LATEST STORIES
Developing life long skills
This month in the kawakawa room we have been focusing on three skills: friendship building , self regulation and letter recognition. We chose these three things because it is a goal for majority of our tamariki within our room.
There has been a lot of new transitions lately that’s why we chose friendship building, there has been a lot of emotions both new an old that our tamariki are currently experiencing so we are learning how to handle them, an lastly letter recognition we have introduced letter of the week for both our new an young tamariki and our older tamariki who head off to big school soon. These three skills have been developing very well this month amongst our tamariki.
It is evident that they are building friendships through helping friends in need, through their play and through their interests.
We have provide our tamariki with opportunities to explore different emotions in different ways and different situations that may occur and letter of the week has been exciting as we do different activities throughout the week based on our letter. Activities such as arts an crafts, tracing, physical play around letter of the week and identifying our surroundings beginning with the letter.
This month has been great within our environment and not forgetting it was the month of love.
In the month of February our tamariki in the Pounamu room have been busy exploring their senses in sensory play. Kaiako supported this interest by providing them a variety of experiences such as water play with ice, getting creative with play dough. Play dough is one of the 16 areas of play and creates a spark in the learning of toddlers. It has a calming effect, develops fine motor skills, enhances hand-eye coordination, improves social skills, supports literacy and numeracy in the children. The other main source for sensory play has been water. Children were able to explore water play and these experiences help to develop and strengthen children's gross and fine motor skills. Children enhance their gross motor skills, coordination and physical fitness through lifting, pouring, carrying, running and splashing. They also learn the feel of cold ice and loved watching ice melting into water while having fun.
In the Kahurangi room in February a lot has been happening. We have had a few tamariki away due to the every changing world, however we have given the tamariki the best environment we can. We have supported them through lots of new experiences inside and outside, especially around water play, as it is very soothing and therapeutic. The tamariki are enjoying painting and manipulative play within their space and construction is a huge hit especially with the duplo blocks. We will continue with this next month as well, however we will follow their ever changing interests as they grow and develop.