Hi again from Kiah Room!
You may have noticed that our room has started to undergo some big changes; Kiah educators have had to be very resourceful in managing play spaces and keeping things very flexible. We are making daily use of our café blinds and verandah area, ensuring our children are safely out of harm’s way but allowing them to watch the builders coming and going. We’ve converted Sleep Room 1 into a makeshift nappy change and bag storage area and have set up the “library” in the hallway as an extra baby play area. The children have been coping very well with these changes and many of them are quite intrigued and excited about what is going on. On some days we hear lots of interesting noise going on from behind the barrier, so we talk excitedly about what the builders might be ‘fixing’ today.
We have been playing with our tool sets, dressing in hard hats and playing with our ‘occupation people’ to extend on what we are seeing and understanding.
We have been experimenting with our emergent curriculum format and trying to get our heads around this new concept. Our first trial seemed to be successful and many of our families enjoyed seeing their children’s learning displayed on the wall. Our focus has evolved from “water—what can we do with it?” to “daily routines and activities”, which will focus on the children’s levels of independence in routines, helping others, transitions, children’s voice and managing the changes in our room during the building process. If you have any questions regarding this new concept, please see us and we’ll explain as best we can—this is a new journey for us too!
On 10th April, Brenda attended a “Nature Play” training. She came back to us with lots of useful information and renewed our love of “treasure boxes”. These are little boxes with lids or little bags that can contain random interesting objects for children to explore. If you are able to donate any small boxes that we could use to add to our collection, we would welcome them joyously.
From the Kiah educators, Lisa, Tanika, Mel, Jo and Brenda
