Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Burger Centre visit

The Dolphins walked to the Burger Centre on Thursday. It was lovely to connect with the elderly community and share a special time together. This experience is extremely worthwhile and meaningful, not only for the children, but also for the educators and elderly community at the Burger Centre.

The children participated with confidence in this new space and sang with pride. We received positive feedback from the Burger Centre.

This year we will be visiting the Burger Centre every term, thus recognising the many benefits this reciprocal excursion has. 

Children’s reflections:

We asked the children to think about why they thought we were doing a mitzvah when we went to the Burger Centre, what was special about this experience:

Ziggy: It’s because they want to learn new songs. I got to talk to someone named Norman, he’s a grandpa and looks like my grandpa.
Ella: The old people were happy. I liked the cookies and juice. 
Asher: I liked singing because I got to talk on the microphone. We did a mitzvah singing for the old people.
James: It is really nice to make people happy, they can’t do lots of things.
Oscar: I enjoyed singing for the old people.
Rose: I liked making the people happy because I was singing.
Amelie: We did a mitzvah because we made them feel happy. I felt happy.

We followed up on this experience by inviting the children to do a reflection using the language of drawing, painting and collage. We encouraged the children to represent their red Kornmehl t-shirts, using red oil pastels or red paper. We played a slide show with the photos we took on the day to inspire and provoke the children’s thinking.

Open Day

The Pre-school held its Open Day on Thursday morning. We had 60 attendees who were all interested to find out what makes Kornmehl special and why they should send their children to our Pre-school. During the morning several people shared with me how impressed they were with the spaces and learning areas – both indoors and outdoors, the length of time the educators have been at the service, the happy engaged children they could see and most of all the warmth they could feel as they entered the doors. We all enjoyed showcasing our Pre-school to the prospective families.

Social and emotional learning

Over the last few weeks, the Seashells have been discussing and sharing information related to feelings, being kind and playing with our friends. These concepts are an important part of our Pre-school experience and a strong focus in all our interactions and encounters during the day. The Pre-school years afford us the time and opportunity to unpack these life concepts with the children. These are values and dispositions that will stay with the children for the rest of their lives and form the foundations for future social and emotional learning and skills. The educators often use role plays, puppets, songs, movement or books to unpack these concepts.

Learning to share and be kind:

Aria: If Charlie wants to play with me, I say yes.
Itamar: I will share my ball when I finish playing with it.
Willow: My brother Arlo shares with me and we are happy.
Gabrielle: I share my toys with my brother Jacob.
Henry: I shared Paw Patrol with Jesse when he came to my house.

Learning about using kind hands:

Willow: We can hold hands together.
Samara: I like holding hands with Milo.
Amalia: Hands are for hugging.
Jordan: We can hug ourselves.

The Seashells made a beautiful creative group poster of each child and educators’ handprints – showing how the Seashell class are all connected, kind, inclusive and good friends. 

The Early Years Learning Framework Version 2

The recently released EYLFv2, explores several new concepts for educators and teams to unpack and critically reflect on. One of these concepts is called funds of knowledge. These are explained as the historically accumulated experiences and understandings that an individual has and includes abilities, skills, bodies of knowledge, life experiences and cultural ways of interacting. A child’s funds of knowledge are often described as a “virtual backpack” of all the life experiences, skills, dispositions, and knowledge they bring into the Early Childhood setting. 

Educators are responsive to children’s funds of knowledge (experiences and understandings), ideas, sociality, and playfulness, which form an important basis for curriculum decision-making. In response to children’s evolving ideas and interests, educators assess, anticipate, and extend children’s learning, development, and wellbeing via open-ended questioning, providing feedback, challenging their thinking and guiding their learning. Educators plan and implement worthwhile play-based learning experiences using what children already know, their interests, curiosities, and funds of knowledge. 

Through these funds of knowledge, children bring their individual, family, and community ways of being, belonging and becoming, to their early childhood settings. Educators who know and build on children’s funds of knowledge help them to feel secure, confident, and connected to familiar people, places, events, and understandings. This reinforces each child’s sense of belonging. 

Children are more likely to be confident and involved learners when their funds of knowledge, and their family and community funds of knowledge (experiences and understandings), are recognised and included in the early childhood curriculum. This assists children to build on what they already know and make connections to make sense of new experiences. 

Very young and older children are growing, developing, and learning in individual ways and may demonstrate the Learning Outcomes differently. Educators’ knowledge of individual children, their strengths and capabilities will guide professional judgement to ensure all children are engaging in a range of experiences across all the Learning Outcomes in ways that optimise their learning. 

Here is a YouTube video that explains what funds of knowledge are and why educators should care.