A day in the life of Rosebush Kindergarten

Rosebush children are received in the garden by their teacher before going inside to get changed in their waterproofs. They quickly get ready with Nicoletta’s help for a fun morning in the garden. We have been doing lots of skipping, a favourite amongst the older children, while other activities take place such as making little wooden gnomes.

We started the year with lots of water play, but as the season has changed and has got a little colder, the children have found other games to play. They have really been immersed in building walls, towers and dens with the larger wooden play planks, balancing on logs and helping with garden chores. Every Friday is a cleaning day and sometimes we bring our Kindergarten washing outside and we also take everything out from our garden shed and clean it thoroughly!

This year, we have bought a new garden balancing “boat” where the children love to lie down and rock back and forth while watching the sky and the tree tops. We really enjoy being outside first thing in the morning and experiencing the weather changing as they arrive to school. One day, the wind was blowing with all its might just as we came into the garden and we were rained on by a shower of yellow and gold leaves. What a joyful time the children had running after all the leaves and singing “catch them, catch them if you can”!

As the morning goes by, the time comes to go inside the Kindergarten. The children like to help each other to remove their waterproofs and wellies, wash their hands and get ready for Ringtime.

Seasonal songs and poems are learnt with lots of movement. Our Ringtime always start with a warm welcome to all and at the moment we are “getting ready” to go on a walk. We are learning to tie our shoe laces with a little rhyme and a song and soon we will find ourselves in the woods with the little gnomes.

We find a King that tells us all about the little seeds and we are grateful to Mother Earth for keeping them safe until spring comes one day. We also polish our lanterns well and we sing the lantern songs that some children know well. We are even learning one in German and we find a spider and sing Incy Wincy spider in Spanish as well!

We make “our way back home” as we walk through the windy paths holding our lanterns high, singing more songs until we arrive home. And as we get home, we knock on the door and mother/father opens it and receives us with a smile and open arms then we wash our hands. We practice and sing every day our washing hand song in our Ringtime to encourage the good habit of washing hands well. And then we are ready for our daily rest that we introduce the same way always:

“The moon on this hand, the sun on the other,

The moon is my sister, the sun is my brother.

The moon on my left, the sun on my right.

My brother good morning, my sister good night.”

After our rest time the children are quite hungry and ready for our warm and healthy snack, being soup and bread day it is a favourite! Although birthdays are also very popular with cake, popcorn, fruit and juice for all!

Once we have finished our snack, it’s time to play and work! While some children come to help with the washing up, others get on with daily craft activities and others get on with what children do best, play! And sometimes they need to be reminded of their kind words or their playing hands.

We bake bread, grind flour, make cakes, and mend toys…..so many opportunities to learn about the world. We practice numbers as we count maybe chairs and plates, we write each other’s names on the drawings made, practising our letters and the pencil grip. On Thursdays we paint, wet on wet, and all the children join in this activity. They really love to see the colours change and then we might use our paintings to do things, like our lanterns for the next Martinmas festival.

Our indoor play is very creative! We have been delighted with a number of puppet shows and every day we have dens, cats, babies and much more. Recently the children have been making castles with tables and chairs, meaning that little space is left for the adults to work. By this point, to the outside world, the Kindergarten seems a mess and chaos, but as our tidy up song comes, we all get busy putting things back where they belong.

Now we are ready for story, another quiet time in the morning. We light our candle and we sing our song, we listen to the story and then we get ready to go home. Some children stay and join the Orchard group. They might do a drawing or look at a picture book and then we go to meet our friends from the other group, the Mulberry Bush. A warm lunch is waiting for them and an afternoon filled with games.

Elena Oliver Andres

Rosebush Kindergarten Teacher