This Week at The Infants’ Home 6 January to 10 January 2020

The children in Johnson House preschool have recently been working with each other, exploring provisions at the light box. These colourful construction pieces have helped to promote the children’s ability to problem-solve and persist in creating and using their imaginations to build and design elaborate creations. The guide cards have been a useful tool to inspire the children and to encourage collaboration with peers, especially when more complex designs and patterns are being worked on.

After months and months of building a house using recycled milk bottles and cable ties, it was finally complete! The house was built to extend on the children in Murray House’s pretend play of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, where they have suggested that they needed a house in which to hide from the bear. The children take a lot of pride in their house made of recycled milk bottles, sharing that they have helped to build the house. To maintain the structure and sustainability of the house, educator Mandy has been supporting the children to check if the cable ties are still intact, and changing them when necessary.

Now that the house is complete, the children have a cubby house for their own play, and they also use it when they re-enact We’re Going on a Bear Hunt with Mandy. As they re-enact the story, the children are offered opportunities to recall the sequence of events and the different scenes in the story.

Extending further on the current interest in cooking and science in Robinson House, the children and early childhood teacher Sarah decided to start off the year by going over the  basic cooking skills and recipes they`d tackled last year. At the beginning of the year we often experience a mixture of feelings when starting at a new place or returning to preschool after being on holidays. At Robinson House sharing and connecting how children and educators feel as a community is a big part of the rhythm of their day. Listening to others, and talking through processes helps them understand a range of ideas and tackle challenges together.

As a community they aim to work together to ensure they all feel, safe, valued and respected. However, they acknowledge that expressing how we are feeling can also be really tricky, and is a big step for some of people. So Sarah decided to add some fun, by connecting their previous learning and encouraging relationship connections and a sense of belonging within the group, by suggesting they make ‘feeling sandwiches’.

Each child was invited to use their creativity to make their own facial expression that identified how they were feeling on their slice of bread. They used a selection spreads and other healthy ingredients to create their design. They creatively added details such as frowns, hair and facial features.  After preparing their sandwich, each person had a turn to share what they had made and how they were feeling.

This experience was an enjoyable learning opportunity that encouraged the children to listen to others, validate how they were feeling as an individual, and to consider how others may be feeling.

At Bianca’s Family Day Care Service in our Inner West hub, one of the children’s interests has recently been on the bushfires. Through this interest the children have been learning about cause and effect, bushfire prevention and what they can do to help.

During art and craft activities last week, Bianca encouraged the children to paint and draw fire and she provided them with an array of fire colours to choose from. The children also created a fire collage, sticking fire coloured paper flames, which the school children in the service had helped Bianca to cut out, onto paper with glue.

These activities gave the children had an opportunity to discuss their own thoughts about fires, during which Annabel (2.5 years) said “the fire is very hot, the koala needs a drink because of the fires”, and Bertie (18 months) said “fire”. Steve (a school age child) said “I’m drawing a picture of Victoria as I’ve seen the fires are really bad there”.