Week 5We have already hit the middle of Term 3, and would like to congratulate students and families for a wonderful four weeks at school. Time flies when we are having so much fun!
Literacy
Phonics: This week the students are learning the phonic sound Ff and will be busy working on some Ff- Ff-Ff Father’s Day surprises……ssssh!! Please don’t mention this to Dad!
Our home corner has transformed into a florist’s shop and the children are using their creativity to make flower arrangements and use the language and social skills required for customer service! Dramatic play is very important for children’s development and learning. They can try out roles from familiar family scenes and local community experiences. It enables children to develop their imagination and engage in experiences to make sense of the world they live in.
Sight words: Through the year, Kindy students have a list of 20 high frequency words, which are found in written texts and readers. Children are encouraged to recognise these words without having to ‘figure them out’. They are also referred to as sight words or look and say words. They are : I, am, a, look, mum, dad, is, it, at, in, can, the, we, like, here, see, go, will, to, this…..so far the students have learnt eleven.
This week’s sight word is ‘The’ e.g. Mum is at the school. The sun is hot. The students have enjoyed learning and reviewing these words while reading them in sentences. They have also been observing how to track words in a sentence, from left to right, when reading.
Story retelling: We have recently been focusing on oral storytelling. This is a great skill to teach children. It gives them the opportunity to build on their oral language skills including speech, vocabulary and grammar. Storytelling encourages a love of reading and stirs a child’s imagination. Exposure to stories provides children with ideas to use when telling their own stories.
Show and Tell: Our news-telling has been going very well and we have learnt some very interesting facts about various sea creatures.
Top Facts of the week: Dolphins have two ‘tummies’ !!
A blue whale is longer than three buses in a line!
The blue whale’s tongue can be as heavy as an elephant!
Book Week: This year the theme is ‘OLD WORLDS - NEW WORLDS - OTHER WORLDS’. There will be a Dress Up Parade to celebrate Book Week. Students are invited to dress in their favourite book character. This should be simple and done in consultation with your child. The parade will be held on Friday 20th August at 9:00 am. Students could also wear a sign to show what the character is and what book it is from, if not immediately obvious. Parents can attend, however, we ask all family members to support us in social distancing and abiding by current health and safety regulations.
Songs: In Kindy we often teach concepts through music and movement to make learning fun and enjoyable for the children. Learning is optimised when the curriculum is taught through a multi-sensory medium and keeps children motivated and engaged. All Kindy classes have learnt songs for letter sounds, letter formation and number formation. They would love to teach you these songs – just ask them! Keep in mind that we have covered the following sounds - Ss,Aa,Tt,Pp,Ii,Nn,Mm,Rr,Cc,Kk,Hh,Ee,Dd,Ll,Bb,Gg,Ff and numbers 1-15.
Numeracy
Students are focusing on the numbers in the ‘teens’ and will be reviewing numbers 1 to 15 over the next few weeks. We are practising how to accurately count objects and identify that the last number counted answers the question “How many?” We have learnt the maths strategy of counting on, doubling and now we are learning partitioning i.e. splitting a number into smaller units. e.g. 5 can be broken into 3 and 2 or 1 and 4.
The students have continued to amaze us with their progress. Thank you to all parents for supporting your child at home with their learning. A few minutes each day can make a big difference in your child retaining the concepts taught at school. It is amazing to see all that the children have achieved in such a short space of time!
There are many events taking place at school and we are excitedly looking forward to the next five fantastic weeks in Term 3!
