Johnson House
Preschool
Story by Educator Shireen
Recently the children in Johnson House preschool made playdough with an educator, and they talked about how the dough was like slime when it was watery. To extend upon the children’s ideas, we set up a play experience to make slime with them. After the educator showed the children the ingredients and explained how much we needed, the children were excited to take turns to add these in and to mix them together. They observed and talked about how the slime changed as the ingredients were added. When it was ready, the children felt the slime, and stretched it and squished it on the table with their fingers to make patterns, and they initiated writing their names on the slime.
The children had fun and explored their sensory motor skills through this experience, and they were developing their social skills as they interacted within the group and took turns to add and mix the slime ingredients.
Community Playgroups
Story by Playgroup Assistant Maria
This week in our Baby Time playgroup we had a special visitor, Greer, who is a Music Therapist from the program Sing & Grow. Sing & Grow is a national, evidence-based music therapy program for young children and their families. Greer came to Baby Time to introduce different kinds of musical instruments, new songs, and movement and relaxation activities for the families to experience.
The families and babies explored percussion instruments like drums and maracas while Greer played some songs on the guitar for us. She introduced herself with some personalised songs and got everyone up and engaged using different tempos, like fast and slow.
We sang some familiar nursery rhymes in English and in other languages including Japanese, Chinese and Spanish to include our multilingual families.
At the end of our session the families gave us positive feedback and everyone had a great time.
