12/03/14 Todays is my first day experience in a pre-school.

This pre-school is different than the

previous experience. The indoor area and the outdoor area are very big. Therefore,
there were lots of different activities for children to choose. The normal kindergarten
have two separate area which are inside and outside. While this school have three
different area which are inside, outside under cover, and outside big garden. In this
case, children also can engage in the nature and outdoor area in the rainy day. This
arrangement is very good for the Melbournes winter weather. Childrens need the
physical excise. Children get hyperactive if they dont have enough physical activities
for the day. So his setting is very good for children to engage the outdoor area.
17/03/14 I engaged into the committee meeting today. This school runs by the council and
parents committee. This meeting runs every month. During the meeting, parents
talked about how to rise the funding, the financial issue and bank statement. All the
parents take their responsibility in their role. In this meeting, teachers also talked
about their planning and programming with parents. Parents improve their
understanding about the programming through collaboration and communication.
There were lots of parents in my working place complained that they dont know
what teachers doing and there is no learning happened in center. Children cannot
learn anything from the center. However, free-based learning is teachers pedagogy
and philosophy. The partnership with parents is very important. Through the
conference, parents can understand teachers planning purpose better, and teacher
can collect quality data from parents as well. So in this case, teacher constructs a very
good relationship with parents. Moreover, it is benefit for childrens learning and
developing.
24/03/14 Mentor teacher encouraged me to take the group time. All the songs I knows is
suitable for the early years which is from 0 to 3 For these group children, Those songs
are not suitable for them. I have to develop my skills and confidence to take the
group time. I realize my weakness is my language. I am the second language speaker.
I am not quite confidence with my English especially in front of the adults. I realize
that I can speak fluent language when I engage with the children. When I speak with
the adult, my voice is softer. It is a big challenge for me to talk to parents. This
morning, my mentor teacher encouraged me to talk to parents and asked them to
sign in for their childrens consent form. I am so nervous to stand in front because of
my race and my language. I feel not confidence, so I cannot use my language
properly. To overcome this barrier as a teacher, I have to do more practice and try to
talk to parents even they dont understand me. Parent teacher relationship is very
important. I need to overcome this problem and build a good relationship with my
future colleagues and parents.
31/03/14 The center used lots of image to support childrens learning. For the disability
children sometimes they dont understand teachers words. So every teacher have
there images in hands. When the disability children out of control. They use images
such as stop, wait, group time, snack time. So children can understand what they
are going to do through the image.
The image also good for children to settle down in activities. Teacher can give the
card for children to choose what activity they want to do. Moreover, children can
develop their literacy skills through the image. The words also appear on the image.
When children see the picture, listening to teachers word, see the vocabularies. They
can recognize the words with the meaning and speaking. The images have lots of
benefits. So in my future career, I will implement the image picture as well to develop
childrens learning.
28/04/14 Through the conversation with my mentor teacher, I understand the concept for the
indoor area and outdoor activities concept. In the beginning, I always confuse about
why children have paining activity inside and outside in the same day. I believe the
activity need to be variously. Through the conversation with my mentor teacher, I
understand that many children likes to play inside only, while some children like to
play outside only. So she brings inside activity outside. For some groups children also
can engage the inside activity outside which builds their learning skills and interest.
The pre school education also has a difference than the kindergarten. Ideally, children
need to choose where they want to play and what they want to play initially.
However, this is very difficult to be figure out in the real situation. Because of the
most centers the kindergarten children share the same play ground with the younger
kids. So the ratio is a problem. So most of the teacher set up the specific time to let
children play inside and outside. However, in this center, the ideal philosophy become
true and children can choose the outside play and inside play by themselves. Which is
the best learning for the childrens development.
05/05/14 Through the precious observation before, I realized lots of children interested in the
spiders (see obs). I prepared the spider web activities combine with the spider body
part and the spider spin the webs video. There was a child told me that spider used
their hands to spin the webs. Therefore, I tried to used this activities to clarify the
real situation and the spider movie. I introduce the spider body parts for everyone
and watched the spider spin webs movies. They children realize spider used their
spinner to spin the webs rather than hand. Then I prepared the spider web craft
activities with them. However, this activities is not lot what I through before.
According to the Kathy Walker theory, she strongly introduces the play based
learning. I strongly believe that. However, when I do this activity, I make the craft too
hard. I teach the children how to do it rather than let them play freely and exploring.
This is an group activities, in the end became an one teacher and one child activities.
Because children cannot complete this task by themselves. Through this experience, I
realize teachers philosophy is important. While how to manage the activity and
assess childrens standard is important as well. I havent work with the prep kids
before; I dont understand where their fine motor skills standard is. So this activity is
too challenge for them.
06/05/14 Through the conversation with my mentor teacher today. I understand the prep
system related to the primary school. I am a Chinese and grow up in China, so I did
not really understand Australian education system. Through the conversation with my
mentor teacher, I understand the report have to use positive language. Parents have
to sign the report to let children to go to school. Children also need to do drawing.
Through the drawing, the primary school teacher can understand childrens standard.
In another word, this report is a final assessment for children transfer to school. My
mentor teacher also told me she do the assessment with colors every term. I saw the
report example which brings lots of benefit for my future career.
07/05/14 Today, I engaged with two special needs students. One of them is autism. He played
in his own world always. Through my observation, I realized that he play with other
friend sometime. So I try to build trust relationship with him and warm engage with
him. After I build the trust relationship with him. He started to play with me. I asked
for a hug. He gave a gently hug with me. Then I started to play hide and seek with
him. I encourage him to speak and count from one to ten. He cooperates with me
very well. So I believe to work with the autism child need patient and gentle. The first
step to work with special needs student is build the trust relationship.
The second special need student I worked today is easy to anger. He throw the toys
away to pretend he is angry. He is difficult to control his emotion sometimes. But
most of time he is alright. I also do the first step is working with him and build the
trust relationship. He is out of control in the afternoon. Then I played his interest
game with him. We played very well together in the end. Then There was another
student come to interrupt with our play. He start to be anger and throw all the toys
away. I uses gentle language to encourage him to pack up all the toys. He trusts me
and pack up everything. Then he take me to played the lego. So I believe, for the child
who hard to control his emotion probably can help them to engage in their favorite
activity to settle them down. I realize that the strategy works very effective today.

08/05/14 Bena Angliss preschool has a long history. One of the main characteristic of Bena
Angliss preschool is the nature outdoor environment. Centers philosophy
demonstrated that: Provide a high quality learning environment that includes the
opportunities to explore, play and be connected to the nature world. Nature
environment provide different resources for childrens to explore, feel, investigate
and experiment. Children also discover the science concept through connect to the
nature. For instance, children observed the shapes of the stone to image what is it in
their mind. Some of children imaged that it is the egg. They pretending they were the
chicken and laying on the eggs. Children also imaged that the stones are the
dinosaurs bones. The play the hide and seek game through the trees. They carried
the lodge by themselves. They watched the leaves color and pick up the plants as
treasure. The feel the weather and smells the air. Now days, most of the center use
childrens toys and technologies to instead of the nature resources. They had very
limited time to engage in the nature environment. They dont have enough time to
play in the outdoor area. In most of the centers, the playground constructed by
plastic cement only a little bit grass and tanbarks. The policies are more related to the
childrens safety issue and not much about the education and curriculum. While I am
considering is the quality education happening in the child care? Does the TAFE
provide the quality education to train the diploma educator? What is the minimum
qualification should the centers leader and educator have? What policies should
government change to facilitate the better education for young children? The quality
education based on the quality policies. So this makes me to consider that my future
career development to do the master of education policy and leadership. Therefore, I
can express my own voice in department.

09/05/14 The volcano activity went through very well today. In the beginning of this activity, I
asked some open-end activity to access childrens knowledge about volcano. Some
children told me that they have done the volcano activity before. Only few of them
understand the lava. So this activity still meaningful for children. I choose a group of
children to do this activity. I introduced the basic knowledge for children such as
what is the volcano, what is lava and what is volcano eruption. Then I introduced the
resources I used to this science experiment and ask children to observe, smell and
predict what is that. Children quickly predicted that the vinegar because of the strong
smell. They did not predict what soda is. After I told them what is that, one children
told me that his mom use soda to make cake. So through the daily experience some
children already gain the knowledge of that. Moreover, I started the experiment.
Children like to see the volcano eruption. They touched the lava and asked me to
do it many times. Then I introduced to children that the lava should be hot in the real
situation. Then children touched the lava and pretending it is very hot. Moreover, I
finished this activity. Children putted the sand in it. The teacher is unpredictable
some times. Children used the red color to mix the sand and then the sand got the
red color too. Through my observation, it is the good time for children to explore the
color mixing and find out the new colors. So I gave all the food dye to children and
asked them to mix the color and explore what color they can get by them self. They
found the purple color and very excited and then told me: The red and the blue
makes the purple color. Then through my intentional teaching children extend the
volcano activity to the color activity. In the end, children used these colored sand to
integrate into the cooking game. I found out there were two children in this pre
school never play together. However, they selected in this group to do the activity.
Finally, they played together in peers alone for the whole day. It clearly shows that
when children have the same interest, they can make new friends.
12/05/14 Today is the first day to take full control in the preschool. I already set up the half
activities for children already. This morning, I still was in rash this morning. I still need
to improve my organize skills in the future. Especially the ratio is a strict regulation in
early childhood education. If there is not enough staff in the preschool, if I forgot
something inside. It is will impact the activities and efficiency. So I need to improve
my organize skills. Todays outdoor activities were very good. Especially the shape
painting and the sensory activities. Children explore the shapes and stamped on the
paper. Through intentional teaching, I assessed childrens knowledge about the
shapes. Most of the children have good knowledge about the shapes with star shape
triangle shape, circle and the love heart shape. Some of children confused about the
shape with the rectangle and the squire. There were two children asked for the black
color. So for the Wednesday shape painting. I will put the black color for children to
explore. For the outdoor sensory activity. I create the snow dough combine with the
frozen characters. However, the frozen characters I brought from Ebay had not
arrived. So I did not achieved the learning outcome of the dramatic play. Children still
enjoyed the snow dough activities. James extends the last week volcano activity and
used the snow dough to build the volcano. He told me: There is no lava in this
volcano, because this volcano has not erupted yet. Through this conversation, I
found out James understand last weeks concept very well. He also used last week
concept to extend to this weeks activity. There was a child told me that: Can you
make more snow dough for me? This is not enough for us. Some children also used
snow dough to make the snow ball. Though they touching and playing the snow
dough. It improve the sense and language about the squashy. For the Wednesday
activities. I will make more snow dough for children to explore and feel the sensory
activity. There were lots of activities which I set up for children I did not have enough
time to do intentional teaching with children. I will focus on other activities on
Wednesday.
Today we also organized the Mothers day party. This is not the first time for me to
experience the mothers day party. The preschool Mothers day party is different.
Children enjoyed to play with their mom and proud of theirself to their achievement.
This is the good opportunity for parent teacher communication. This is also good
event for parents to share their knowledge and experience with each other. Through
preparing the mothers day party, I realized that staff collaboration plays a significant
role. The party preparation only used an hour. My mentor teacher is a great leader
and allocated the staffs role in this party. This is a great skill that make the work task
efficiency.
13/05/14 Today is the Lizard group which I dont need to do the whole control. However, some
activities still running through. For the play dough activity. This group played with this
activity very well. There were four children played in one table. However, they did not
play together. They engaged in their own play. When they were playing, they imaged
their own story and talked to their self. This activity went through well to develop
their language skills and imaginative skills. I also engaged with the shape painting
activities today. I realized this group have better standard to recognize the shapes.
Most of them can recognize the different shapes. I encouraged them to write their
own name on the paper. For the butterfly group, many childrens dont know how to
write their own name and how to spell it. However, in this group, most of the
children know how to write their own name. Most of them enjoyed in their painting
activities.
I engaged with a Chinese girl to play in the sandpit today. She asked me do you want
to play with me? Then I started to play with her. She did not like other children to
engage in our activity. While, I still encouraged the other to engage in our activity.
She did not refused and try to collaborate with others. I started the conversation with
her. She told me : I dont like Chinese, I am an Australian. Yes, while where were
you born, were you come from China like me? Yes, but I dont like Chinese, I like
you, but I dont like to be Chinese, I hate to be Chinese. Through the conversation, I
realize that she did not confidence and happy about her identity and skin color. She
recognized the difference because she adopted by a Australian parents. She always
play by herself and refused to play with other friends most of the times. It makes me
to think about how to build the positive personal identity for her. What make her to
think in this way? I am an international student who studying in Australia. I have
negative perspective with my own identity in Australia. I am lack of confidence in this
country. It is important to shape this girl in a positive way because it will impact her
psychology development and wellbeing. Lack of confidence will impact childrens
long term development, such as me. I only have three more days to complete this
placement. I already communicate with my mentor teacher. The assistant told me it is
good if they can combine with some multicultural curriculum to her.
14/05/14 Today I was more engage into the full control. I was more engage in the supervision. I
realize that when I do the supervision, it is very difficult to do the intentional teaching
with children at the same time. So I need to improve the skills to supervision and
intentional teaching at the same time.
I planed the treasure hunt game today. The activity is not successful today. Firstly, I
did not explain the activity very well. Secondly, I did not prepare the activity very
well. I hide the treasures yesterday afternoon. However, when I encourage children
to find the treasures today. I could not find the treasures as well. The treasures
labeled the numbers, so children did not find all of them. However, I changed the
activity immediately. I made the treasures again and asked half children to hide the
treasures and half children to find the treasures. However, there were still two of
them missing because children forgot to record the treasures position on the map.
However, I did well with the group time. This is the first time I do the group time with
30 children. It is a challenge to me because some children is difficult to manage. So
the strategies I used to them is using singing to get their attention. This strategy went
through well. Moreover, I read the story to children. They pay good attention on story
and had a good time.