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Blog #3: Young children and digital devices

by admin | Oct 20, 2021 | Education, Learning

For families, there can be confusion around your child’s best interests in relation to the use of digital technologies including phones and tablets in the home. A useful guide for understanding technology use with and for young children is the Statement on Young...

Blog # 2: How does my baby learn to talk?

by admin | Apr 14, 2019 | Education, Learning

Learning to talk is uniquely human. For babies, learning to talk is a complex process which involves both biological and environmental factors. Families support children to learn to talk when they provide opportunities for shared communication, model the use of...

Blog # 1: My child isn’t writing their name or the alphabet. Should I be concerned?

by admin | May 30, 2018 | Education, Learning

It is common to view writing your name or copying alphabet letters as a skill children need to learn in preparation for school. From an occupational therapist perspective, formal handwriting is only suitable for children aged 5 years or over, including printing their...

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Our Day

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Nutrition

Kindergarten (4-5 years)

In the Kindergarten room, children learn through project work, inquiry learning, and rich art making. Across the year, children engage with literacy and numeracy concepts in the context of play, with university-qualified teachers supporting the development of pre-reading and pre-writing skills, along with early mathematical understanding. Within a play-based program, teachers foster children’s curiosity and confidence as individual learners, and collaborative learners in small and large groups.

The learning environment fosters children’s curiosity and immerses them in play-based and inquiry-based approaches to learning. Inquiry-based learning invites children to explore concepts over time and to problem-solve through creative and collaborative thinking. Multimodal learning features in the Kindergarten room to support the exploration of concepts across different play spaces in multiple modes using non-digital and digital tools and resources. As children navigate outdoor play spaces, they are supported to learn their own limits and boundaries in physical and risky forms of play.

In kindergarten, children are 4 for a whole year! Teachers celebrate who they are now, confident that the quality of the educational program affords children ongoing opportunities to develop foundational knowledge and skills necessary for formal schooling. Teachers foster children’s responsibility for self-care through routines and rituals that invite children to demonstrate independence and contribute as a valued member of the kindergarten learning community. As part of the kindergarten program, teachers prepare an end-of-year Transition Statement that outlines the distance travelled in your child’s learning in line with national and state-based learning outcomes.

School Readiness

Five Foundational Skill Sets

Physical skills

Fine and gross motor skills help prepare children’s bodies for the physical demands of a school day. For example, when handwriting, children need well-developed core strength to sit upright for long periods, tracking ability with their eyes to space and locate words on the page, shoulder strength and finger dexterity to manipulate a pencil, and the ability to cross the midline to coordinate controlled movement. Children also need well-developed physical skills for independent self-care,, managing lunch box items, and engaging in physical activity and sports. In our kindergarten program, children have repeated opportunity to develop and refine fine and gross motor movement patterns through climbing, balancing, dancing, running, skipping, ball games, loose parts play, block building, Lego, puzzles, and art-making.

Social skills

Getting along with peers and adults, forming friendships, and working collaboratively all contribute to children’s positive experiences of being at school. As a group learning environment, kindergarten supports children to develop foundational social skills, with repeated opportunity to connect with peers and adults outside the home, develop strategies to enter play or invite others to play, collaborate, share resources, negotiate conflicts, and develop empathy for others’ perspectives and feelings. In our kindergarten program, children have repeated opportunity to work collaboratively with others through play, engagement in everyday routines, and extended project work.

Emotional skills

As they transition to school, children move toward self-regulation skills which are critical to being productive learners and maintaining friendships. Self-regulation is dependent on the quality of co-regulation a child experiences in the first five years. In our kindergarten program, Educators model appropriate emotional responses and support children to develop a language to describe their feelings and responses to familiar and new situations. Co-regulation can only occur when children feel secure in their relationships with educators and experience predictable, responsive and supportive environments.

Oral language skills

Speaking and listening lead the way for reading and writing. In preparation for school, children need to use language to express themselves, ask questions and communicate with others. They also need to comprehend what is being said to them to take in curriculum content, follow instructions, and understand what others are communicating. Strong oral language and listening skills provide the basis for learning to read and write at school. In our kindergarten program, we focus on children’s oral language development – their ability to speak, listen, comprehend and hear the sounds of language. Children have repeated opportunity to engage in shared book reading, rhyming, singing, storytelling, dramatic play, and rich conversations with peers and adults.

Dispositions for learning

Kindergarten Transition Statements

As part of the kindergarten program, teachers prepare an end-of-year Transition Statement.

The transition statement provides a snapshot of your child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions for learning across the five learning and development areas for the state-based learning guideline. Kindergarten teachers develop the statement from a strengths-based perspective and draw from information you have shared about your child, along with observations and formative and summative assessments of your child’s learning and development recorded across the year.

Kindergarten

Understand their child’s learning and development progress
Share information with their child’s school to support continuity of learning.

For schools, transition statements help Prep teachers to:

Understand each child’s learning and development progress
Support each child’s successful transition to school.

Pre-Kindergarten (3-4 years)

Increasingly complex forms of play support children’s learning and development in the Pre-Kindergarten room, as they engage in imaginative play, construction play, storytelling, and arts-based learning. Children engage with texts and other forms of print as they begin to explore symbols, and represent ideas through painting, drawing, and artmaking. Literacy and numeracy concepts are embedded across the learning environment and aligned with play themes.

The learning environment is responsive to children becoming more detailed-oriented in their play. Children aged 3-4 years use language in increasingly sophisticated ways to take on roles, collaborate with others, and express themselves through story, art, design and imaginative play. Open-ended resources feature in play spaces, prompting children to collaborate and negotiate with peers how resources can be used in play. Outdoor play spaces with more challenging features invite children to learn the capabilities and limits of their own bodies through physical play.

Responsive educators support children to develop friendships, play collaboratively with peers, and understand and label their own and others’ emotions. In the Pre-Kindergarten room, educators facilitate rich learning experiences as children display increasingly complex forms of play. Educators support children to develop independence in self-care and engage fully in routines across the day as a valued members of the pre-kindergarten learning community.

Toddlers (1-3 years)

Toddlers’ learning and development is supported through engagement in everyday routines and active forms of play. Small-world and imaginative play promote language as Toddlers use their growing knowledge of the world around them to create narratives using varied resources. Construction play supports the manipulation of different materials, with arts-based learning promoting early mark making and creativity.

Toddlers are active, curious, and on the move as they play. Schemas or repeated patterns in play feature in Toddler rooms, with children transporting objects from one space to another, connecting objects in a line or circle, exploring trajectory, and enclosing objects or themselves in other objects or spaces. A well-designed learning environment for toddlers supports unhurried play, room to move, and common play schemas.

As increasingly independent learners, Toddlers explore the learning environment actively. Educators support collaborative forms of play as Toddlers begin to take interest in the play of others and develop skills to initiative and enter play scenarios. Educators involve Toddlers fully in predictable routines across the day, with mealtimes, toileting, rest times, and play providing opportunities to connect, educate, and care.

Babies (birth-12 months)

Babies’ learning and development is supported through everyday routines and early forms of play. Simple games, books, songs and rhymes promote language development and self-awareness. Through movement, babies develop fundamental movement patterns and physical skills. As sensory learners, babies engage actively with the world as they explore independently and socially with others.

Sensory-based resources and experiences feature in the Nursery room. The learning environment is designed to support different motor movement patterns with soft places to lay and roll, room to crawl and cruise, and elements to traverse and climb. Your baby will enjoy learning both indoors and outdoors as they engage with trusted educators.

Babies use trusted educators as their secure base as they explore the environment, learn through their senses, and develop new connections in the brain through play. Educators in Nursery rooms are emotionally available to babies to support a sense of security and belonging. Across the day, educators slow down in their work with babies, using everyday routines and play as opportunities to connect, educate, and care.

Play, Discover, Learn

Play

Young children learn best through play. Play builds healthy bodies and brains as children explore actively to make sense of their world and have fun. Play improves children’s physical, social and emotional wellbeing, and supports language, thinking and problem-solving skills.

Discover

Exploring and making sense of the world independently and with others promotes positive dispositions for learning. Through discovery, children demonstrate curiosity. Discovery drives motivation to learn as children build confidence and resilience to engage in familiar and new experiences and take risks in their learning.

Learn

Play and discovery lead to learning. Learning occurs when children have repeated opportunity to practise and master new skills, observe, ask questions and problem-solve. Learning can only occur when children feel secure to explore their world. For this reason, relationships are the basis for all learning in First Five Early Learning centres.

Our Philosophy

At First Five Early Learning we celebrate who children are now. We recognise learning begins from birth, with the first five years the most critical and sensitive for shaping children’s health and wellbeing, learning and development.

We foster children’s natural propensity to learn through play and discovery. We draw from early childhood education research and evidence-based practice to inform high quality approaches to teaching and learning.

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We view children as capable learners and demonstrate respect for the multiple ways they represent their ideas and share their learning. We slow down in our work with children to hear their voices and respect their thinking.

We join with families and community to nurture children’s learning and development in their formative years. We respond to children’s identities, cultures and languages and recognise family and community as children’s first and most influential teachers.

Quality Matters

The First Five years is a critical and sensitive time period for children’s learning and development. High quality education and care matters for children’s early experiences and how they develop foundational skills for learning and life.

For young children, high quality education and care incorporates: