair with different colours.

                              

Charlotte's flower fairy: Charlotte added eye lashes, blush and fingers to her fairy. She took time to layer the dress with pettles and even added some pollen.

   

Senita's Flower fairy: Senita drew a very delicate fairy and took time to add colour and features, she created a line for the ground with a ribbon.