Helen's+page.

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**Welcome to Helen's Page.**
Helen has been teaching in the Early Years for many years and her work in this area is exemplary. Helen has also presented workshops at Early Childhood conferences sharing her ideas and her expertise.**
 * Helen works as teacher in the Preparatory Year at St Benedict's School on the Capricorn Coast, Central Queensland.
 * The learning that occured in the following examples was in Term Four of the school year. Helen's classroom is based upon the philosophy of early learning as she empowers the students to make decisions and to have the confidence to negotiate with her in their leaning experiences. Helen also makes use of technology in her planning with the students by use of an interactive whiteboard.**

Term 1 2010 As the children have not had very much experience in the religion area when they arrive at Prep we started by learning about talking to God. We learn't :When we talk to God, God always listens to us. We light our candle to show us that God is with us. We looked at some photos of children who were praying. We discussed what we thought they were doing. We decided to try praying to God. We learn't how to make the sign of the cross. We took photos of Oliver as he made the sign of the cross and we used them to help us each time we prayed. We mixed up the sequence of the photos and sorted them back into the right order. We read a book called I Can Pray.



At St. Benedict's we celebrate Ash Wednesday Liturgies in our class so we can make it for the appropriate level of the children. "Today is Ash Wednesday. We will be marked with a cross of ashes on our forehead. (Look at picture of people on Ash Wednesday and discuss) Ash Wednesday is the beginning of a special time called Lent. During Lent God asks us to think about doing good things. We try to do Good things for others." Show the Ashes. "We ask God to bless these Ashes. We ask God to bless each one of us as we receive these Ashes. Help us God to try to do good things." Music - Blessing song Michael Mangan as we receive ashes.
 * We light the candle to show that God is with us.
 * We put out the purple cloth as our prayer mat. We use a purple cloth to show we are getting ready for Easter.
 * We put out the cross to remember Jesus and that he loves us so much.
 * We make the sign of the cross so God knows we are getting ready to talk to him.

"Lent is a time for us to try to change. We want to do Good things. We want to try to be more like Jesus." Brainstorm the sorts of Good things we could try to do during Lent. How can we be a good friend? How can we be good at home with our family? How can we be good at school? Children are asked to take a coloured piece and place it onto the light box to form a flower. As they place their coloured piece they make a promise to God about the good things they will try to do. Share the story. God loves me more than that.

During term one it is important to introduce the children to the life of Jesus before they are hit with the Easter story. We listened to stories from the bible - The birth of Jesus- We listened to the story and looked at the Nativity set. Jesus welcomes the children- We listened to the story and role played it. We sang Jesus loves the little Children We listened to a story called Little Boy Jesus. It showed us how Jesus' life was very different to our lives. We saw that he helped his Mum and Dad with the household chores. Many children brought in their own bibles from home. Holly brought in a Picture of Baby Jesus and his mother Mary. During Holy Week the older children roleplayed the parts of the Easter story. Following each part we read the story in the bible. We roleplayed each story and took photos. We sequenced the photos and retold each story. On our prayer table we looked at a display of different crosses. We talked about the crosses and decided to make some crosses of our own. We displayed the crosses in our school office.



We revised the stories of Jesus we had heard throughout the term. The children decided how they were going to represent their knowledge. They painted, collaged, sculpted with playdough and drew things about Jesus. The overwhelming popular choice was that Jesus died on the cross. The children also orally told us their knowledge of Jesus which we recorded.

Term 4 2009 In small groups we read a book called "The Peace Book". After talking about each page we discussed what we thought peace was e.g. not just peace and quiet but a feeling of peace inside. We looked again at things we could do to feel peace. We did a relaxation session to feel peace. The next day as a whole class we shared a book called "What is Peace?" We decided that peace was a good feeling and that we should all try to feel peace inside. We decided to pray to God to help us be peaceful and peacemakers. The children chose the things we need for the prayer. We lit a candle, and read the story "What is Peace?". Each child took a turn to say what they were going to try to do to feel peace. We prayed to God together to help us. We sang "Go Now in Peace'. As a follow up to this prayer we each collaged a picture of how we can feel peace.

Here are some photos of the student's work.



Look at the stars in the sky. Do some gardening

Watch the birds and the clouds in the sky.

Play ball with some friends

Go to the beach

Watch rainbows and butterflies

Go for a swim



The boys have made vacuum cleaners from popoids and plastic bags. They went out to collect rubbish from the school yeard. I talked to the children about the special job God has given us to look after our world. At group time we shared what the boys had been doing.



At group time the next day I told the creation story using props. The children asked if they could take the props outside to play with.

They set up the animals. The material represents the sky land and water.



The blue water represents a flood. All the animals are in a boat.

God covered the boat to protect the animals from the flood.

The rainbow came and took the flood away.



A student looked into the kaleidoscope and exclaimed "Mrs Langdon I can see God's world". Other children rushed to have a look and areed that they could see God's world.



At planning time a group of children chose to help make a movie about the Creation story. They retell the story using the props. One student decided to make a picture of the creation story.

The next day Breanna brought her bible to school because she has found the creation story in it. We read the story together and sing "And It Was Good" by Jack Miffleton. At planning time we looked at Breanna's picture of creation and we decided to make a class mural of the story. Each child nominated what they were going to work on. We also began talking about recycling. We read a book about recycling. We visited the can recycling bin near our bus stop. Some children made posters for the school to remind everyone to recycle. Some people wrote letters to their families to encourage them to bring empty cans to school to go into the recycling bin. Will wrote a letter to Mr Collins to find out how the cans got from our school to the recycling centre. We found out that Noah's Dad takes them in his ute. A day later we started our day with the song "The wonders I See" (Great Gifts). We sang the song and talked about any words we didn't understand eg. creation, wonders. The children could name all the wonderful things that God created. During this discussion Shani told us that she had said a prayer that morning with her family. She shared it with us. "Thankyou God for our world. Thankyou God for making it for us. Thankyou God for loving us." Lauren told us that she had been praying with her family for rain. We talked about thankyou prayers and prayers asking God to help us. Damian had a great idea. he said, " At activity time we could write our own prayers." Everyone thought this was a good idea. Each child took a turn to say their prayer and then went to work writing their prayer. We stuck the prayers onto our creation mural. I've taken photos of the children's paintings for the mural so I can use them to retell the story.



Here is Jesse writing his prayer. It said "Thank you for our food and rain."



During inside time Sam made a "church house". She said - "It has a cross and some flowers. Mummy is talking to Father Brian." We shared it at group time review. This encouraged Nely to make a church the next day.


 * We read a story in the children's bible - Jesus grows up. It told about Jesus learning the laws God gave Moses. We talked about God's special message "Love one another" and I showed them a large cardboard heart with Love one another on it. We brainstormed the ways we could love one another at school.
 * At planning time Indi decided to make a large cardboard heart. She painted it with glitter paint and wrote love one another on it. The next day their were lots of heart makers at inside time.
 * We decided to try spotting people when they were loving one another at prep. For example I praised Max for doing up his friends apron and Mitchell for giving a box to Darcy and finding another on for himself. We shared all the loving one another that was happening at group time. Now there are lots of children letting me know when they've been kind to someone or someone has been kind to them.
 * We collaboratively planned a prayer circle around the theme of Love one Another, - What do we need? prayer mat, candle, Picture of Saint Benedict, The hearts that we made, bible. What will we do? We will light the candle. We will put the hearts on the mat. We will say a prayer. (we wrote a prayer together) We can sing a song. We listened to some songs about love and then voted for the one that we would use - God's greatest gift from Great Gifts. We will read the bible. We read the story The Good Samaritan.
 * We roleplayed the Good Samaritan story. I took photos. We used the photos in small groups to sequence the pictures and retell the story.

Here is the Good Samaritan helping the man who was hurt.



This is Breanna's love one another picture. "A person is sad and the other one will give them a hug." She did this at inside time.

This morning a group of children were making pictures on the magnetic board. They worked together to make the sky and the grass. They were amazed when they made an eye and then two. They decided to make God. I asked the children what they thought God looked like and they assured me he looked like a person. They experimented with different shapes for the body parts. Luke thought God needed a heart. I assisted them to experiment with shapes and we looked at a heart so we could work it out. They put the heart inside the body. I asked "Why God needed a heart?" Luke "To spread the love to everyone." Me "How will God spread the love?" Luke "He will burp and all the love will come out." We decided to say our class prayer to God so we put the picture in the middle of the circle. Sam volunteered to say a bedtime prayer that she says with her family at home. Luke said a prayer. "Thankyou God for the animals." The picture lead to a discussion about where God lives. We talked about all the places we could find God. The church, the sky, he's always with us, he's in our heart etc.

Lachlan was working hard at outside time using wooden blocks, pots of sand with flowers in. I asked him about what he was doing. He said "I'm making a prayer" He carried on working and when he had finished he went inside to fing something to cover it up. "I need a cover for the unveiling." He then went inside to make himself a microphone. After lunch he presented his prayer to the class. He unveiled it and spoke into the microphone. Dear God, Thankyou for our world. Thankyou for our school. Thankyou for the wonderful flowers."

Nativity
We talked about the bible. "It's a book about God" "It's got stories about Jesus" I told the class that the bible has lots of stories in it that were written by lots of different people. I presented them a nativity set with the characters from Luke's Infancy narrative. We talked about the characters and who we thought they were. I then told them that the man's name who wrote this story was Luke. I told them the story. At our next group time I presented a contrasting nativity set with the story by Matthew. We talked about how the two stories were different. We then looked at a book called the Christmas Story. We discussed how this was a mixture of the two stories of Luke and Matthew. We wanted to do a picture of the Nativity story. Each child volunteered to draw a part of the story. They drew with nikko pen and I enlarged their pictures on the photocopier so they could colour them.

Matthew's story
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The Nativity sets were put out on the prayer table and were accessed by children as they played and talked about the stories.



Josie found a card with the Nativity scene on it. She cut it out and made a frame for it.

We read a story about the First Christmas Gift. It encouraged the children to think of Gifts they could give to God. The all drew a present shape and inside it drew a picture of the Gift they could give to God. (by being kind and loving one another.) They drew pictures of themselves helping other people.