Kornmehl
Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl
Thinking about and supporting Israel in different ways
The Pre-school has been involved in a Twinning Program with a Gan in the Arava for the past two years. As a cohort of teachers with our strong Australia/Arava partnerships, we wanted to show our support and love for all the displaced children from the south, who are currently being hosted by the wonderful Arava communities.
The aim is to make each, and every child feel loved and thought of from afar. A template was designed and sent to us. Together with the Starfish and Dolphin groups, we worked to each make a special love heart drawing for a friend in Israel.
We feel that in some small way we can make a difference to these children, who are facing tough times.
The children were presented with the image of a love heart with some words that read, ‘Israel is in my heart, Israel b’Libi.’ Also in the love heart was an Australian flag and an Israeli flag. We wondered what this meant and why we are sending our drawings to the children in the Arava in Israel.
Lulu: I see Israel and Australia and Hebrew and English writing. Because we love Israel so much.
Aimee: To make the people in Israel happy, it means this is coming from Australia.
Ziggy: We’re drawing pictures for the school in the Adama (Arava). There’s Australian writing and Israeli writing. I know my name in Hebrew. It’s Zeev. We’re friends with them. I did that gold for Australia and the Magen David for Israel. Australian people help the Israeli army.
Ella: It’s because of the war.
Allec: I can see a star and two flags. That’s because we celebrate both birthdays.
Alma: Because Israel has many visitors from Australia, because they want to show their friendship between Israel and Australia, and they want to show the children in Israel how we care about them.
Tamar: I can see the Israel love heart because Australia supports Israel.
Hudson: Because they both live in your heart
Ali: Let’s colour our love heart in rainbow… because we want to cheer up Israel.
Fairy Garden
We have introduced a new peaceful fairy garden into our outdoor space. This space is filled with treasures and toys that lend themselves to magical, fairy, imaginative play. The area is popular for all three groups. The Dolphin children have been working this week to make fairies go in the garden. They have also created a cute magical fairy garden installation to extend the play further.
The children are involved in looking after the area, encouraging each other to play gently and respectfully with the fairies so they don’t break. We are learning to share, take turns and co-operate, while playing with the materials.
Ella: The home for the fairies is behind the door.
Hudson: I am making a home for the unicorn.
Jesse: We need to share the toys.
Aria: You need to hold one toy at a time. If people put the toys in their pocket, then we will not have any.
Itamar: We keep the toys in the fairy garden, and we don’t take them in the sandpit.
Evie: Nobody can snatch things from each other.
Rose: Be careful not to step on the fairies.
Noam: We don’t want them to get hurt.
Working with our faces
The Starfish and Dolphins engaged in a project using their faces as a provocation for matching, creative art, symmetry, literacy and for building identity and self-esteem.
We took black-and-white photos of each of the children, which we cut in half and used as a matching game during morning meeting. We had lots of fun, finding both sides of our face and combining half of our face with somebody else’s face. At activity time, we explored symmetry by drawing half our face to match the other half of the photo. This was challenging for the children, matching the proportions and the positions of their facial features. We combined this activity by writing lots of character words down and getting the children to choose a word to describe themselves to their Year K teachers. This is another way that we are preparing the children for Year K next year.
Clay Earthenware Project
Since last term, The Starfish have been working on making a dinner set out of clay, that can be used in our home corner for imaginative play. Together with Justine, they have looked closely at examples of real mugs, bowls and plates and re-created these out of clay. This takes considerable skill for young children, to mould the clay using their fingers and hands and to design their own individual crockery piece. Last week all the clay pieces were brought to life, as the children added glaze colour and design in the final stage of the project before firing it in the kiln up at Emanuel School.
It was lovely to see them work with such intention, being specific in their colour choices and where they wanted to paint on their pieces.
We talked about their drawings and designs, and this once again inspired their creativity, with some adding flowers, dots, and stripes.
It has been a joy to see the children embracing this project with enthusiasm.
How wonderful it will be, that very soon, they will be using these unique and colourful pieces in their play. A huge thank you to Eytan Messiah and Chrystal Rimmer for helping us complete this process with the children. We appreciate being able to work with you both.
The Shabbat Project
This weekend thousands of people around the world will be celebrating Shabbat from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. There are amazing community events happening all around Sydney that we encourage families to take part in. On Friday we invited families to join us to bake challot with their children during the morning. It was a special time to mindfully sit together, enjoying the smells of the challah dough baking in the oven and to take a few moments to acknowledge how grateful we are at this moment in time to be safe and to pause and think about our fellow family and friends in Israel. We wish you all a wonderful Shabbat.
Happy Birthday
We wish a very happy birthday to Nellie Pillemer (4), Milo Chimes (4), Zac Hochroth (5) and Evie Wicks (4). We hope you all had a beautiful birthday.
Refuah Shlema
We wish a speedy recovery to our wonderful Starfish Educator, Justine Robertson, who is recovering from hip surgery. We miss her and hope she will be back with us soon.