Volume 26 Issue 9 31 Mar 2017 4 Nisan 5777

Kornmehl

Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

This week the Pre-school has been a hive of activity as we have immersed ourselves in the wonderful festival of Pesach, with all its traditions, history and stories. We tell the story of Pesach using animation, song, music, props and costumes and invite the children to take on roles in the story. Re-enacting the story in this way helps to bring it to life and allows the children time to process the details and make sense of it. We have participated in lots of cooking experiences this week. From matzah pizzas to matzah pancakes to making matzah in the matzah factory. The children have loved these interactive experiences and enjoyed all the tasting too.

We have been making our own Seder plates, drawing visual representations of wild animals and frogs and making baby Moses in the basket out of clay.

The children are enjoying learning and singing all the songs from the Pesach story. We hope they will be active participants in your Seders at home.

Centennial Park Visits

Next term our visits to Centennial Park will start in Weeks 2 and 3 for the Dolphins and Starfish groups. We are planning on walking the children to the park and back, once every three weeks and therefore will require parent support to help us do this. The Seashells will start their visits in Term 3, once we see they are ready to cope with the walk down and back. The Pre-school has purchased a classroom set of waterproof pants and tops for the children, so all they will need are gumboots on a rainy day and sneakers in warmer days. If the weather is bad (strong winds and torrential rain) on the day we will make an informed decision whether to cancel the excursion.

The Bush School approach does not stand alone from early childhood education and care. The Belonging, Being and Becoming: Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) recognises the importance of the outdoor environment in the development of young children. The Early Years Bush Connections concept is informed by other successful outdoor learning practices from well-researched and established international examples such as Forest Schools, Wilderness Awareness schools, Wild Play schemes and Nature Kindergartens.

We believe Bush School has many advantages for the children, especially in today’s hurried society, where the children do not get enough uninterrupted time to just play and be in nature for extended periods of time.

Some advantages of Bush School are:

  • Open-ended resources in visually simple spaces – giving children the opportunity to be creative, to observe, to be inspired and to problem solve in an open-ended natural environment.
  • Risk-full learning – the development of a risk adverse society is creating what Tim Gill calls the “shrinking horizons of childhood” where the independence and freedom of childhood have been curtailed.
  • Eco-friendly and sustainable living – do we want the earth to still be beautiful in 60 year’s time for our children? We need to encourage an ecological awareness in the children from a young age. Real materials are far more sustainable and encourage the children to use their imagination more than materials that are prescribed.
  • Physicality – children need to be more active. Movement is critical to each child’s health and wellbeing. The physical aspects of their development are promoted through running, climbing trees, and physically being in wide open spaces with a canopy of trees for a roof.
  • Children who play regularly in natural environments show more advanced motor fitness, including co-ordination, stamina, balance and agility, and they are sick less often.
  • When children play in natural environments, their play is more diverse with imaginative and creative play that fosters language and collaborative skills.
  • Exposure to natural environments improves cognitive development by improving their awareness, reasoning and observational skills.
  • Spending time in nature has shown to reduce stress. Nature buffers the impact of life’s stresses on children and helps them deal with adversity. The greater amount of nature exposure, the greater the benefits.
  • An affinity to and love of nature, along with positive environmental ethic, grow out of regular contact with and play in the natural world during early childhood.
  • Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder. Wonder is an important motivator for lifelong learning.
  • Motivation, concentration and problem solving skills are developed through exploratory play.
  • Children who play in nature have more positive feelings about each other. The development of self-confidence and self-belief comes from children having freedom, time and space to learn, grow and demonstrate their independence.
  • Natural environments stimulate social interaction between children. It fosters an increased awareness of others and our actions on them, as well as encourages sharing and co-operative play.
  • Language and communication development is fostered by being in the outdoors. This is prompted by visual and other sensory experiences of participating in a bush school program.

Back to Pre-school Visit

On Friday, we held our back to Pre-school visit for all our lovely children from last year who have moved onto Year K. The children are always so excited to come back to Pre-school to see their teachers and friends in other groups. They are also eager to share with us what they have been learning at big school and they enjoy singing some familiar songs from last year and having a play in the garden.

The connections that we form with the children are deep and strong and stay with us all for many years. It’s a joy to us and very rewarding when we see children walking through Emanuel School and stopping to greet us and to tell us what they are up to.