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Playing and growing in the Hive

Hello Hive families!

Our first week of Term 3 was filled with excitement and activity! The children have settled back in after a long break, and it's terrific to see their confidence, resilience and concentration skills growing each day! They are showing us daily that they have a good grasp of our daily routines and rhythms.

We thank you for visiting our pop-up exhibition at the end of Term 2 to celebrate some of our inquiries as part of our unit Sharing the Planet.

Children's reflections on our Sharing the Planet exhibition

"My mum is going to love this" Noah

"We can grow things" Milla

"You need water and sun for that" Amelie

"A lot of dirt" Walter

"Can we take these home to grow? You can eat it" Oscar

"It was a seed; now look!" Tom

"The beans will grow from those flowers" Spencer

"It's growing lots now. It's bigger!" Arlo

"The roots are in the soil" Luca

"That's me!! I remember making that" Aaren

"My shield was made from recycled cardboard" Tom

"It's the recycle sign" Sebby


"We construct theories about how the world works through playful exploration."

Term 3 Unit of Inquiry: How the World Works

This term, we have introduced our new Unit of Inquiry: How The World Works.

Our learning engagements and investigations for this unit will be hands-on, playful, and engaging! The focus will be on observing, experimenting, discovering, and learning about the world around us through active exploration.

We will be learning about:

  • how we can manipulate materials for a purpose
  • how forces can cause change
  • how we can use our understandings to design and create

The children will be inquirers, thinkers and communicators as they encounter new materials, develop theories from their interests and design and create using a wide range of resources.

Concepts we will be exploring:

  • Form – What is it like?
  • Function – How does it work?
  • Causation – Why is it as it is?
  • Change – How is it transforming?

We began with some colour mixing exploration as an introduction to our new unit.

The story Little Blue and Little Yellow was used as a provocation to invite the children to explore colour mixing in the art studio.

"It's green" Zahli

"Yellow and blue make green" Amelie

Sensory play

The children helped set up some water balls outside on the sensory table. We added some tools to encourage exploration, manipulation and sharing. We observed the children communicating, using specific vocabulary, and learning new words. As the children scooped, poured, pushed, and pulled, we explored the forces which will enrich the interactions for our new unit of inquiry 'How the World works'.

We look forward to sharing this new unit with you and know that the children are curious about seeing, touching, and exploring the materials around them. You will notice that we will provide lots of open-ended provocations to encourage their questions and help them learn. Planned learning experiences for this term include magnets and tinker trays, water and ice experimentation and a variety of natural materials to be explored.


"Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different than before."

Ongoing professional learning for Early Childhood staff

Throughout this year, the Woodleigh Early Childhood team from the Penbank and Minimbah Campuses have engaged in a collaborative action research project with early childhood consultant Kirsty Liljedren. Teachers and educators from both campuses have been meeting regularly to engage in professional learning workshops, critically reflect on our practice and share our documentation of the children’s learning.

Guiding Questions and Lines of Inquiry:

  • What is the role of the teacher in relation to children’s agency and assessment of learning?
  • What is our image of the child? Exploring the role of the educator in supporting learner agency.
  • What is worth documenting? Continuous assessment in the Early Years – exploring the content and ways we can make visible the children’s learning.
  • How does documentation inform our pedagogy and practice? Exploring the monitoring, recording, and reporting of student learning
  • How can we work collaboratively with families? Making learning visible to children and families

As our research develops, you may notice changes to the information and documentation you receive about our program.

Current areas we are focusing on include:

  • Exploring new ways of documenting – creating posters and displays, capturing the children’s thinking over several days, using titles and questions in our documentation
  • Creating documentation that makes visible the children’s learning in the context of the group
  • A more focused approach to our documentation. This will mean fewer 'snapshots' of the day and more detail about specific projects or inquiries.
  • A 'quality, not quantity' approach to Seesaw - this will allow us to concentrate on relationships and engage in a more reflective approach to our teaching

LISA COXON
Head of Early Childhood