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.
-
Bake Sale: the Sweet Taste of Success
A big thank you to all those who volunteered their time and cooked, baked and donated lovely baked treats; and to those who volunteered their time to manage the cake stall last Sunday. We had a lovely sunny start to the day, and the event was a great success. All those lovely treats, beautifully packaged,…
-
Sweet chefs at GAP
The Thursday/Friday GAP children have been busy refining their Austrian/German culinary skills. There are so many ingredients to learn the German names of, and to smell, examine, discuss, weigh, measure, stir, pour, and taste when baking at the GAP! The class really enjoyed making and eating delicious Kaiserschmarrn (literally translated as Emporer’s mess) and Apfelmus (apple…
-
Therapy Dog Visits
We were delighted to have visits from “Brown Dog” and his psychologist friend Matt, from Sage Psychology, for both our classes this month. After gentle introductions, the children decided it would be fun to have Brown Dog join them in the circle, so into the circle he went and sat down on one of the…
-
Muttertag / Mothers’ Day 2018
The children have been busy at GAP preparing for Mothers’ Day, making beautiful bookmarks using items collected from nature. In one of our classes, the children started by glueing beautiful autumn leaves onto a big poster. The colourful group of leaves reminded us how the mums at GAP are also one big wonderful colourful community together,…
-
Australian Aboriginal Visit
The Thursday/Friday GAP children were educated and entertained today by Duncan Smith OAM and his colleagues Lorraine and Jakida, from the Australian Aboriginal educational group, Wiradjuri Echoes. At first some of us were a bit shy, but we soon warmed to our guests as they had all sorts of fun things to show us and…
-
Musik mit Mirjam
The Monday/Tuesday GAP children had a fun visit from Mirjam recently. Mirjam comes from Switzerland, speaks German (and French), and is a talented musician and music teacher. She even used to be an assistant teacher at GAP, and kindly took time off her work at the Austrian embassy, to return to the GAP and give…
-
Botanic Gardens Excursion 2018
The Thursday/Friday GAP class enjoyed an excursion to the Australian National Botanic Gardens. We savoured our morning tea out in the fresh air under some fragant gum trees, looking around in wonder at all the greenery, spotting birds, insects, plants and ponds. Our enthusiastic early-childhood-education-trained German-speaking guide soon met up with us and took us…
-
Fire Inspector’s Visit
The GAP children enjoyed a visit from the fire-fighters today. No, the fire-fighters were not there to extinguish the large number of candles on our Director’s birthday cake… but rather, our annual fire safety inspection was today. (You know you have a great job when good looking fire-fighters visit you at work every year for your…
-
Gruen, Gruen, Gruen…
There is a German children’s song about colours that starts, “Gruen, gruen, gruen, sind alle meine Kleider; Gruen, gruen, gruen, ist alles was ich hab.” (You can enjoy hearing it by clicking here.) Well at Spielwelt, we love being green too! This post celebrates and acknowledges what we have done to date to be GREEN,…
-
German Easter Celebrations
The Thursday/Friday GAP children particularly enjoyed celebrating German Easter traditions. The children have been busy over the last week or so, creating and decorating an Osterbaum (Easter tree), crafting their own colourful cardboard egg-cups, dying hard-boiled eggs all different colours, creating adorable bunny ear head-bands to wear, and today we topped it all off searching…