Liberty Avenue  3 Year Old Kindergarten

Dinosaur bones

Can you find the treasures hiding in the sand?

Palaeontology

Our dinosaur dig provides opportunities for the children to further explore their interest in dinosaurs from a palaeontologist's point of view.

Loose parts

What would you like to include in your play today?

Building and construction

So much room to build and create

Ping Pong Ball run

Upcycling some coffee pod stands provides hours of fun when you add some ping pong balls to experiment with

Dinner anyone?

Our doll's are all dressed and ready for dinner, they're just waiting for the children to come to play.

Home away from home

Imaginative play provides children with opportunities to explore their own understandings of family life, whilst also building strong connections with their peers through play.

A Pet House

Soft furnishings, sensory mats and some cats and dogs provide a new way to explore the Doll's House.

Good night everyone

With soft, comfy beds, our pets are ready to turn in for the night in their new home.

Experimenting with light and colour

Our light table provides a lovely little nook for some individual exploration

Wood you like to explore?

Our playdough table, incorporating natural materials and earthy tones to create an inviting place to play, explore and learn.

Connecting with country

Australian fauna, flora and our indigenous symbols provide inspiration for the children to connect with country and our traditional land owners.

Caring for the environment

Learning about the importance of caring for our waterways and disposing of our rubbish responsibly.

Literacy and numeracy through cooking

This is our individual playdough recipe, combining photos, words and numerals to support children's emerging literacy and numeracy skills through cooking.

Making our own batch of playdough

The children enjoyed following their recipe to make their own individual batch of playdough to use.

Check out our new clothes!

One of our educators has made new clothes for our dolls - using some fabric with indigenous artwork on it.

Going on a leaf hunt

Children love to "collect". Having an abundance of natural materials available in our playground supports the children as they build a strong connection to nature.

Incorporating nature into our artwork

After collecting some leaves in our playground, we discovered we could recreate the shapes of the leaves using our paint rollers.

Building a pond

The children created a pond using rocks from our rock pond - it was filled with crocodiles!

Patterns and design

Natural materials provide us with opportunities to create, design and modify to suit our needs.

Searching for treasure

Our huge sand pit offers amazing opportunities for treasure hunts. Some times we hind treasure provided by nature, other times we find hidden toys in our sand pit.

Bath time

Role play helps children to make sense of the world they live in whilst also providing valuable language opportunities.

Cooking up a storm

Utilising the shrubs and bushes available in our garden, the children set to work making incredible culinary delights.

Tea anyone?

"You just need some water and some rosemary and a bit of lavender."

Mud kitchen creations

Our mud kitchen is a bee hive of activity. Sometimes working alone, other times in small groups.

Anyone for soup?

"I love soup. Sometimes we have chicken soup and sometimes we have pumpkin soup. Which one is your favourite?"

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Pouring and transferring

As the children transfer their creations from one container to another, they are exploring concepts of volume and capacity through their play.

Floating and sinking

""Look, the dirt and mud goes to the bottom and all of the leaves stay on top. They're floating."

Recipes

Measurement, amount, ingredients, mixing, cooking, pouring, heating, creating, aroma, .......... so many great words we can use when cooking.

Sensory threading

The addition of eucalypt leaves and leaves from a lemon tree provided a beautiful aroma for the children to experience as they threaded.

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Some autumn leaves provided some texture for this inspired artist. Cutting them to size before sticking them to his painting with pride.

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A range of open ended materials - often recycled, provides the children with inspiration for their creativity.

Making vegetabe soup

The children also discussed their likes and dislikes as we added new vegetables to the mixture.

Thinking outside the square

Collecting, arranging and sorting these resources required collaboration, communication and negotiation as the children decided where everything should go.

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Transferring bark from one place to another provided great opportunities to explore volume and capacity as this worker decided whether his load was too full to transport without spilling.

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We had fun making new purple play dough together. The play dough was very soft and pliable when it was finished.

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Making an environmentally friendly shopping bag for Mum for Mother's Day.

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Marble painting challenges our motor planning skills as we attempt to make the marbles roll in particular directions

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Gathering resources. "What will I need and what am I planning to do with the things I choose?"

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Look what I made from some recycled boxes

Shared imaginary play

Pretending to be lions looking for food in the jungle. The children created story lines within their play, contributing their own ideas to their play as it evolved.

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Meet one of our pet worms from the worm farm. We feed the worms using our fruit and vegetable scraps from our healthy snack boxes and cooking experiences.

Squeezing the pegs

Pegging washing on the line requires strength, co-ordination and dexterity.

Emerging literacy

This sign says: "Stop! Please don't crash my building down." Although we can't read it, once it was explained to everyone, this sign was very effective to remind everyone that this building was very precious to it's creator.

Exposure to text through play

Our pretend office provided children with opportunities to explore their interest in writing and various forms of communication

Box construction

This clever person has attempted to write his own name on his work

Creative building

Varied shapes recycled from some old chair legs have provided the children with some interesting shapes to incorporate into their building designs.

Gathering resources

The children gathered "treasure" from around the room to adorn their creation.

Imaginative play

Some dinosaurs gathered in our block corner today for a birthday party. They played hide and seek amongst the logs and ate some leaves together.

Making fruit kebabs

We made fruit Kebabs to share with our Mums, and special people at a morning/ afternoon tea.

Making Mud soup

The children gathered their ingredients together; chanting "Muddy, muddy soup" as they collaborated.

Watering the sensory garden

The children enjoy helping to care for the plants in the garden. Spearmint geranium provides a beautiful aroma for us to explore.

Watering the garden

Grasses provide an interesting texture and contrast in our garden

Watering the herbs

Our rosemary and lemon verbena are great to add to water as we play as well

Finger painting

Our fingertips make great drawing implements

Painting on fabric

fabric provides an interesting texture for the children to explore and a lasting result that could be framed or kept.

Where the fairies live...

Our garden is always evolving with interest areas throughout

Cooking in the cubby

Our kitchen in the cubby house has been created from a recycled TV unit and provides hours of fun.

Our meeting place and weaving net

Fun with shaving cream

Some children do not like finger painting - having other implements available to use such as this scraper enabled this child to explore something he would usually avoid.

Our bird house

We try to invite nature into our play ground with visits from bird life.

Muddy puddles

Gumboots and water provided a great opportunity for the children to create their own muddy puddles to explore.

Classifying and matching

Magnifying glasses and some photographic cards provided the children with opportunities to take a closer look at the insects, finding similarities and differences amongst them.

Dinosaur city

Three children worked together to create an amazing city for all of these dinosaurs to live.