We could not have picked a better week to learn about Sun Awareness as it’s been very warm. I must say, both Miss Ruby and I have been so amazed by some of the children’s knowledge of how to stay safe in the sun. Using our Talk for Learning poster, the children were able to identify a variety of pictures. We then spoke about what we could do to stay safe and protect ourselves from the harmful rays. To extend this and develop their learning even further, we played the Kim’s Game. The following five items were on the tray, which all linked to our topic, sun lotion, sun hat, cup, sunglasses and a sun picture. All the Robins participated and correctly guessed the missing objects. It’s activities like these that support children’s language development through modelling and extending. 

The Robins thoroughly love collecting the shopping and it’s great to watch them work together as a team. Who would have thought that two year olds could do such a good job of packing all the groceries into bags and carrying everything back to class.

Continuing with our topic, the children enjoyed playing with the yellow sunshine playdough and they made some yellow sunny paintings. We have added some to our Every Child is an Artist display board.

Mindfulness can be explored through many activities, such as exploring nature or even sensory activities. The children had lots of calming fun, filling and emptying different-sized containers with porridge oats. There were also mirrors placed into the tray to add many dimensions to the children’s play. Sparkly jewels were hiding beneath the oats, so the children had fun finding them.

This week’s cooking activities consisted of sunshine biscuits, bread rolls, sunshine mousse, cheesy sunshine pizza tarts and mindfulness vanilla cupcakes. Wow… we certainly love cooking! It’s these experiences which foster the children’s love of baking from such an early age. According to one of our Robins… every day is a banana cake day!

On Wednesday, it was our turn to host the Pre-Prep assembly and what a fabulous job the Robins did. They shook their bells to… Baby Shark, which we explored as part of last week’s Under the Sea topic. It was great to see everyone in Pre-Prep (and the teachers) up on their feet, singing and dancing along. It’s these fun activities which support the children to stand in front of an audience. Well done, Robins!! We also held a Pre-Prep quiz and showed our friends some topic photos from last week. 

Being outside is great for the mind so as usual, we explored the school grounds and even had a hot chocolate treat on the Paddock. Never wanting to miss a memorable moment, Miss Ruby took a selfie of us all as we sat together making memories.

Afterwards, the children enjoyed playing in the Long Garden and lots of fun was had balancing, climbing, jumping and …singing!

Nature is certainly a big focus in Robins and we were very excited when one of the Robins brought in a bird's nest from their garden. The birds had left the nest so it was lovely to see all the different materials which had been used to make the nest. There was also cat fur, which was very interesting. It’s these moments that are truly special and by having such wonderful relationships with the children’s families, we work in partnership to support each child’s learning.

The children planted some more sunflower seeds and we transferred the seedlings into bigger pots. We are all looking forward to watching them grow. In fact, the children have enjoyed watering and looking after all our other plants in the gardens. There is certainly lots of colour and much more wildlife and minibeasts. We are hoping to enter the Coolings Competition again this year. It was such a great success coming third!

Next week’s topics are Environmental Awareness and Biological Diversity. Your child is welcome to bring in something from home linked to our topic or their interests (bookbag size). They will have the opportunity to share these during Show and Tell. Thank you for sending in some grocery boxes for our home corner. The children enjoyed using these as part of their imaginary play.