Kindy is off to great places!

You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!”

- Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You’ll Go!

It seems like just yesterday that the Kindergarten children arrived at Santa Sophia for their very first day! There was a balloon arch, lots of photos and many excited little faces ready for big school. The Kindergarten children were so brave, even though their family could not come into the classroom with them this year (parents you were very brave too!). Nevertheless, the excited buzz of the first few weeks of Kindergarten has continued, and the children are now settled into their routines and love coming to school!

We start each day altogether with a prayer circle where we create a prayer space, pray to God and sing songs. We have many beautiful singers in Kindergarten! We have also had the opportunity to participate in our Opening School Mass in the church, as well as an Ash Wednesday Liturgy. The children are to be commended on the reverence shown during these times.

It is almost halfway through the school term and the learning has taken off!

Kindergarten has already begun Reading Groups and are learning to independently work in their Literacy Pods each day. Some of the play based literacy activities have included making words out of letter beads and pipe cleaners, letter hunting in magazines, developing their oral language while role playing in the ice cream shop and making letters out of Play-doh. The teachers have also started reading with groups of children on a rotational basis each day. During writing, we have been practising how to hold a pencil, draw a picture about our ideas and locating where to start writing on our page. We have also read lots and lots of books! One of our favourite books was ‘The Kinder Hat’ - we even made our own kinder hats with streamers!

During Mathematics the children have been counting everyday, concentrating on saying the “teen” numbers correctly and working on counting collections of objects carefully. We have also been learning about patterns and made many using natural materials, shapes, pictures, colours and numbers.

A highlight so far has been our ‘Seasons Hunt’ adventure to introduce our inquiry question ‘How does Summer change the world around me?’ for our unit in Investigations. We travelled all around the playground in search of the seasons whilst singing…

“We’re going on a seasons hunt, we’re going to find all of them!
What a beautiful day, we’re not scared. Look! A season! A hot, sunny season…”

There have been many play based, summer themed, investigations stations for the children to participate and inquire in including water play, making summer puppets for the puppet show, making a summer picnic in the home corner, building shelters for animals and people as well as making little summer books. Learning is so much fun!

As the quote at the beginning says “you’re off to great places,” we can see that the Kindergarten students love of learning and positivity has allowed them to take risks in their learning, form new friendships and be joyful everyday. Thank you to all of the families who have provided your children with great enthusiasm and positivity during the first few weeks of school. Your children are shining!