Special Guest - Yoga!

This week we had a very special guest join us. Ms Lauren's sister, Ms Rienna came all the way from Australia to teach us some special yoga poses. We did downward dog, warrior, cobra, crocodile, bear and even forward folds. Ms Rienna played a game with us where she let us choose 2 of our favourite yoga poses to link together and then we got to show our friends. We had so much fun! Thanks Ms Rienna :)

Goodbye Sophia!

One of our friends Sophia is leaving us to move to England! We had a lovely party for her and all her friends. Sophia bought yummy nut free cupcakes for everyone to share. We played musical chairs and even read a special story for her. Bye Sophia we will miss you xo

Concert Rehearsal

The children were very excited to have their dress rehearsal for the Winter Concert. They rehearsed each song and practiced changing into their costumes. They also ran through the play, Stick Man. The children’s energies were amazing and the preschool was buzzing with adrenalin. We can’t wait until the concert!

Hanukkah

The children have been learning about celebrations around the world. We learnt about Christmas and Santa and discussed our own family traditions. We also explored what Hanukkah is. The children read a story about Hanukkah lights and we made a star of David. Some of our children who celebrate Hanukkah taught us about a dreidel.

Winter Concert!

With our Winter Concert less than a week and a half away we have transformed our classroom into a stage. The children have been busy rehearsing their ballet and hip hop routines. We have been working on our Stick Man play as well. The children have learnt their lines and are now in the process of creating their own props for the play. They have made additional characters and are now painting Stick Mans house. We are all working together as a team to complete this big task. We can't wait to see you at our concert!

Decorating our Tree!

The children have been working very hard the last few weeks to create many decorations for our tree. We have made snowmen, bells, baubles, stars and even candles. Ms Ingrid bought us some decorations from the store so we added those to our tree. Doesn't our tree look great!

Christmas Tree Surprise!

Ms Ingrid surprised us this week with a very special Christmas tree! As a class we discussed how we decorate our Christmas Trees at home and what ideas everyone had to decorate our tree at Little Feet Little Faces. The children decided they wanted to create baubles, mini Christmas trees, bells, stars, snowmen and candles. It will be a very big project and the children are going to complete some decorations every week until Christmas time.

Special Guest Mr John

On Tuesday we had a special guest come visit us! Mr John has been a long anticipated special guest from the Summer. We are very grateful he could find some spare time to come play guitar with us! Mr John sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with us, as well as Old McDonald and Mr Sun. The children had a great time listening and singing along with him. Mr John also showed us how to pluck the strings on the guitar and taught us why it has a whole in it and why you have to use just your fingers to pluck the strings. The children were all very excited to get to use a guitar, for some it was the first time they had ever seen the instrument! Thanks Mr John for a fantastic lesson!

Stick Man

 The children have been very excited to rewrite Julia Donaldson’s Stick Man. We have been using everyone’s ideas to create an adapted version that fits the children’s visions of Stick Man’s adventures. The children also wanted to create a Stick Man and a Stick Lady Love, so we used as many art materials as we could find. The children did an amazing job and through this experience were able to bring their ideas to life! We focused on drawing using observational techniques and then developing our fine motor skills to colour and glue materials onto our Stick Man and Stick Lady Love.

Winter Concert rehearsals!

The concert is coming up soon! The children are very busy learning their new routines and rehearsing their play. We will be performing an adaptation of Stick Man by Julia Donaldson. The children are helping to write and adapt the text with some very creative ideas! Our preschoolers will be performing a ballet and hip hop routine each as well as the play. Our specialised dance class will be performing a classic ballet piece and a funky African hip hop! We can't wait to see you all there!

Spooky cookies!

For our spooky Halloween party the children decided that they wanted to make a spooky treat. Ms Ingrid found us some very special Halloween cookies for us to decorate. As a team we sorted out the coloured icing and sprinkles. We discussed different patterns we could make using different coloured sprinkles. The children made some very spooky cookies!

Halloween Pumpkin!

When discussing what the children knew about Halloween some of them mentioned carving a pumpkin. We decided to buy a big pumpkin and carve a spooky face. The children practised what kind of spooky faces they wanted to make by drawing them on paper. We watched Ms Ingrid cut the top off the pumpkin, then we worked together as a team to scoop out the middle and seeds. We all put gloves on to keep the pumpkin seeds clean so we could use them later on for a baking experiment. The children had a great time getting the pumpkin ready. On Friday we carved a spooky face into the pumpkin with Ms Anieka. Happy Halloween!

Specialised Class - Dance

Ballet

The children in our specialised dance class have been working very hard on their ballet routine for the winter concert. We have been following the RAD syllabus and focusing on our arm and feet positions as well as learning sautees, jetes and spring points. As we learn our choreography the children are learning to point and flex their toes, extend their arms and legs to create beautiful long lines and also to bring expression and imagination into their dance.Here is a sneak preview of our ballet class.

Fall Fun!

The children have noticed that there have been a lot of fallen leaves collecting in our playground. Since we have been learning about Fall the children knew why the leaves were falling off the trees. We decided to have some fun and we raked all of the leaves into a big pile then jumped in them! We practiced how high we could jump in the leaves and even threw them as high as we could so we could dance under them as they fell to the ground.

Field Trip to see Thumbelina

On Friday the 14^th of October we went on a field trip to see a play called Thumbelina. It was a fantatsic opportunity for the children to see how the dramatic concepts they learn about at school are put into practice. The children had a wonderful time watching the play with their friends and their parents. Look at how much fun we had!

Let's learn Literacy!

The children have been working very hard on their language books. We have been using our flash cards to practice our phonics as well as exploring concrete materials such a magnetic letters to further our understanding. In our literacy workbooks the children practice printing their letters and we focus on the directions of the lines used to make the letters. We also link the sound to the letter and try to think of words that start with that sound to lead into initial consonants. We use a lot of positive encouragement to encourage all levels of learners in the class. Emergent writing skills range from meaningful strokes of a pencil all the way to word recognition and letter representation.

Paper Mache Turkey!

For Thanksgiving the children decided to create a 3Dimensional Turkey. We all brainstormed together what the best way to create our turkey would be and the children decided on paper mache. We used a recipe and discussed how a recipe is a specific text genre and followed the instructions to make our paper mache. We then painted our turkey and added feather suing our handprints. Throughout this visual arts experience the children discussed what they like about Thanksgiving and their plans with their families.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week we are learning about Thanksgiving. The children are very interested to know how people used to find food before there were grocery stores. We did some research together and learnt about cornucopias. The children made their own cornucopias and chose what produce to make out of playdough. We made strawberries, oranges, bananas, grapes, mushrooms and even a potato!

Families are...

This month we are learning about families. The children had a discussion about what a family is, who is in their family and what is special about their family. Together we wrote some sentences about our family. The children then labelled their drawings using familiar sight words such as Mom and Dad. We also focused on our symbolic drawing by drawing our family members slowly. We drew their faces, eyes, mouths, bodies and some children even drew their clothes!

Construction!

In their creative play time the children have been very interested in constructing the marble run. They work together in either small groups or as one large group and create outstanding pieces of work! As they are constructing these towers they are learning many things. For example: Negotiation skills with peers, conversation skills, problem solving skills, learning about balance and counter balance and many more exciting skills! 

Stained Glass

Today we discussed fall and special things that happen in fall time. The children wanted to make more fall leaves so we decided to make stained glass leaves. The children exercised their small finger muscles by tearing the tissue paper and sticking it to the contact. We then decided to also make pumpkins since the children had such great fun making the leaves. They repeated the process but this time for the pumpkin and we focused on creating shapes with the pieces of paper.