Our State Government Department of Primary Industries provides preschools with a wonderful free of charge program called the “Responsible Pet Ownership Program”.

A dog owner and his/her dog come to the kinder for a one hour session to teach the children how to be safe around dogs.

We have been having this incursion for some years now and always find it extremely worthwhile.

This year we had Angelique and Woody her golden labrador come to visit us.

There are boppy songs, lots of interaction from the children,

bright books and relevant stories and best of all …

a real live dog!

The children are taught when it is appropriate to approach a dog and how to go about it.

Our patient dog visitor is the one they practise on.

We are also provided with a CD and DVD, a book and lots of posters to follow up with.

It is a fabulously worthwhile program and what the children (and parents) are taught really works!

As the children are just settling in to the new year, we like to sing old familiar songs which the children are comfortable with, but with a twist so they feel a bit more ‘grown up’. An example is the well known favourite, “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”.

This is the way we sing it with a jazzier tune than the regular one:

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes,

knees and toes.

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes,

knees and toes

and eyes and ears and mouth and nose.

Heads, shoulder, knees and toes, knees and toes.

We sing it through as it should be, then each time after that we touch all body parts mentioned in the song but one by one leave out their names.

….. , shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes etc

….. , ………, knees and toes, knees and toes etc.

….. , ……… , …..  and toes, ….. and toes etc.

….. , ……… , …..  … …., ….. … …. etc.

In the end, the whole song is totally quiet with us all just moving our hands up and down our bodies. We find the children are very proud of themselves when they can do this altogether and without prompting from the teachers.

Most years as a follow up to our Wild Action incursion, we take the children to the Healesville Sanctuary on an excursion. It is a wonderful place to see and learn about our unique Australian animals.

One year we bought a set of Aussie animals from the Sanctuary shop and we pop them into all sorts of imaginary play areas, sometimes by themselves and sometimes with other creatures. Here we have used sand as a basis. The sand is great as it can be dry as we have it here, or wet so that the children can sculpt it however they like. Add a few logs, plants and rocks and there you have it!

In keeping with our current interest in Australian animals we taught the children a new version (one we made up ourselves) of an old favorite song.

The original is:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,

merry, merry king of the bush is he.

Laugh kookaburra laugh kookaburra,

Gay your life must be!

Our new version sung to the same tune is:

Crocodile sits in the muddy swamp,

Eating all the children – chomp, chomp, chomp.

Snap crocodile snap crocodile,

Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp!

The other day one of our kinder children asked if we could get “The old lady who ate all the animals” down from the shelf.

We have the funniest cloth doll depicting the old lady who swallowed the fly, complete with all the insects and animals which go with her story.

The children really enjoy drama, so a small group of children soon gathered around and Donna explained the story to them. It was delightful to see the children’s faces as they realized the impossible task which lay ahead for the old lady!

Each of the children then chose a character to feed her ; fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and a horse of course!

Donna sang the story to the children, as this was how she learnt it as a young girl. Each child waited with anticipation for their turn to feed the old woman, taking great delight in stuffing their insect or animal into her mouth and pushing it well down into her belly!

After several groups of children had taken part in acting out the story with Donna, she brought out the book of the same title and the children helped her to read the story aloud.

The children then went on to ‘read’ the story from the book themselves and using the puppet they continued to act out the story over and over again.

.

Some of the children even sang the story!

Helping each other out and following the pictures in the book, they had memorised the story really well and between them they didn’t miss a line.

It was delightful co-operative fun, incorporating great language, literacy, music and drama as well as numeracy and imaginary play … perfect play based learning!

Of course if you don’t have an old lady puppet, any hand puppet could be used in her place, even a sock puppet would work really well, and any number of different types of animals could be substituted for the characters she ate.

Older children could make up their own characters and lyrics … they don’t have to rhyme … they could draw pictures and write down their stories and make a book. Perhaps they could even go so far as to make their own puppet and characters!

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird … How absurd to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat … Fancy that, she swallowed a cat!

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird … She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog … what a hog to swallow a dog!

She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a goat … what a joke to swallow a goat!

She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow … I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!

She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, she swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse … she’s dead of course!

We have a large colourful parachute at kinder which we use for music and movement, cubby building and for hanging in the room to jazz it up.

Teddy’s parachute is a wonderful song off the CD Echo Fred by Kids Music Company which the children love. We put a bear or another type of soft toy in the middle of the parachute and while listening and singing along to the song we attempt to bounce the bear as high as we can.

The children have discovered that team work is all important. Working together the bear does indeed hit the roof!

Before packing the parachute away the children often request the song boa constrictor. This involves beginning the song with the parachute under our feet and slowly moving it up past our toes, knees, middle and neck as the song instructs, until we are …

… gulp … swallowed!

We don’t always use the parachute, we have a lot of scarves of different shapes, colours and sizes which make wonderful individual boa constictors.

Here’s the boa constrictor song:

I’m being swallowed by a boa constrictor,

I’m being swallowed by a boa constrictor,

I’m being swallowed by a boa constrictor,

and I don’t like it very much!

Oh no, oh no, he’s swallowd my toe, he’s swallowed my toe.

Oh gee, oh gee, he’s up to my knee, he’s up to my knee.

Oh fiddle, oh fiddle, he’s up to my middle , he’s up to my middle.

Oh heck, oh heck, he’s up to my neck, he’s up to my neck.

Oh dread, oh dread he’s swallowed my …

… gulp!

To pack away the parachute, we whoosh it up and down together three time, (once again teamwork is needed) counting as we go and when we get to three, Sherry or Donna hold on to the parachute scrunching it up into a bundle as all the children let go! …… Or do they?

Letting go is a difficult concept for some children, one we will continue to work on!

Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of all the songs, rhymes, movement activities etc… that we have taught, and making lists is so uninteresting, for us and the children. We came up with the idea of making colourful cards and laminating them whenever we learned something new.

Each session we pop up the cards we want to use or the children have chosen. The added benefit is that the children are reading them too and know what we are doing in music that day, so great for literacy.

We copy pictures from Clip Art and just pop the labels underneath. Then we like to laminate them as they last for much longer and you have them for future years if you decide to do those songs etc… again. If you make them as you go along and need them, the task is not so onerous.

We do a lot of listening to music and identifying the instruments, and find these cards are a great way of showing the children what the instruments look like and how they are played.