Our last few weeks of Preschool have been a busy time – with Kindy Orientations, Italian Day, Diwali Celebrations and our Zoo Excursion. Term 4 always seems to be such a busy term for everyone!! I know sometimes as a teacher, and as a parent, it can feel like you are preparing for one event, then the next and in the middle of all of this it can be hard to find time to slow down and connect with children, friends, colleagues and family.

As a service we are working on the notion of Slow Pedagogy and trying to embed this as part of our practice – even during a very busy Term 4. 

Slow Pedagogy is all about:

• valuing the present moment

• being attentive to children’s pace, rhythm and interests

• enabling children to revisit their ideas and creations, places and stories

• creating opportunities for children to go deeper in their learning

• supporting time for observation, listening, reflection and documentation
• encouraging unhurried everyday routines with time for wonder and care.

You may have heard from your Preschooler that we are working on some creations for a Preschool Art Show. This will be held over two afternoons during Week 7, with our ELC open for visitors to peruse our art between 3pm and 5pm on Tuesday and Friday afternoon. We are trying to approach getting ready for this through the lense of slow pedagogy. This means that not all the children will complete all the art experiences on offer. They may choose only to do a couple. It also means they can revisit experiences more than once and create another artwork using the same approach and perfecting their skills, if they would like to. We are trying to deepen the students learning by taking time to look at the work of artists to inspire our own art making, then allow the children to reflect on what they like or enjoy about a particular work or process. The children have had such rich and diverse learning experiences across each of our classes as they have prepared for the Art Show. They have had the chance to view art works by a range of different artists; Andy Goldsworthy, Georgia O’Keefe, Henri Matisse and . As part of this they have had the opportunities to explore some of the elements of art, such as line, colour, texture and shape. 

There has been the chance to explore lots of different media and art processes – sketching with charcoal, paper cut outs to create collages, assembling 3D pieces of work, and using found and natural objects to create with. They have explored different paint techniques – creating colour layers with paint and scraping these back, applying paint with sponges and brushes, splattering paint and using watercolours. As I have visited different rooms it has been so lovely to see children’s joy as they experiment and explore with different processes to see the different effects they can create. There has been so much sustained attention as they plan their pieces, carefully arrange different pieces and make judgements about what looks best to them. Naturally there has also been lots of opportunities to build those all important fine motor skills – cutting out, manipulating objects, drawing and using brush strokes.

We can’t wait to share our Art with you – so be sure to save the date in your calendar!! 3 -5PM, TUESDAY 26 & FRIDAY 29 NOVEMBER

One of the blessings at the ELC is having staff from a diverse range of cultural back grounds. Our students had such a lovely time learning a little bit about the festival of Diwali and where it is celebrated. Miss Aman and Gurleen wore some beautiful traditional dresses to celebrate and everyone had the chance to choose a colourful bindi to wear on their forehead and have beautiful henna design drawn on their hand.

Miss Gurleen helped the children to create some rangoli from coloured sand – leaving LED candles in the centre. Children also had the opportunity to make their own diyas from clay – a lantern for holding a candle. We even got to enjoy some fireworks!! Poppers that the children could throw on the ground to make a popping noise. So much fun!