Another 'roar'some week at preschool

Inter faith week led our learning last week and it all began on Monday by exploring Aboriginal Australia, its culture and heritage. Using virtual reality, we were transported to the Far North Queensland rainforest and the Pamagirri Aboriginal group to witness their welcome, war and snake dance. It was fascinating to learn about the aboriginal beliefs on creation and compare with the Christian belief. Aboriginal Australians refer to the Creation time as "Dreamtime".

Then as our topic is currently based around dinosaurs we explored the country Argentina where the'first giant' dinosaur was discovered. We learnt some facts:

• The lizard foot dinosaur was the largest animal that ever walked the land.
• The dinosaur had an elongated neck and tail. It's neck was about 10m long. We couldn't wait to measure 10 metres!
• Language spoken : Spanish, Italian, English, German, French. We said Hello in these different languages each morning.
• Religion: mainly Christians (Roman Catholics 92%)
• Flag: blue and white, with a yellow sun on the white band
• Has high mountains and sometimes very cold weather as it is quite close to Antarctica.

Within our personal, social and emotional development this week we have been developing our
taking turns skills and have been playing board games. We have also worked together to complete jigsaws.

To extend our communication and language we have been introduced to new language,Argentina, Sauropods, religion, faith, elongated, meter and measuring. We have been maintaining concentration and listening well to new information. Great listening skills preschool!

To support our physical development we have been using scissors to cut out shapes and dinosaurs. We also danced to music using ribbons and scarves to support our gross motor skills.

To develop our literacy skills we have been drawing dinosaurs and focusing on talking about and describing our marks. We have also used the chalks outside to draw maps and dinosaurs.

Within our mathematics development we have been measuring and finding objects that are taller and shorted than ourselves and using string we measured 10 m. We then measured to see how many children long 10 m was, it was 10 children. Can you believe a dinosaurs neck was that long! We have also been printing with out number blocks 1-5. The children selected a number block and used to print to match the number block.

To develop our understanding of the world we have explored Argentina and have created flags and looked at maps. We have also used the paint program on the interactive white board to draw and create our own dinosaur pictures. The children had to select what colour they wanted to use and used their finger draw.

Within our expressive arts and design we again used water colours to create the Argentina flag and we have begun making our valentine's cards. It has also been very noisy in preschool as we explored instruments. We read our story 'Stomp Dinosaur Stomp' by Margaret Mayo and created sound and movement to the different dinosaurs. It was exciting to explore how loud we could play our instruments!

Another fantastic week of learning.
Tara