Music Makers

Now I'm the first to say that music is not my strength. I definitely can't hold a note, sing, or even play a musical instrument, but I had a great time planning and facilitating our 'Music Makers' Discovery session for our Mountaineers (Mountaineers are our four-year-old pre-school visitors).

(Don't worry if your child loves music and singing. I am great at playing CD's and using You Tube, and I love teaching new finger-play songs!)

Here we are making our own musical instruments; guitars, drums, and anything else we were inspired to make. We also wrote certificates for our friends to give to them for making such wonderful musical instruments, thanks Sparklebox.

We sold concert tickets and dressed up to perform a concert for our friends.

 

.We filled the little containers from the inside of 

Kinder Surprise eggs with different things. We loved listening to the sounds they made. (A big thank you to my two boys at home for eating all of those eggs for me!)

 We used these cards from Sparklebox to practice our handwriting on the mini-whiteboards.

We cut and sorted different types of musical instruments and glued them onto paper.

We used this website to explore music and different instruments on the interactive whiteboards.

We also had a great and extremely loud time playing lots of different musical instruments and exploring the different sounds they make.

This week we have been working on looking after property. Our musical instruments and the special things we have out for Discovery need to be used carefully. I was impressed to see children trying hard to use our equipment carefully and putting it away when they were finished. The ability to have gentle hands and look after things that we use at school also extends to looking after and using our gentle hands with our friends, this is very important and sometimes difficult for some children just starting school. (Something we are still working on is looking after property by tidying up at clean-up time - there is always a mess around the art and craft activities.)

I love to include our dress-up box during our Discovery session for several reasons:

• Children can practice opening and closing zips, buttons, velcro, and laces.
• They have an opportunity to take clothes on and off, practicing one leg before the other and turning clothes the correct way out so they are ready to wear.
• Dressing up allows children to have the opportunity to mimic in a safe environment things they have seen in real life.
• Children use their imagination by inventing multiple uses for different dress-up costumes.
• Children learn responsibility by returning the dress-ups to the correct place for others to use.
• Waiting for a turn at wearing a particular costume allows children to practice sharing and turn-taking - something very important for school children.
• Acting is also a great way for children to channel their emotions in a healthy and harmless manner.

Heart Art

As part of looking at shapes and their attributes we created these gorgeous mixed media Heart Art. Thanks to this website for the idea.

We had a great time selecting colours for our artwork and carefully drawing around the heart to fill up our paper.

When we have time I plan to show the children how to make paper-chain hearts and thread them onto string to hang with our beautiful artwork.

As part of children's inspiration for this art work we have been reading this poem about hearts during the week. One great thing I liked about this particular poem and one of the main reasons I choose to read it was the fact that it repeats the same important sight words (sight words are the most common words we read and write and children learn these by remembering what they look like - hence being called 'sight words'). The other reason I choose it was because its repetition makes it easier for my beginning readers to read or remember it. I also used little clip-art pictures to illustrate each line to help give clues as to what the words say.

See my post about our Circle Teddy Bear Faces, and our Abstract Shape Collages for more shape art activities that we have enjoyed.

Super Shape Collage

 One goal of teaching geometry is to enable children to develop “a feeling for shape and the properties of objects so that they can tell objects apart, classify them and know their basic properties.”

http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/geometry-information?parent_node

We have been learning to recognise and name shapes and their attributes. And as I love art and I am always trying to incorporate it into other curriculum areas we made these shape collages (inspired by this website). 

 Here are our collages drying.


I cut lots of circles, triangles, squares, and oblongs out of tissue paper. (Tissue paper is quite tricky for little hands to cut and I didn't want this to be a cutting activity.) We then glued on the shapes, trying to create new shapes by overlapping the tissue paper. The children have chosen one part of their collage to glitterise. 

 

Arranging and gluing on our shapes. 

Some of the finished artwork - note the glitter.

Amazing Counting

Check out this fantastic counting. I turned around yesterday to discover these amazing mathematicians had ordered our teddy bear numbers from 0-30 with absolutely no help from me. Not bad for children who have only been at school a few weeks!

My class continue to make me proud!

(Plus - check out our new pocket chart, I can see lots of uses for it.)

A Quick Look at Discovery

Our Discovery theme this week was 'Toys.' 

Here are a few photos of what we got up to.

A Transition to School Book

If your child is starting school; visiting, talking about, and looking at photos of your chosen school can make the transition from Kindy or pre-school easier. Ask the teachers at your school or your early childhood teachers if they have a book about the transition to school.

You can download this book to read to your child about starting as a Mountaineer at Totara Park School (we call our 4 year old visitors Mountaineers). I have included lots of photos with simple language that introduces some of the people and places they might see at school.

Meet TP Kid. He will show you around our school.

Pacifica

We had a great time exploring lots of Pacifica themed activities for Discovery this week. I love to choose a range of activities to explore for Discovery.

Tapa cloth made with crayon and dye. Tapa or siapo is a traditional Polynesian patterned cloth.

• Pacific music making.
• Threading a lei. A lei is used to welcome visitors.
• Pasting a koru mosaic with tissue paper.
• Drawing symmetrical patterns with a Pacific theme.
• Sand-castles decorated with shells. Sensory play has a variety of benefits. Check out this post about sensory play and why I like to use it during discovery.