Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Kinder is winding up for the year and we are heading off for the Christmas holidays. It has a been a busy year and we are looking forward to the break, however unlike the two of us, the website won’t be taking a holiday, (slowing down a little perhaps but not going away). You see, in between spending time with our families and friends, enjoying the festive season with scrumptious food and long cool refreshments mixed with love, laughter and great company, followed by quiet times to relax, perhaps with a few good books (we think a minimum three books holiday reading a must), we plan to find a moment here and there to crank up the laptop and publish posts to help you with irresistible ideas for the upcoming year.

As 2009 draws to a close we would like to thank you for your wonderful support and positive feedback over the past three months - you inspire us as much as we inspire you, so if you enjoy what we offer please be sure to share it with your friends and remember to ‘Contact Us‘ we’d love to hear from you!

Now be sure to relax, take time out for yourselves, and enjoy good company, in order to prepare for another exciting year of teaching adventure and discovery through play based learning.

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a wonderful new year and we’ll be back on line early in 2010.

Sherry and Donna

Here’s a look at another delightful Christmas decoration the children had fun making.

Using styrene Christmas shape with pins and sequins …

… was a great fine motor exercise …

… and creative too …

… with beautiful results!

And our Christmas hangers are looking amazing!

We like to make our Christmas activities pretty simple and child oriented. We tend to pop lots of glitz out on the table and let them go for it!

In this case they could make wreaths if they wanted, so we put out paper plates, glue, patty pans, bells, recycled Christmas cards,  pipe cleaners, pom-poms, hole punches and curling ribbon and off they went. Naturally they were free to source other bits and pieces to use as well.

They came up with many and varied wreaths – some simple and others more complex.

They had a lovely time exercising both mind and body …

…  glueing …

… sticking …

… punching …

… attaching …

… twisting …

… threading …

… tying …

… and displaying. All so very unique … and …

… our first ever Christmas whale … TOO CUTE!

All throughout the year we compile a portfolio for each child. We call them “Memory Books“. They consist of our observations, parent’s contributions, children’s art work and stories, photos of them in action and the different incursions and excursions we do together.

At the end of the year they are given to the families as a very special present from their kindergarten children.

They are completed now and the children have had their final look through them…

… decorated the covers using posca pens and wrapped them up.

For their wrapping paper, we placed a mixture of bright edicol-coloured water by the easel and big sheets of paper.

The variety of beautiful paintings …

… with their incredible colours …

… took our breath away!!

Spectacular!

We didn’t worry about naming them as the children understood that we would be sharing the paper around, so they simply choose a sheet they liked when the time came to wrap.

::: make it irresistible :::

We love to have our easels set up outside and we find that the children love it too. In fact we’ve noticed that many more children are drawn to the painting experience when the easels are outside.

Using edicol-coloured water like we did here, can create a real mess under the easel (then again can’t all paint!)…

… so we have a large piece on lino on the ground …

… so we can easily mop up any spills.

Of course this would be a great advantage on the floor inside as well!

Here’s a selection of Christmas decorations the children have had a ball making this past week.

These cute little Christmas trees …

… and stars …

… were put together using our trusty hot glue gun and the children used glittery pipe cleaners to add colour and sparkle.

Once again the children created their own very unique designs …

… and using all those lovely glittery pipe cleaners had some children creating wonderful pipe cleaner stars.

We so love it when one idea spontaneously leads onto another!

These terrific trees are made by folding a piece of paper in half then cutting in on the diagonal  to make a triangle …

… some children cut out shapes on the fold.

… and along the edges …

… and when opened up, they look like Christmas trees.

Decorated with glitter and sequins they look terrific.

All different – all beautiful!

As you would know by now we always get so excited when the children come up with great ideas of their own and it happened again today when one boy turned his Christmas trees into …

… a Christmas crown!

Don’t you just love it?!

These great little decorations are simply old Christmas cards cut up into strips and glued onto sticks.

Whether or not the strips are reassembled in the right order isn’t important.

They all looked unique and amazing. Christmas and creativity …

… so cool!

And our Christmas hangers are looking particularly spectacular now!!

HO!…HO!…HO!

As you already know, we love the fact that in Australia we celebrate Christmas in the summer, so in order to enhance the Aussie Christmas feeling we have gone against tradition, and have a gum tree for a Christmas tree …

… and it just wouldn’t be an Aussie Christmas around here with out good ol’ paper chains hanging up around the place adding to all the festive cheer!

As we like to use recycled products in our program where ever possible, we opted to chop up old magazines, junk mail and advertising material to make our Christmas chains, and inter mixed with other brightly coloured paper …

… they look terrific.

Red and Blue group children ran a friendly competition to see which group could make the most chains.

Over several days the children poured into kinder keen to make their chains longer and longer!

Joining all those chains together proved to be a great fine motor activity for the children, and working out how to best attach the ends using sticky tape or staples, really had them thinking and experimenting …

… and bringing the ends together without twisting the paper, well that was a great challenge in itself!

It also proved to be a colourful maths activity when some of the children grouped the coloured strips together before adding them in patterns to the chains.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

We are an Anglican kindergarten and are able to celebrate Christmas in a fairly traditional religious sense.

A very special part of the Christmas experience for the children is a family Carols’ night in the church, at which the kinder and pre-kinder children star.

To prepare the children for this, Father Tim takes us down to the church, where we paractice the carols we will be singing.

The children love visiting the church, and Father Tim tells them about the story of Christmas using his very old and beautiful nativity statues.

Not only do we visit the church but we also venture down stairs to see the chapel …

… where the children find another nativity scene.

As a result of these visits we like to have heaps of dramatic and imaginative play with the church visit as the basis.

We set up a stable in our bush box with all the dress ups for Mary and Joseph, sheep, donkeys, wise men, angels and of course there’s a baby Jesus.

We have a variety of nativity figures in different sizes, so we pop them around the room in various settings.

And of course we can’t forget the beautiful nativity stories available for the children to experience like;

The Story of Christmas by Vivian French and Jane Chapman …

Mary’s Baby by Jane Chapman, The Christmas book by Dick Bruna …

… and our all time favourite, Wombat Divine delightfully written by Mem Fox and beautifully illustrated by Kerry Argent.

At the end of the year we have a mini concert for our parents. We like it to be a reflection of our year – no big deal!!! We sit down with the children and discuss with them what songs they would like to perform for their families. When we come up with a list, we go over them a couple of times over a few weeks and do one run through in our positions. We do tend to teach them a couple of new songs - Australian Christmas songs to finish off the grand finale.

All the children know “Jingle Bells” so “Aussie Jingle Bells” is easy to teach, particularly with our faithful song cards to help us.

Dashing through the bush

In a rusty Holden ute, kicking up the dust, Esky in the boot.

Kelpie by my side, singing Christmas songs,

It’s Summer time and I am in my singlet, shorts and thongs!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Christmas in Australia on a scorching Summer’s day, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells Christmas time is beaut,

Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute, hey!

And of course we can’t forget another favourite Christmas song – We wish you a merry Christmas, only once again we like to put an Aussie spin on it by singing,

We wish you a ripper Christmas,

We wish you a ripper Christmas,

We wish you a ripper Christmas,

and a snappy New Year.

May the kids have a hoot.

May the pressies be beaut.

We wish you a ripper Christmas…….and a snappy New Year!

A lovely Christmas decoration the children made this week was brightly coloured gum nuts.

So the children could hang them on their Christmas hangers, we pulled out the hot glue gun and attached curling ribbon to the tops of the gum nuts. As the children are having a great time with the glitter, we added P.V.A. glue to fluoro paints and let them decorate freely.

Some children chose to use only paint.

Oh such gooey fun!

While others couldn’t wait to dive into the gitter.

However they chose to decorate them they looked great!

Of course Christmas is HOT, and naturally every one knows that, right? Which means you won’t find any fake snow painted on the windows around here … that’s for sure!

Here at kinder we like to celebrate a true Aussie style Christmas with real Aussie style decorations like these beautifully decorated gum leaves …

…  simply irresistible!

The gum leaves come from the magnificent gum trees living in Donna’s garden. Fortunately the trees require a good trim at this time of year due to all our lovely spring rains and early summer sun, so we gather up the trimmings and recycle them here at kinder!

The children use posca (paint) pens to add colour to the leaves, and add a bit of sparkle if they like with colourful glitter sprinkled over the top.

This is a very popular activity …

… which brings out the children’s creativity.

Perhaps it’s all the glitter …

… after all, it wouldn’t be Christmas without the glitter!

When the paint dries …

… we run the leaves through the laminator …

… to preserve them.

The children punch a hole in the end, and add some colourful curling ribbon so they can be hung up.

The results are beautiful, unique works of art …

… which we hang up on the children’s Christmas coat hangers.

WOW! Our first decorations … and they look soooooo good!

Not only do these beautiful gum leaves make great Aussie Christmas decorations, they also make lovely gifts or gift tags for very special people!