Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Yom Ha’Atzmaut

We celebrated Yom Ha’Atzmaut on Tuesday, singing and dancing together and sampling delicious birthday cake. This was a special time to celebrate the wonderful connection that we have with the Land of Israel. Everything in the Pre-school was blue and white, from the paint to collage, play dough and even our clothes. We all had a taste of falafel, pita bread and hummus.  

Parent talk

We invite all parents to join us for an informative and interesting talk from Occupational Therapist, Carla Port on ‘School Readiness, sensory processing and self-regulation for Pre-schoolers.’ This will be held in the Pre-school on Tuesday 9 May from 7.00 pm.

Centennial Park visits

Our visits to Centennial Park started on Friday with the Dolphins enjoying a lovely morning engaging with nature and the outdoors.

The Pre-school has purchased a classroom set of water-proof pants and tops for the children, so all they will need is gumboots on a rainy day and sneakers on warmer days. If the weather is bad (strong winds and torrential rain) on the day we will make an informed decision 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. We will spend more time next term discussing the benefits of Bush School and why we have included this experience as part of our program.

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 years’ 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 for 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.

We invite parents to engage in conversations with their child’s teachers if they have any questions about Bush School.

Mothers Day breakfast

We look forward to sharing Mothers Day with all our special Mums on Monday morning 15 May at 8.30 am in the Pre-school. If you cannot make the breakfast, please organise for a Grandma, Aunty or special friend to come in your place.

School readiness

This is the time of the year when teachers begin to think about whether the children are ready for school and when many parents begin to question whether their child is ready for school. One particular issue often raised and frequently asked is: “How do you prepare my child for school?” It is always useful to think about this issue at varying stages of young children’s development. 

Childhood is an extraordinary period in a human being’s life. All stages of our lives bring with them certain characteristics, limitations and special challenges. The relationships and opportunities offered to a child at any time must be responsive to the child as he or she is now. Readiness for school translates into a child who is a capable learner, who is confident, flexible, open to possibilities, sufficiently resilient to take risks, sufficiently secure to be confident – in short, a child who goes off to school and is comfortable with challenge. The central concept when working with children in the present is that we develop relationships and promote personal development rather than teach facts.  Our aim is to support children to:

• become effective as contributors within our pre-school community
• be valued as unique and powerful human beings
• engage in relationships of caring and respect
• be involved with positive relationships with their peers 
• feel a sense of belonging.

We ask parents to reorient themselves to look at children, no matter how young, as people with certain characteristics who are growing, becoming, developing and adding new knowledge, skills and understandings all the time. In this way, each child in our Pre-school has been assisted to become responsible for themselves, for others and for the physical world.

We hope that this will give you something to think about as we draw closer to our Parent Teacher Interviews, the time where we think about your child’s progress, development and readiness for school in all areas – socially, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. We hope parents will also join us for the parent talk on the 9 May, as Carla Port will be addressing this topic too.

Buddy Reading

We had our first Buddy Reading session on Thursday with the Year 2 children. This is always a special time that we all look forward to, when the children, especially siblings and previous Kornmehl students, read to us. This is a lovely program encouraging both a love of literature and a strong sense of belonging within the school community.

Mazal tov

We wish a hearty mazal tov to Daniel, Sasha, Maayan and Ashira Symonds on the birth of a son and brother – Raphael. We know he will bring you much joy and happiness always.

Refuah shelama

We wish a speedy recovery to mums, Amanda Isenberg and Sally Greenberg. We look forward to seeing you back at Pre-school soon.