Australia

November 3, 2012
This is my last term at Hawthorndene Kindy and already time is going by too fast, in just a few weeks I will have to say goodbye to all the wonderful children, families, friends and collegues that I have had the pleasure of meeting over the year. My experience has been incredible and one which will for ever change my life. I have a bug inside me now that wants to travel and see the world.

This might be my last post of pictures at kindy but the memories will last a lifetime. Please enjoy the pictures of some of the wonderful learning occurring in our beautiful outdoor setting. One thing I will miss most, is coming to work each morning, seeing the sun shining on the flowers and plants in the garden, hearing the birds sing, and spending my days outside under the gum trees, laughing, playing, guiding and educating curious young children in a magical outdoor environment.

This is the perfect place for a child to learn about the world,  build social skills, inquire, wonder and most importantly do what children do best PLAY!!!!!!

October 14, 2012

Letters from Hawthorndene Kindy 

for Mrs. Meredith, Grace and all the room three children at Inglewood Heights

The children at kindy have been drawing you all some very lovely pictures, they are eager to learn more about you and the things you have been doing in Canada. We look forward to hearing back from you all. 

Click on the first photo to start the slide show. I have also included some pictures of the kindy so you can see how lovely it looks in the spring time with everything growing and blooming and the sun shinning.

September 1, 2012

The first day of Spring!!!

Today is the first day of Spring in Australia, a time of new beginnings, sunny weather, flowers blooming and the start of some nice weather. It has been a long raining winter, yes there is winter down under in Adelaide. It even snowed one night in the hills last week. But with the start of a new season comes many more exciting adventures to be had outside. Here are some pictures of spring around the kindy this week.

Spring 

By  Karla Kuskin

I’m shouting

I’m singing

I’m swinging through trees

I’m winging skyhigh

With the buzzing black bees.

I’m the sun

I’m the moon

I’m the dew on the rose.

I’m a rabbit

Whose habit

Is twitching his nose.

I’m lively

I’m lovely

I’m kicking my heels.

I’m crying “Come Dance”

To the fresh water eels.

I’m racing through meadows

Without any coat

I’m a gamboling lamb

I’m a light leaping goat

I’m a bud

I’m a bloom

I’m a dove on the wing.

I’m running on rooftops

And welcoming spring!

 The climbing tree.

 Golden Wattle is Australia's floral emblem.  It is a tree which flowers in late winter and spring, producing a mass of fragrant, fluffy, golden flowers.

 Our first carrot in the Kindy garden.

 Even Diesel loves Spring.

Good bye winter!

August 18, 2012

Science Night
This past week at kindy was the annual community science night which is the biggest event of the kindy all year. We had so many fabulous activities for friends and families to come and take part in. The event was open to all, and started with a soup dinner. Many families made a variety of soups. We sat outside and ate tea together and then the fun began. We had animals from Cleland wildlife park, we learned about solar powered toys, watched experiments, made our own toys to take home and so many exciting tings. Take a look at the pictures of all the activities we had set up.

 Crocodile and Echidna

 Platypus

 Mummy and baby snake

 Discovering natural materials

 Making gravity cups

 Marble run

 Sensory box. Can you guess what is inside?

 Beetbot road map. The children love to program the little beebots and tell them which direction to go. It is a great way to use their problem solving skills and mathematical knowledge.

 Dig for bones.

 Some of our live Kindy friends, the hopping mice, fish and stick insects.

 Bella the blue tongue lizard.

A hawk from Cleland wildlife park.

August 10, 2012

We are half way through term three and my time in Australia is flying by. I have been learning so much over the past few months about early childhood and how to provide a play based program that engages the children. This term we are focusing on science which is I know is very broad but we are looking at being healthy, being active, animals, plants, space, cooking and what ever interests the children have.  We are in the process of getting ready for our science community night and over the past few weeks the children have taken part in many science experiments. We have had some animals from the nature education centre stay at our kindy for a few weeks. We had two guinea pigs named Honey and Cookie who were so well loved by all the children. This week we had a blue tongue lizard named Bella and soon we will have another furry friend, a little bunny. It has been a really great term so far. Below are some pictures of what we have been learning all about.

 Our Kindy Grocery and Pizza Shop

 The children made all the signs.

Our morning Routine

When children come to Kindy they find their name card in the pockets, they then choose a locker and stick the name tag on the Velcro. They put all the belongings in the locker for the day.

 This is where we put all their artwork to be collected.

 We talked about what it meant to be a good friend after reading the story The Rainbow Fish. The children each created their own fish and in a speech bubble told us what makes a good friend.

 This is the literacy centre. The children each have a name card with their picture on it. These cards help them to learn to write their names. They also love writing letters to their friends, the name cars come in handy when they want to write their friend names.

 Balloon painting.

 Our under the sea research from last term hanging out on the veranda for everyone to see.

 Our weather station. Each day the helper of the day checks the rain gauge and we graph how much rain is in it. We also graph the weather and check the thermometer. The children enjoyed learning all about seasons all over the world. They found it interesting that it is summer in Canada right now. They also wanted to learn all about snow and winter in Canada.

 These place mats are for play dough, we have made all kinds of mats for children to use such as counting, making pizza, making letters. It is a great way to  incorporate literacy and numeracy into the play dough centre.

 Honey our new friend!

 Outdoor play, building our gross motor skills.

 Making fruit salad.

 The children took part in a scavenger hunt to find natural materials.

 Bella the blue tongue lizard.

 Creating with clay.

 Honey and Cookie, dinner time!

 The most wonderful place at kindy this term. The sensory room!

 The sensory board.

 The Hungry Caterpillar art work.

 Our kindy garden. We are growing bean sprouts in the large jar and we are growing grass seeds in the stalkings. Inside that box is another grass seed plant we are testing to see what happens when you do not give a plant light.

 The children have been so excited about the recent landing of the rover on Mars that they wanted to make some space pictures.

 We found lots of snails outside and brought them inside to learn more about them.

 Our fruit and veg shop.

June 3, 2012

This has a been a really busy term so far. We have been doing an inquiry into under the sea. The children are very engaged in creating sea creatures out of recycled materials, learning about various animals, and really focusing on asking questions. We have been learning about how to ask questions and where we can go to find answers.  We have been learning about how to be good friends, and show respect for each other. We have also been focusing on play based activities to build numeracy and literacy skills. Our garden is blooming with all the rain that comes with winter. Soon we will have pees and carrots. Right now we are starting to get some mandarins, lemons and kale.The children love to help out in the garden and try the delicious things we are growing. There has been a lot of great learning happening at the Kindy and I would like to share this with you through pictures.

 Building literacy skills by identifying letters in our names.

Dramatic play at the play dough table. The children created a bakery shop, they helped to write a menu and had a great time using their imagination to create many baked goods.

Creative Expression creating still life art work with fresh fruit from the fruit and veg shop across the road from the Kindy.

Positive behaviour board
The children get little sea creatures with their name on them with the description of the positive behaviours they displayed at Kindy such as helping out a friend, sharing, playing nicley, including others, helping teachers, etc.

 Learning through play documentation board. This information board for parents and guardians is all about learning through play at the blocks and construction area. I included photos of the children learning through play. I linked it to curriculum expectations and research around learning through play.

This is the Inquiry wall. When children have inquiry questions we put them up here. I have also been typing up children's answers to the questions. This is the board when we just started with only a few questions.

 The park beside the kindy, a nice winter's day.

 Lemons in the kindy garden. Look how big they are in my hand.

 This is our making table. We have a variety of materials for children to use and create with.

 This is the inside of the kindy, it is just one area. We also have a little library and writing area.

 Using magnetic letters to build our literacy skills.

 Pictures of all our sea animals we drew.

 Our family information area. Here we have copies of newsletters, information handouts, and our learning journals. You can see them on the table, they are the large black portfolio books. These books are similar to my blog. I take pictures each week of the children learning through play, I print the pictures and link their play to learning expecations. It is a great way to show families all the things we have been doing at kindy.

 Creating sea animals from rocks.

 The kindergarten shark. Many children worked together to make this out of a large box. You can see all the Popsicle stick teeth at the front and poor little fish that got eaten inside.

 We went for a walk in the park beside the kindy and we gave each child a ziploc bag. They collected a variety of natural materials. When we came back to kindy we created little gardens with the things we found.

 Helen has been so great and visited the nature education centre here in Adelaide. You can borrow all kinds of things from the. She borrowed a turtle shell, preserved sharks and fish, sharks teeth, dolphin and whales bones, spider crabs, and so much more. The children have enjoyed learning about under the sea from these materials. We have learned a lot about measurement and size by comparing the length of whale and dolphin bones and comparing it to our size.

 We created our own bike licenses. The children had fun making them. We talked about some rules for the bike track and then we went outside to do a practice run on the bike track to get our licenses.

 This is the kindy flower shop. The children created money , they created signs, made flowers and had a terrific time engaging in cooperative dramatic play.

 We put all the dolphin bones together to make the complete skeleton.

 My new documentation board, learning through play in the arts.

 Creating beach scenes.

 The spider crab.

April 4, 2012

My first term at Hawthorndene Kindy is wrapping up and what a great few months it has been. One of the greatest things I have learned is how to build partnerships with families and make them part of their child's learning. This term we have had so many wonderful opportunities for families to be involved and take part in learning from Chinese New Year visiting night, Family Funtastics Day, Saturday working bee and our fabulous end of year concert and lunch today. I have also learned a lot about the importance of building bridges between Kindergarten and school and transitioning children to reception. This week we said good bye to six Kindy students who will be going to school next term. Over the past few weeks they have enjoyed short visits to their new class. Each Monday and Wednesday afternoon the reception classes come back to Kindy for a play and get to maintain those ties they built in Kindy. I would like to share some pictures of the past month at Kindy.

 The children found a snail in the garden and made a home for it. We also found this caterpillar and brought it into our aquarium to observe.

 Literacy on the bike track: Children write their name at the Kindergarten bus stop if they would like a turn to ride the bikes.

 The children were really interested in space and we thought we could turn the library into a space room. It turned out to be a space ship. Children made a computer out of recycled materials and created telescopes and decorated the walls with stars and planets.

 We had a visitor. Peppa the bearded dragon.

 We are learning all about reducing, reusing and recycling. The children drew pictures of the items that go into our worm farm for compost.

 This is just one sketch of the plants growing in our garden.

 Family Funtastics Day!
This is a fundraising day and a day for families to come out and have fun. Families sponsor their child to go around the funtastics course. They go around the course four times. After we had a BBQ and then children got a medal for their hard work in participating in the obstacle course.

 This is just an idea of some of the course. The children had to slide down the slippery dip (slide), jump through the hula hoops, bounce on the bouncy balls, kick the ball in the soccer net and then throw the balls into the bins.

 They had to go in the tunnel and follow the jagged yellow line.

 They had to throw a ball and hit BoBo the clown in the nose. They had to follow the balance, go under the climber and run around the bike track.

 Here are some pictures of what the children enjoyed doing that day.

 Here is our inquiry board about Peppa. Here you can see what children had learned about Peppa ( the bearded dragon).

 The outside making table. Children enjoy using wood and recycled materials to create art. We created these little yellow sheets where children can tell us all about their work. We write while they talk all about what they made and how they made it.

 Another snail the children found for our Kindy museum.

 The children became really interested in making maps, after we created a map to get to the fire for the fire fighters during dramatic play outside. We later talked about different types of maps and I showed them samples, such as road maps, bus maps, galaxy maps, city and country maps.

 The children love to draw pictures of the birds Bluey and Greeny.

 Another map created by a group of children. They got my building in Canada there and the CN tower.

 We have been learning how to write letters and worked together to write Mrs. Meredith a card. We have a writing center where children can write letters or postcards.

 Our map making center.

 Our Kindy butterfly, the caterpillar turned into a cocoon and then a beautiful butterfly and the best thing is we got to watch the entire process at the Kindy museum.

March 14, 2012
The Kindy museum, has evolved over the past few weeks based on the children's interest. Take a look at the photos below to see all the new things the children have been creating and adding to the area. 

 Our stick insects and a variety of dinosaurs.

 Our space section, the children decorated the backdrop and made their own rocket ships which are not in this picture. They used recycled items to make the rockets.

 The children made their own signs for all the materials.

 We were learning all about animals that hatch from eggs and we even got to look at some real birds nests.

 We spent some time looking through non-fiction books about different animals and children drew pictures of the things that they learned.

 Our pretend dinosaur bones.

 Sketching dinosaurs.

 Now you can see the rocket shop that one child created.

The black egg in the back is an Emo egg which got broken so the children made a sign that says do not touch.

 Sketching table. Here children enjoyed drawing pictures of dinosaurs and shells.

 The museum cafe. Come for a drink at the cafe a beautiful location on the veranda over looking the playground.



The Outdoors
One of the best things about Kindy in Australia is ability to use the outdoors as another classroom all year round. There are so many wonderful places for  inquiries and play. 

 Using the Kindy wall as an easel.

 Our obstacle courses which build gross motor skills.

 The mechanic's shop. The children were very busy fixing bikes and scooters here. They created their own signs for the shop and on the table you will many recycled materials and tools for fixing the vehicles. On the easel you will see the children had their own computer which they made to take orders and write recites.

 The wood working table, here children can explore with tools such as hammers and nails to create their own beautiful creations and sculptures.

 Going camping.

 This is a magpie it loves to come visit Kindy and eat the the left over snacks the children left on the ground.They are beautiful birds.


Learning about Canada

 Using a variety of art materials children created snow pictures after learning all about winter.

 Canada flag with some new colours.

 Fall pictures.
We talked about how beautiful it is in Canada when the leaves change colour and
March 1, marked the beginning of Autumn in Australia.

We created Inukshuk's and learned all about them. It was great problem solving for the children to find four or five rocks and find the best one to hold all the weight of the others and balance their rocks.

 March 1, 2012
Last week we had a discussion with the children about what they would like the dramatic play center to be. Many children were interested in an art gallery and artist workshop. A few days later we talked about how we could make this together. Many children then became interested in also making it a museum. We made a list of all the things that could be in our museum/art gallery. The ideas were fantastic and it was amazing to get the children's ideas and thoughts. Last Friday we put together the museum/art gallery with just a few basic ideas and throughout the week it evolved. Below are the pictures of how we set it up and later I will post the pictures of how the children added to it based on their interests as the week unfolded. This was such a great example of how children become engaged in their learning when they have ownership, when their ideas are validated and when they can freely inquire about the world around them.

 The children's ideas.

 Learning about fossils and shells.

 Sea creatures.

 The artist's workshop with a lovely view of the Kindy grounds.

 Non-fiction books and dinosaur exploration.

 The Kindy Making Museum. This is where children put all the wonderful things they have created. They really enjoy sharing their work at group time and then it goes to the making table where people can enjoy it.

 The art gallery wall.

Things we have been working on making all week for the museum. Stay tuned for how the week unfolded.........





 February 19, 2012
We are approaching our fourth week of Kindy I can't believe how fast time is going. Last week we had a very exciting Chinese New Year visiting night which was a great success. Many families came to take part in hands on activities such as creating kites, dragons and tan gram pictures. We had a dragon dance and all the children got to have a turn either with an instrument or as part of the dragon. It was a great way to begin first term and meet many families. I would like to share pictures from the past few weeks so you can see all the great things going on at Kindy.

 Our positive behaviour board. We like to recognize children for the great work they do, the way they interact with others, and the way they build their person and social skills.

 This is the parent information table. Parents can look through the learning journals, which are the large black books. A few times a week I print out photos of the children's learning to put in the book for families to look at.

 I read the story ' Rainbow bird' an aboriginal Australian story. The children enjoyed painting their own pictures of a rainbow bird.

 These are our class birds, Bluey and Greeny.

 And Diesel the turtle.

 The children helped to create this beautiful Chinese New Year banner for our restaurant.

 Morning sunrise over the Adelaide Hills. The Kindy is in the hills and the picture was taken from my balcony before work.

 We have been learning about non-fiction texts and how they can help us learn more about China.

 I brainstormed with the children what they knew about China and what they wanted to know. Then we used the non-fiction books to learn facts and share with each other.

 We are learning about friends from around the world. We are going to start learning all about Canada. We enjoy talking about Mrs. Meredith and reading her emails from Canada.

 The playground beside the Kindy.

 The Kindy building.

 Our outdoor making table. The children enjoyed using cardboard, paint and natural materials to create some scenes of the garden. Children also enjoy wood working here.

 A better shot of Bluey and Greeny. Each weekend they go home with a family who gives them lots of love.

 Little visitors.

 Our China inquiry board. I documented what children wanted to learn more about and then we shared our findings and had the children talk about what they have learnt.

 We read a really great story 'Grandfather Tangs Tan Grams" and Helen showed us how to create pictures of different animals.

 Diesel

 Me, Helen and Tess. The Hawthorndene Kindy Team.

 These are some the activities we had for Chinese New Year visiting night.

Beautiful sunrise over Adelaide Hills, taken before my journey on the bus to school.



February 4, 2012
Welcome to the Australia page of my teaching blog. I am spending the year teaching Kindergarten in Adelaide, South Australia at Hawthorndene Kindergarten. I will update this page regularly to share photos of all my teaching and learning. I also hope to use this page as way to for both Kindergarten classes in Australia and Canada to write each other and be "pen pals".

I have had such a warm welcome to Australia and know this is just the start of an amazing journey. I would like to share some photos of the outdoor environment in which the children play, discover, enquire and build social skills. The Kindy is situated up in the Adelaide Hills which is a beautiful setting for learning and caring for the natural world.

 

 Children play here with water. It runs out of the well and into the sand box.

 You can see the steps where the children eat lunch and snack. This is their sail boat. This week they pretended they were going on a trip to Canada. When they got their they were busy making igloos out of plastic building blocks.

                                     

This is where we eat lunch and snack. The children also paint pictures on the easels,

and experiment with tools doing woodworking.

This is the bike track. The children enjoy putting out the signs and arrows to give directions.

In the back you will see a white canopy. Under there is the sand box. And behind there is the Kindy building. Next time I will post interior pictures.

                          In the back left you will see the climbing trees.

    The Kindy garden. Some of the things that are growing are; 

    cucumbers, pumpkins and  cherry tomatoes.

                                     Cherry tomatoes from the garden. YUM!!!

                                         Look at these beautiful trees!!!!




December 2011
Links to learn about Canada
http://www.wartgames.com/themes/canada.html
http://canada.pppst.com/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnSyq_DJN0c
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/places/find/canada/
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/kids/

November 2011
The children in Room three have been writing Mrs. Meredith letters, take a look below to read them.

In January I will begin teaching at Hawthordene Kindergarten in Adelaide Australia. I am going to use this page as a way to communicate and share my experiences. I will miss all my students at Inglewood very much and hope that everyone will keep in contact until I return December 2012. You can send me messages on this page on the comments section or by post at:
1 Kindergarten Avenue
HAWTHORNDENE SA 5051
Adelaide
Australia

Here is our morning message from November 23, 2011.

Today we wrote letters to Mrs. Meredith (click on the picture to enlarge). The children learned all about writing letters to others. Here are some samples.

They are looking forward to meeting Mrs. Meredith.