We sang multi cultural children's songs

Do you have any songs you sing regularly that are from other cultures? Each term we pick around 12 to 15 songs that we sing regularly so that they all become very familiar and turn into our favourites.
We don't sing them all every week - we sing about 4 and always include one familiar song like "Der Glumph went the little green frog". This term, for our new songs, we have chosen a few multicultural songs. Our favourite so far has been the Native American circle dance:

We circle around, we circle around
The boundaries of the earth

We circle around, we circle around
The boundaries of the Earth

Wearing our long wing feathers as we fly
Wearing our long wing feathers as we fly

We circle around, we circle around
The boundaries of the sky

The next week we made simple feather head dresses to dance with as we circled around holding hands.

See more multicultural songs.

See how we made our headdress.

Borrow or buy our favourite CD of multicultural songs.

Read a multicultural story: Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes which has beautiful illustrations of babies from all different nations.

Be one of the first to join in our link up of play ideas

2013


Linking up is simple at Today at Play:

1. Link up your early childhood play idea from 2013 

2. Link up as many ideas as you like

3. Use the "Name" of your idea not your name.

We had a playdough bakery

Playdough is always popular and we are forever trying to find new ways for the kids to explore with it. The great thing about this sensory activity is that most children, and parents, love it and even one year olds enjoy poking their fingers in the colourful dough.
We always make playdough using the uncooked recipe so that sometimes the children can help us.

Today with the colourful playdough we provided:

• Metal cake trays
• Metal muffin trays
• A variety of plastic kitchen containers
• Spatulas
• Wooden rolling pins
• Plastic knives
• Plastic spoons
• Wooden spoons
• A variety of things to decorate the "cakes".
• A shaker of extra flour to sprinkle on top.

See more ideas for playdough activities.

Wordless Wednesday: zoo trip

Linked up at 5 minutes for Mom,   Live and Love…Out Loud,  Parenting By Dummies and Seven Clown Circus.

We did painting on the easels

We talked about water safety

Because it is hot and sunny and summery here we talked about children and water safety at playgroup today.

Unfortunately the number of people drowning in Australia has increased, for the third year in a row, making us realize that we all have a part to play in preventing drowning. Children are at greatest risk when they are toddlers and need constant supervision around water to have fun and be safe.

We talked about basic safety around water and pools and CPR and made sure everyone knew the emergency number 000. The most important thing we decided was to only allow your child near a pool if you are able to stay and supervise.

We talked about active supervision and how it means focusing all of your attention on your children all of the time, when they are in, on or around the water and how mobile phone use can distract us from active supervision.

We used the Kidsafe Swimming Pool Safety sheet.
The Royal Life Saving Society has many fact sheets on water awareness, bath time safety, home water safety, wading pools, pool toy safety and resuscitation. They also have resources on water safety in Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese. 

We made kangaroos

Lots of brown cardboard and a little white cardboard, cut into circle shapes to create a kangaroo. We also used black stickers for the eyes. Our kiddie creations did not quite end up looking like our inspiration above but the children loved gluing the shapes and the mothers enjoyed cutting the circles, as they could still chat as they cut.