Monday 22nd -Friday 26th August

The Fire Dashers have had a very busy week this week and have been working hard during our workshops.

As well as working hard in our workshops we have also be thinking about the power word... YET! We have been discussing how even though there may be things we can’t do, it just means we can’t do them... YET!

The children loved watching this sesame street video all about the ‘power of yet’ which then lead onto a great circle time discussion about things that we can’t do that we would like to be able to in the future. During center times the children worked with Ms. Diwa to think about two things they can do and one thing that they can’t do yet. They then discussed steps they could take to help them achieve their goal.

The Fire Dashers have also been developing their teamwork and communication skills. In Math Workshop this week the Fire Dashers worked on playing a maths game with a partner. Together we created an anchor chart to show what playing a game with a partner would look like. Some of the Fire Dasher’s suggestions were; to take turns, don’t argue, look at each other when you are talking and don’t get upset if you lose.

Waiting patiently

Turn taking 

Waiting for your turn

Giving eye contact

Looking at your partner when you talk

Looking at your partner when you talk to them.

It was also lovely to see these skills move into their free choice play. During free choice one child made a paper aeroplane that quite a few other children liked and wanted to make too. Rather than just make one for each child he used his communication skills to help explain to his friends how to make a paper aeroplane so they could all make one themselves. We then had a great time testing them and seeing which plane flew the furthest. One child even began to experiment to see if a smaller plane might travel further!  

Using our listening and communication skills

Working together

In writers workshop this week the Fire Dashers each created a page to go into our very first Fire Dashers book called ‘All about the Fire Dashers.’ First we created our pictures really thinking about the detail and taking our time to create pictures of ourselves, new friends we have made and something that we enjoy doing in Kindergarten. We then moved on to thinking about colours and colouring in. We discussed what it means to use an appropriate colour and what the boundary line is. Finally we wrote about our pictures. We used our words of the week to help us with our sentences and tried hard to sound out any letters we could hear in new words.

In readers workshop this week we have continued to learn about how to take care of books, particularly how to look after the spine when we chose a book and put a book back. The Fire Dashers also loved listening and helping me to tell the story ‘The Journey’ by Aaron Becker which is a wordless book. This also helped us with our writers workshop as it showed how the details in pictures can really help us to tell an exciting story. I was extremely impressed with the language the children used to describe the forest and the castle that appeared in the story.

During readers workshop we also went on a reading walk around our school. We were amazed at how many signs there were to read around the school and how some of those signs were just pictures that we could read. We definitely learnt that reading doesn’t just happen in books, it’s all around us, everyday! Take a look at all the signs we found around our school to read.

This week we also played a sound game. The children enjoyed playing the game and deciding what sound the object started with. We also enjoyed lots of fun activities during our center time. Take a look at the videos and photos below to see what we have been getting up to.