GAP
Practical guidance, family resources and everyday moments connected to German-language early learning through GAP Playschool.
These posts help families understand the rhythm, routines, culture and community around early childhood learning at Spielwelt.
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Children’s Clothing Swap
Pfadfinder have been learning about the clothing industry and how it affects the environment. The textiles industry is a huge polluter, so we thought up some ways we could reduce our impact. Watch this space! One easy way to reduce the number of clothes that end up in the landfill: Pfadfinder had a clothes swap night…
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Chocolates and straws are next to go
As delicious as chocolate is, the committee has recently decided to knock it from our fundraising campaign despite its reasonably good return on investment. Aside from the obvious questions about modelling healthy habits for children, chocolate is a luxury the environment can’t really afford on the scale it is being produced in the world. Add…
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Winter arrives at GAP
Our recent chilly mornings have put colour into our cheeks and piqued the children’s curiosity about winter, frost, snow, ice and all things frozen. (No, no, not the musical Frozen… that’s a whole other story!) Today the children created some lovely paper snowflakes and winter-themed art. We sang songs about the seasons, and learned about…
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German Year 10 student service activity
When we were contacted by a Year 10 student from Canberra Grammar school, who spoke perfect German and was interested to put in some community service hours for his school with us at GAP, we said, “Ja klar!” And we are glad we did. Carl arrived bright and early on a chilly Monday morning and…
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Frogwatch Visitor Hops In
The Thursday/Friday GAP class enjoyed having our German biologist early educator friend Anke Maria hop in to visit, bringing her educational toys from Frogwatch. We heard from her friend Friedrich der Frosch (a frog puppet) about some of the threats to his environment: feral cats, bulldozers, people, sunscreen and detergent in the rivers, plastic bags…
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More recycling at Spielwelt
You may have noticed a few extra bins around at the Turner Scout Hall, in the kitchen and the new foyer. We are making it easier for families to be greener… which is very German, so embrace the programs and enjoy feeling cultural and forward thinking with us! The GAP children and scouts enjoyed their…
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Clockworks
Sometimes the children’s interests takes our curriculum in all sorts of directions. There has been an interest in clocks and time lately in the Monday/Tuesday class, so we decided to create our own clocks. We have heard stories with clocks and time in them, and sung songs about clocks. You could say we are going…
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Architect visit
During our occupations theme, we were lucky to have Serge (one of our dads) visit the Monday/Tuesday GAP class to tell us about his work as an architect. First we had the chance to check out pictures of some of the buildings he had designed, and other neat European buildings. We each were allowed to…
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Lantern Walk 2018
Sankt Martin was seen galloping about on his trusty horse on Sunday night in Haig Park, amidst the many children and families with their beautiful lanterns, at this year’s German Lantern Walk. Many Spielwelt families and their guests rugged up and braved the authentic-German-winter night air, to join the festivities. There was music throughout the…
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Occupations
The children at the GAP have been learning about various occupations in our community. They enjoyed baking and selling their delicacies at the Lecker Baeckerei bakery, styling our teachers at Fritz Frisur’s hairdressing shop, selling goods at our grocery shop, engineering new buildings at our Bob der Baumeister construction site… … doing administrative work and stamping…