Prep | Kindergarten News

Mathematics

Party season is upon us and Kindergarten students have been busy applying their knowledge of multiplication and division to real world problems.

If I need to make 20 lolly bags, how many lollies should I put in each bag? How many lollies would I need all together?
Mrs Pahos is having a birthday party for 30 friends. She wants to put them into groups for a party game. How many groups should she make? How many people could be in each group?
Mrs Bailey is buying some crazy socks for Christmas presents. Each pair of socks is $5. How many pairs of socks should she buy? What will be the total cost?

Students are using a range of strategies to explore these open ended questions. We have shared a variety of ideas including, drawing images, using counters and writing numerals and words. Perhaps there is a real world problem involving multiplication and division that your son can help you solve.

Buddies

One of the many highlights in Kindergarten, is the time that we spend with our Year 6 buddies. Through interacting with the Year 6 boys, both year groups have improved their social and communication skills. It has been a wonderful opportunity to help deepen understanding in Mathematics, English and through the Units of Inquiry. On behalf of the Kindergarten boys we would like to thank our Year 6 buddies for their kindness, leadership and friendship. We wish our buddies all the best as they transition to the Senior School.

Learn to Swim

It was great to see the boys engage with the annual Learn-to-Swim programme. It is a programme that the boys have gone without for the past two years due to COVID, however, they took the opportunity to be in the pool with a strong level of maturity and engagement. Boys were respectful to the teachers and behaved themselves travelling to and from the centre on the bus. Hopefully the additional swimming training will put them in good stead for the summer ahead. Fingers crossed that it will be a summer of heat so that boys can refresh in the water.

Holiday Reading

During the coming holidays, our young learners are encouraged to engage in a wide range of quality literature as regularly as possible. This involves reading texts that allow your child to practise their decoding skills. We would also recommend that you read texts to your son that are age-appropriate, yet above their current reading level. Kindergarten students are often able to comprehend complex texts that are beyond their current reading abilities. Happy Reading!

Music

The Unit of Inquiry Where We Are in Place and Time has had a focus on the Christmas Story and been enhanced by the use of GarageBand. The students have been developing their vocal skills in readiness for the Christmas Service and their aural skills as composers to create drum, string, or keyboard compositions. The Key Concepts of Connection and Causation have been supported by the related concepts of pattern and sequence in assisting the inquiry.

Mandarin

Boys started the UOI “Where We Are in Place and Time” by learning about 3 different types of journeys (Form), which are holiday journeys, migrations, and the evolution of Chinese characters from pictographs. Then we looked at the nearby places in our school community and identified the key places that are important and what we do at those places (Function).

In terms of Approaches to Learning (ATLs), students have been developing their Communication Skills by identifying the Chinese words with oral and visual support and by reading them out in various word games. There are two other main activities used to develop students’ Communication Skills. The first one is Chinese songs, which help the boys to constantly review and consolidate simple and common Chinese words. The second one is Chinese stories with simple and repetitive language patterns, as well as visual cues, which are suitable for young learners to comprehend and repeat after.

STEAM

Forward, back, left and right! It’s all about robots in Kindergarten STEAM. This term we have been inquiring into how robots can be used to code a journey. First the boys tried and tested many different robots to determine that all robots Function in different ways. The boys then had a turn being robots, following a sequence to make their own sandwiches. We then took a deep dive into the Form and Function of BeeBots. Before using BeeBots to develop code that could follow a path and then create their own journeys. As the term comes to a close the boys are looking forward to using their iPads to drive and code the Dash robots.

In the school holidays your son may like to continue building on his coding abilities by playing Kodable, a coding and logical thinking iPad game available on the app store, your son’s username and password should be glued into the front page of his Record Book.