Mothers Day

We celebrated Mothers Day on Monday morning with a special breakfast for all our wonderful mums, grandmas and special friends. The children were excited to have breakfast at Pre-school with their guests. The rooms were all set with a variety of activities to delight all the senses. In the Dream room we had back and hand massages while listening to quiet music and smelling the scents from essential oils and candles. In the Seashells room, we had threading beads to make a necklace or bracelet as well as decorating doilies and winding wool around sticks. In the main activity room was a delicious breakfast and painting a portrait of our Mums at the easel, together with straw and dough constructions and collage.

Everyone was busy and having lots of fun!

Many thanks to our wonderful dads who came in at 7.30 am to help prepare the breakfast – Elan Miller, Danny Stein, Omer Ingber, Jason Goldstein and Kevin Jacobson. Your help was very much appreciated.

Many thanks also to Sam Butt, Deborah Laurence and Naama Merritt for helping to bake delicious muffins and crunchie biscuits on Friday.

Lag B’Omer

On Tuesday morning, we celebrated Lag B’omer in the Kornmehl car park with a bonfire. We all sat around the fire, singing songs and eating baked potatoes and roasted marshmallows.

This was a very special and authentic time for everyone to understand the meaning of this special day.

A note about play

“Perhaps play would be more respected if we called it something like ‘self-motivated practice of life skills,’ but that would remove the light-heartedness from it and thereby reduce its effectiveness.  So, we are stuck with the paradox.  We must accept play’s triviality in order to realise its profundity”. Peter Gray, Free to Learn

Play is self-chosen. Children were born to play. They love to play. They will play all day if they’re allowed. If you have to coax them into doing something, then it’s not play.  Play never feels like work or an obligation. Play is enjoyable, fun and has no agenda. Play is not the purpose of meeting adult goals. Play is inherently valuable. All play is learning, no matter what it is, whether you can clearly see the skills being mastered or not. There is no hierarchy of play. Play is unstructured. In play, children make the rules. They decide how long they play for and what direction their play takes. Children should feel free to play and use what is available, however they like, with no expectations.  There’s a lot of work involved in play — problem solving, skill building, and overcoming physical and mental challenges going on behind the scenes.

There are many different types of play: solitary play, risky play, sensory play, parallel play, dramatic play, rough and tumble play, constructive play, active play, and co-operative play. Play builds the imagination, promotes social skills, advances physical development and helps children work through emotions.

There are seven basic characteristics of play:

• voluntary – something children choose to do, but other children can be invited to join in
• pleasurable – a deep sense of enjoyment, which will vary from child to child
• symbolic – usually includes some type of make-believe or pretend and objects assume new meanings and purpose for the player/s
• meaningful – to the player/s, but the meaning may not always be clear to an observer
• active – requires active mental, verbal or physical engagement with people, objects or ideas
• process-oriented – it’s enjoyed for the activity itself and is not concerned with an end product
• intrinsically-motivated – it is its own reward.

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson