Kornmehl Pre-school

Terry Aizen – Director Kornmehl

Parent talks

On Wednesday night, Dr Sarah Robuck shared her knowledge and expertise with a group of interested parents on the topic of Increasing Positive behaviours. Sarah gave her appreciative audience lots of practical ideas and strategies to implement at home.

Sarah gave parents examples to use at home and some informative handouts. The main goal is to build positive relationships, provide encouragement and precise feedback to children and establish and create a positive environment.

Sarah stressed that the power of language is so important and to talk about the behaviour you are seeing. Parents are a child’s first teacher. We need to respond in positive and constructive ways and help them to learn to problem solve. Sarah also explained the different between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Thank you, Sarah, for an informative evening. We are looking forward to session number 2 on Wednesday evening 6 June from 7.45 pm-8.45 pm in the Pre-school on the topic of Managing Misbehaviours.

Biggest Morning Tea

The Pre-school was a hive of activity from Tuesday, as all 3 groups prepared and baked for our Biggest Morning Tea on Thursday morning. The children baked yummy treats to delight the taste buds of our enthusiastic Year K visitors, who came down at recess to purchase treats from the Kornmehl Café.

The Kornmehl children made and designed beautiful signs for our shop and decorated these creatively, incorporating literacy and numeracy skills into their art works. They proved to be very capable shop keepers, who delighted in being given this responsibility to raise money for such a worthwhile cause.

While the children were involved in preparing for their Biggest Morning Tea, the parents of the Pre-school all gathered together to share in a special morning tea together with their guest speaker and Emanuel parent, Kerri Sackville. Kerri spoke about her life and how she came to be a writer. She spoke about her recently released book called Out There a story about dating again after divorce. Her talk was entertaining, funny and enlightening. Thank you, Kerri, for a beautiful morning.

In total, we raised $283 from the children and $1014 from the parents.

What a wonderful effort from all and a lovely way to teach our young children from a very early age about helping those in our community who are ill and making a difference to their lives. Thank you also to Year K and their teachers for supporting our Biggest Morning Tea. A lovely collaborative effort!

School readiness

This is the time of the year when parents and teachers begin to think about whether the children are ready for school. This is also the time 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. Here is what we often say:

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 in positive relationships with their peers
feel a sense of belonging.

We ask parents to re-orient 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, strengths, development and readiness for school in all areas – socially, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Last year we had the privilege of listening to Occupational Therapist, Carla Port, who spoke to parents about school readiness, sensory processing and self-regulation.

Key points from Carla’s talk covered the following areas, which give added content to think about when it comes to school readiness:

Fine-motor skills:

Children need to have an established hand-dominance before starting school.

A mixed dominance at this age will impact negatively on:

- - Handwriting (letter formations, reversals)
  - Reading (scanning from left to right)
  - Left/right discrimination
  - All bilateral skills (catching, cutting, supporting page when writing, construction toys, tying laces).

Gross-motor skills:

To develop bilateral integration for:

Crossing the midline to develop a dominant hand
All motor planning
Ball skills
Scissor/pencil tasks
Reciprocal arm/leg movements
Riding a bicycle
Developing balance skills in preparation for hopping, skipping, climbing, galloping and marching
Completing a puzzle or drawing while lying on their tummy, negotiating stairs with alternating feet, catching a ball, balancing for 5-10 seconds etc.
Visual motor skills
Developing visual motor control to be able to trace, cut, colour in, copy and thread with accuracy
Copying all shapes, especially diagonal lines (/ \ x) in preparation for early letter and number formation.
Examples are colouring in, lacing, weaving, stringing beads, peg board patterns, cutting out shapes, copying a design of 3 steps using cubes, joining up dots, tracing around your own hand, copying shapes or sequences etc.

Play/social skills and self-care skills:

To develop confidence/self-esteem in their ability to perform or attempt all tasks
To understand social cues, rules and limitations
To initiate new friendships and interactions with peers
Eating and dressing independently:

- - For school excursions
  - Changing for sport
  - Sleeping at friends.
Examples are dressing and undressing independently, toileting independently, understanding rules of games and being able to participate in games meaningfully, taking turns and sharing.

Cognition is important:

To develop pre-academic skills for reading/writing
To organise themselves and their belongings
To develop visual perceptual skills (especially memory) for:

- - Spelling, reading and writing
To develop sequencing skills for:
- - Following instructions
  - Early Mathematics.

Sensory processing

This is how we interpret incoming sensory information.

Sensory Processing Disorder is the inefficiency in our central nervous system to process incoming information or stimuli. Difficulties in processing can lead to numerous problems such as disrupted motor co-ordination, sleeping, eating, concentration, learning, behaviour and social/emotional functioning.

Self-regulation

This is a person’s ability to adjust or control their energy level, emotions, behaviours and attention.

Appropriate self-regulation means adjustment and control is conducted in socially acceptable ways.

Behaviours to look out for include:

Fidgeting
Restless/rocking in chair
Knocking into people/objects
Difficulty sitting upright during floor time
On the move, easily distracted
Seeking/avoiding touch
Wrapping legs around legs of chair
Hates change
Dislikes music time
Unpredictable behaviours
Feeling overwhelmed during outdoor play
Sucking on clothes or objects.

Important points to remember when preparing your child for school

Provide your child with spontaneous learning experiences (colours, shapes, how things work)
Look for opportunities to teach in every day experiences
Make school exciting – talk positively about school and this new adventure that they are embarking on
Minimise after-school activities especially in Term 1
Make reading, writing and other homework tasks an enjoyable experience
Give your child positive reinforcement and praise for effort
Encourage independence (dressings, eating, bathing, packing their bags, putting on school shoes, opening lunch containers, looking after their belongings etc.).

Other points:

It’s alright for children to be bored. This allows them to use other parts of their brain as well as their imagination.
Limit screen time for your children during the week and try to get back to how we all grew up with no screen time available during the week.
Put your toys at home on rotation. Don’t have them all out at once as this gets overwhelming for children.
Encourage your children not to sit with their legs in a ‘W’ shape, as this is not good for their knees and hips, but most importantly it weakens their core muscles and postural tone and limits their ability to interact in the environment.
Children tend to avoid activities they find difficult. Be positive, give them lots of praise and encouragement to build up their confidence to try things that might be challenging for them.
Teaching your child to breathe deeply is a great strategy for helping them to calm down.
Early intervention is important to address any issues or concerns.
Don’t be afraid to give your child a steady dose of Vitamin N – saying NO. Children are suffering from over-indulgence and are expecting to get everything for nothing. Children need protection, affection and direction. Children need to hear their parents say “NO” more often. In the process of trying to protect children from frustration, parents have turned reality upside down.