Program Themes

[Jeffnae]

Hi everyone,

Happy new year to all.

I am on my last few days off from work and spending it getting ready for next week.
I am wondering can i have program themes for 1 to 2 weeks depending?

I am looking at including Healthy eating, recycling, community and mining. (as the centre where i work is in a mining town) so far are on my list. plenty to add if i am allowed lol.


Any help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks
Renae

[Lorina]

Hi Renae,

I completely understand what you mean about wanting to have themes on your program. Well, if you wanted to incoporate it as part of the EYLF you could use the experiences you plan as part of Intentional Teaching. This basically means that if you wanted to teach a topic to your group of children and it wasn't planned from a child's interest and it's something you wanted to do it falls under Intentional Teaching. This is fine, but it's best not to have many Intentional Teaching experiences onto the program as most activities/experiences should be related to children's interest. However, I think you should be able to add a couple onto your program each week. I usually use activities/experiences that fall under Intentional Teaching during group time. For example, If I wanted to begin to teach the children colour recognition I would add this onto my program as Intentional Teaching.

Hopefully this makes sense!

Cheers ,
L.A

[Jeffnae]

Thanks L.A for your response.

On my last program i didn't include a lot of intentional teaching. was only 1 a day.. I just find it hard with other staff with activites/ group time thats why i thought i might be able to include themes, this might encourage them but was not quite sure. I am still learning Eylf which always seems to be learning cycle with Eylf
, My plan was at group time include Mind maps on a theme. I think i will try to use my intentional teaching a part of group time aswell Thanks for your help. and this site, Eylf seems to be easier to understand with your help...


I like the look of your new online programming tools looks really good and easy for parents and staff to undersatnd.

Renae

[daa]

If you wanted to include healthy eating as a theme take it from the children. Maybe sit at the table during meals times and talk about what is in their lunch boxes, make it a discussion. Take notes from this and when documenting it say that we talked about the foods in our lunch box and this led to ..... then the possibilities endless.

For example a child might have a tomato in their lunch box and tell you it grows on a tree. then you could run with plants, nature growing some etc

A child might comment on the colour of food so you could run with a colour theme.

cooking classes might result from a child talking about muffins his mum made etc.

Hope this helps.