Guldheden Nursery “I found I could say things with colour and shapes, that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” – Georgia O´Keeffe

Exploring basic shapes and colors 

 

One of the most basic educational processes: the observation of same and different develops when a child explores different colors and shapes. We all use shapes and colors as a way of identifying, and organizing visual information.

Learning becomes fun by giving children the opportunity to explore their artistic side and boost their self-esteem by looking at their wonderful art work.

Children are decorating their handprint chicken with feather.

Children are gluing and coloring eggs.

Learning shapes and colors.

Using everyday objects, such as a bottle to make colorful prints.

Building structures using blocks with different colours and shapes.

 

The preschool should promote play, creativity and enjoyment of learning, as well as focus on and strengthen the new experiences, knowledge and skills (Lpfö). 

To develop their ability to build, create and construct using different techniques, materials and tools (Lpfö).

Guldheden Nursery – Entering the world of Letterland

This month we have been focusing on “Letterland”.

Letterland activates learning by using our senses – music, actions, movement, song, art, craft, games, books and role-play.

Our children enjoy dancing to letterland songs. It is an easy method, to learn the alphabet through music, and dancing to music makes learning more fun. We made it all the more fun by dancing with balloons too. As the children are dancing together, it contributes towards developing friendship, love and care for one another.

Friendly letter characters provide strong visual memory clues, so that the children learn and retain phoneme/grapheme correspondences. Our daily routine includes reading the alphabet characters aloud from the posters and books in the classroom. Our children take turns as they point out the letters which they like to hear aloud. Then repeat with the Teacher. This is a good way to learn phonetic sounds.

Our children are able to identify many of the letters through the pictures. They like to repeat each word after the teachers. This develop their use of spoken language, vocabulary and concepts, as well as the ability to play with words, relate something, express their thoughts, put questions, and put forward their arguments and communicate with others (Lpfö).

 

Focused multi-sensory activities appeal to all learners and activate all learning channel. These days children are more attractive to audio-video media like iPads. Therefore, we use iPads as a tool to increase their concentration time to learn letters/words. By this they develop an interest in pictures, texts and different media, as well as the ability to make use of, interpret and talk about them (Lpfö).

In this activity the children glued, and coloured the first letter of their name on to paper.   Through out this activity we developed the use of the sounds of the letter which they are working on. This stimulates a use of different senses in their approach to developing an interest in the written language and an understanding of symbols, and their communicative functions (Lpfö).

Our activities also took care of following aspects:

• develop their ability to listen, react and express their own views, and try to understand the perspectives of others,
• develop their creative abilities and the ability to convey impressions, thoughts and experiences in many different forms of expression, such as play, pictures, song and music, dance and drama (Lpfö).

Thank you Guldheden Nursery, for showing some of the many different ways that you show our children the fun and exciting world of Letterland.

Guldheden Kindy – Celebrating World Book Day

Being part of the nature, and appreciating all what it offers us is part of our learning process. We also aim to develop our curiosity, and enjoyment through our ability to play.

Children are future adults that will take part in changing the society for the better. Our Preschool aims to prepare them for this by helping them develop their social skills and learning safety rules. During our theme about Transportation- we linked socializing and safety rules to our outings by taking different means of transportation. We focused on the safety rules as well as working together as a group as we understood the need to care about one another safety and comfort.

It is though reading that we have the greatest possibility of developing our language, imagination, fantasy as it  opens a wide window for us to see our world. It is for this reason that we work towards developing an interest in books. Even if the children cannot read by themselves. They love listening to the stories we read for them and now they even take turns to tell a story to their friends using their fantasy.  On World  Book Day , we went to the Göteborg city library to see and read books from different countries, and in different languages. We read a story in Arabic (which a teacher translated into English and sometimes Swedish). The children learned that Arabic is written from right to left. As our interest in books has developed, the children wrote their own book, as the teachers gathered the children´s drawings – they created a book called “Underwater World”.

Reading, having excursions and being one with nature are all great things to experience during a day.  Thank you for allowing us to be a part of the kindy children’s day through your photos.

Guldheden Preschool 1 – Creative use of Annie Apple

Creating rainy weather and sunny days with our art skills.

This week we are working with the letter “A” and are therefore also making the big letter “A” to put on the wall!

Annie Apple – the children are making red apples and the letter A.

Through letter land the children are exploring phonics using their senses. Thank you for sharing some of your experiences of Annie Apple.

Guldheden Nursery – Its through doing that we learn

Developing Motor Skills

Motor skills are an essential component of development for all children. Play is vital to a child’s development of gross and fine motor skills. Through play, children practice, control and coordination of large body movements, as well as small movements of hands and fingers. Through play they also learn to work together as a team and develop compassion for others too.

Movement is at the very center of young children’s lives. It is an important facet of all aspects of their development, whether in the motor, cognitive, or affective domains of human behavior (Gallahue ,1993).

Making shapes with play dough

Drawing for mummy and daddy

We provided support for children’s motor development by planning play activities such as, drawing, football, play dough, balancing, holding rope etc., that provided children with regular opportunities to move their bodies. For all intellectual functioning sensory and motor experiences provides the basis for further development.

Coordinating steps

Playing football

Climbing the rock

Lpfo:

 develop their curiosity and enjoyment, as well as their ability to play and learn.

develop their motor skills, ability to co-ordinate, awareness of their own body, as well as an understanding of the importance of maintaining their own health and well-being.

develop their ability to function individually and in a group, handle con icts and understand rights and obligations, as well as take responsibility for common rules.

Guldheden Nursery – Finding new friends

Our theme for this month is Winter Fun.

The goal of the theme is to introduce the children to changes in the weather and to adapt themselves according to the weather. 

With a little luck we were able to experience  and play with snow and also made different  activities to help children develop an understanding of winter season as well as explainthe clothes that we need to wear during the cold weather.

Children practiced dressing themselves  by putting on their winter boots, gloves, hats, scarves and overalls.

We can play together outside all day no matter what the weathers like!

Lets make snowflakes together!

“The preschool should strive to ensure that each child develops self-autonomy and confidence in their own ability.” (LPFÖ98)

Warm Welcome To Two New Children In Nursery

This month we also welcomed two new children in our group. The children welcomed them with love and happy faces. It was wonderful to see how fast our children got along with their new friends – through singing and playing together, which helped them to feel comfortable in the group. This helped them to stimulate their social development to build up relationships and created a sense of security in the group.

LPFÖ: The preschool should strive to ensure that each child

“Develop their ability to function individually and in a group,

“Develop their identity and feel secure in themselves, and
“Develop their curiosity and enjoyment, as well as their ability to play and learn.

Thank you to the teachers in Nursery i  Guldheden.

Winter concert – A wonderful winter wonderland.

Before the holidays all of the schools put together their own winter concert and I was lucky enough to be able to attend one of them in Guldheden. The children did not only sing and dance but had created their own ideas for the setting, parts of their costume and the scenery themselves.

At first we were welcomed by the director of Guldheden who told us a little bit about the concert and the background of it.

First out were Kindy with a nice choreographed dance and a song about acceptance and understanding for each others differences.

Next up were Preschool 2 dancing and singing to their dinosaur song! They were dressed as gingerbread men, Santa Claus and Mrs. Santa Claus. The children had  very creative hand made dinosaur head pieces!

 

After Preschool 2 it was Preschool 1’s time to shine and they did a wonderful job dancing and singing together in their beautiful head pieces!

Last out were Nursery with their singing and their lovely choreographed dance!

After singing and dancing together we were served with “fika” and had coffee, tea, juice and ginger bread together.

Guldheden Nursery – Enjoying our Open House

We would like to share our Nursery open house event, where doors were opened for children’s families, this special event gives family members an opportunity to come into the preschool environment, and create greater familiarization of the facilities, have parents meet one another and provide informal communication channels between all of the members of the preschool. During our open house the parents were happy to see the art work done by their children as well as to experience the children’s daily environment in the nursery.

We planned open house activities in accordance to our theme ‘Winter Fun’.

It was a positive experience for everyone.  Parents enter the classroom with a smile on their faces and happily participated in baking pepparkakor/ginger bread and making snow flakes. We are often able to inspire parents in providing a more creative environment at home by sharing simple activities that can easily be done by parents at home together with their own children.

Parents got an opportunity to experience and to contribute to pedagogical learning by doing art work and activities with children in the preschool environment.

Parents received an opportunity to participate and exercise influence over how goals can be made concrete in pedagogical planning. This helped us to develop good relationships between staff and children’s families.

This is exactly what the open house should be about, to create a better relationship between teachers and parents and to relax and enjoy each others company. Thank you for sharing your open house event with us Guldheden Nursery!

Guldheden Kindy – Experiencing our world together.

This week we visited Gothenburgs city museum!

We had a lot of fun at the museum together

Relaxation time

Yoga for children. Mental and physical relaxation in the morning make as feel more energetic during our day!

Because being different is beautiful, we are having a child’s presentation of his/herS culture. A project prepared together with parents at home, to emphasize the family-school relationship as well as our multiculturalism ideology.

Every morninbg we start with our hugging routine during our morning circle where we appreciate and value our friends as a great start up for the day.

A big thank you to the teachers in Kindy in Guldheden for teaching our children about multi culturalism, relaxation and even taking them to the museum this week, it’s wonderful to be a part of through the pictures you choose to share with us!

Guldheden Nursery – Exploring through our senses

Our theme for the month is ” Me and my body” .  We’ve helped children to learn about body parts by singing songs, reading books, doing fun activities with hands and feet,  and a lot of sensory play!

This develops their creative abilities and the ability to convey impressions, thoughts and experiences in many different forms of expression, such as play, pictures, song and music, dance and drama.

Develop their motor skills, ability to co-ordinate, awareness of their own body, as well as an understanding of the importance of maintaining their own health and well-being, 

Wonderful to see the children being able to enjoy so many various activities with each others company and with their caring teachers! Thank you for sharing these pictures from you week with us!