Campbell House is a place to enjoy and learn!

Our highly capable and competent young learners, confidently drive a large portion of the learning in Campbell House. Embedded in the documentation regarding the Reggio Emilia approach, is the assertion that there is a very strong relationship apparent in stimulating learning environments where children are listened to very carefully, facilitating effective teaching and learning.

In such settings, listening keenly and carefully to children’s theories and areas of curiosity, help develop and vary the teacher’s approach and methods of teaching. Children question frequently and with true purpose! Children hypothesise, investigate and make different links to prior learning in their journey towards what is very often a palpable desire ‘to find out’ and ‘to know’!

Currently as our 4YO learners progress steadily towards school commencement and the 3YO program children propel quickly towards the 4YO kindergarten year, we have been observing the increased development of their skills, independence, confidence and sense of purpose and self.

The 4YO learners, heading towards commencement of School in 2018 are busily engaging in the emphatic drive to encourage and teach the many important skills required for school readiness.

School Readiness

It is essential for effective and ongoing learning that young students are warmly encouraged to pursue skill development in the following key areas:

• Focus and engagement in task.
• Effective listening skills.
• Independence with physical needs.
• Responsive to directions.
• Capacity to articulate requests for assistance.
• Desire to achieve.

Effective Learning

Rinaldi (2006), in reference to children’s individual construction of knowledge, says much about the role of educators as ‘co-creators’ of knowledge rather than purely just transmitters of knowledge or information.

Staff acknowledge emphatically, that doubts, mistakes, surprise and curiosity are all facets through which real knowledge and skills can be established. Young learners lead us with their insatiable appetites for constantly wanting ‘to know’ how, when, why and where are so often the first word of our young learners. The responsibility of educators is to respond to this need.

The joy of finding out and the wonder of doing so can never be underestimated. When natural curiosity is satisfied by discovery, revelation or experience, learning is much more likely to be remembered with further, more advanced links of information often being sought.

Giving children ‘time’ to explore and engage with other learners in their pursuits, allowing them to make ‘mistakes’ and undertake trial and error, young learners are rewarded for their energy and thirst for discovery. The power of this is not to be underestimated in the impact. The learning environment and the recognition of children’s capabilities opens future and further appetites for learning.

Viewing young learners as being capable and competent and as having an insatiable appetite for learning more information must always be foremost in adults around them!

Preparing for 2018!

Throughout Terms 3 and 4 we have observed our learners in the 4YO ELC programs experience a taste, or more than one, of what it will be like to be ‘in Prep’. This is an exciting time for children who are moving into Barbreck in 2018 and a proud moment of anticipation and often mixed feelings for parents. The girls who will be members of the Prep class at St Catherine’s School, have had several excellent opportunities to spend time in Barbreck and they loved it!

Now that we are in Term 4, the girls have had the opportunity to meet the new girls entering St Catherine’s in Prep. With this, came a lot of excitement!

Under the excellent guidance of Miss Annie Taylor, assisted by Mrs Kate Bourke, the girls thoroughly enjoyed their task of ‘being a Prep student’. Each girl appeared more confident and more comfortable after each of the interesting sessions with “I want to be at School now” and “at School, I am going to learn lots about everything!” and familiar statements after each visit. Preparation for the transition as always, was attended to with professional rigour, care and full appreciation of the critical importance of familiarity and comfort.

With great excitement, we anticipate the new Preps of 2018 will enjoy Barbreck for the first two terms and then, even more so, as they move into the new St Catherine’s Junior School building in Term 3.

Mrs Alana Moor, Head of ELC and Barbreck

Observing the Horizon

The children of the Waratah Room have become great observational artists through taking the time to notice detail, lines, colour, shape and changes in their subjects when completing observational drawing and painting tasks. Throughout the year, the children have painted Waratahs, skeletons, fruit and flowers with paint, pencil or texta. In these experiences, educators have encouraged children to stop, notice and observe the visual information before them. Educators have supported the children to slow down, process the visual information and help them plan how they would portray their interpretations of this visual information.

This term, educators have introduced to the children the idea of ‘horizons’. The children have been encouraged to stop and notice the ‘backgrounds’ of paintings and understand the concept of the horizon and how this can really set the scene of their paintings. We discussed the setting and decided that the shape of the horizon was ‘the line where the land/water meets the sky’.

Once children painted their horizons, educators encouraged children to make detailed additions to their dry paintings – introducing them to layering.

Slowing down the process of painting and understanding the value of layering in their work, enables children to have a more meaningful painting experience and also allows them to have the opportunity to really plan, consider and reflect on their work. Children have spent much of the first half of the year experimenting and understanding the concept of mark making with paint. We now look to refine these skills further and extend our knowledge on observational painting and transfer this into our work.

Miss Sandra Lenon, Waratah Room Teacher