December 2009

Term Three - And so the change begins. We, the teachers settled into the term with some trepidation but all went quite smoothly. We had good systems in place ensuring that everyone was aware of the routines and had set up a picture book so that the children could see who was attending each day. Over the term we managed to the stage where each child was attending at least three afternoons per week which was great.

The children, on the other hand just settled back into kindergarten life as if there were no changes. Apart from the few who wondered why they were no longer attending each day there were no major hiccups. The six hour group quickly became accustomed to having lunch at the kindergarten and spending extra time with us. Little friendships were formed between children who didn't notice each other in the larger four hour group.
We were fortunate that it was only a short time before a fourth teacher was appointed to the teaching team. This was a 6 month appointment to be readvertised as a permanent position after consultation.


Puppet Galore: - All the changes did not dampen the children's enthusiasm for learning and during this term there was a enormous focus on puppets. The entire kindergarten community became infected by the joy and excitment of constructing puppets of all kinds - glove, box, finger, paper bag. You name it the children made them. At times it was a challenge to keep up with providing resources but that was part of the fun for us as teachers. thinking: - Where is this going? How can we extend it? What will happen if we!!!. Another challenge was that of ensuring that the interest was wide enough to enable some of the younger children, just on three years to be involved. Many of these children learned to use the glue guns during this interest and are now dab hands at them.
This interest continued for the whole of term three and at times re-emerged during the following term.