March 2022 was a wonderful month filled with learning and fun. Our Little Explorers learnt about farm animals through various activities set up by our educators to extend on the children’s interest in a farm book called ‘Spot Goes to the Farm’ by Eric Hill. The children played with jelly with little farm animals in it, they used toy animals to paint with, and they created beautiful masks to role play as animals. We set up an area in the room with our big red barn and farm animals for them to explore and build their social skills with their peers and educators. Their group times revolved around this topic and the children thoroughly enjoyed learning about each animal and all the special things each animal does on the farm.
Our Adventurers have been exploring the weather as they have been very interested in the recent rains and floods. To educate our Adventurers, we researched weather photos on the iPad. This encouraged the children to engage in discussions about weather and what they have seen and experienced. We learnt about thunder and lightning, tornadoes and floods, and we looked at hail and sunshine. One of the children said: “I miss the sun because my Mummy’s flowers need it”. This then sparked a conversation about flowers and sunshine, leading further into a discussion about how plants grow. We have since started a bean growing experiment to show the children how a greenhouse works and the root system of plants. This is an ongoing project and they’ve loved watching their little beans grow.
We also celebrated St Patrick’s Day and Holi, the festival of colours. Our educator Miss Lilli took charge of the St Patrick’s Day event and everyone came in wearing green that day. We had green EVERYWHERE – green toys on the shelves, green craft activities, and even a special green jelly for a treat! The highlight of the event was a gold chocolate coin hunt where everyone had to hide their eyes, then wait to go on the hunt for the gold coins which they took home at the end of the day.
The Holi festival followed the very next day. It was a truly magical event. Everyone wore white and the children went through the backyard following a special marked trail. There were obstacles along the way and our educators were situated along the course sprinkling coloured chalk on our children as they went by. There was so much giggling and laughter, and our bonds grew stronger with one another as we had so much fun. During the day, the educators also showed children videos of this special event in India to teach them about the cultural aspect of the event.
It was a great month of March here at Grow ELC Killarney Vale and we look forward to all the fun and exciting things in store for April!
