At Kiewa Kids we thrive to provide endless opportunities for all our children to explore ther world around them. Through weekly local excursions they are able to go on adventures and engage in their local surroundings. We often plan excursions which allows the children to experience transport on a bus and that gives them the opportunity to experience interactions in the broader community.
Lev Vygotski is an sociocultural theorist and he believes that children learn actively through hands on experiences. In Vygotsky's view, learning is an inherently social process. Through interacting with others, learning becomes integrated into an individual's understanding of the world. John Dewey is another theorist which inspires our educators at Kiewa Kids. From Dewey's educational point of view, he believes that students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. Dewey felt the same idea was true for teachers and that teachers and students must learn together. We are guided by Vygotski and Dewey as we plan, assess and implement these learning opportunities for the children at Kiewa Kids.
This year we have ventured to the Airport and to Helifly to extend on the children's interest in transport. The Preschool children got to experience being inside a radio station and recorded their voices. This was extending on their learning in the classroom as they were learning about differnt types of media.
We are always promoting healthy eating and ways to improve our health through food and we were able to learn even more through our excursion to our local Woolworths. We were able to develop our understanding of where our food comes from and good food choices.
We also value incursions as it is always a goal of ours to bring in the outside world to expose the children to a range of learning experiences.
We have been lucky enough to have our local Fire and Police department visit us on two seperate occasions. These visits allowed the children to explore their vehicles and ask many questions about their interesting occupations. The information gained during these visits expanded the children's knowledge on the community services available to them.
We have also had the famous Healthy Harold come to visit to talk about healthy eating, hygiene and our emotional health. The children absolutely loved seeing Harold and learnt a lot from his program.
We value teaching the children about living a healthy lifestyle and have had a visit from a local nutritionist who played games and taught the children about the different benifits of our food. We have also had soccer coaches from Little Kickers pay us a visit to play soccer games at the local oval and they taught us ways to improve our gross motor skills.
So many wonderful opportunities for learning and many more to come...
© Kiewa Kids Elite Early Learning 2017