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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Environmental Scientists
The GAP children had an amazing time learning about water, with our resident environmental expert, Paul Doyle. We wondered, what lives in the rivers? Ducks, fish, platypus, swans, water fowl, yabbies…. What do those animals eat? Small water bugs, small fish, fish eggs, snails, zooplankton, insects… What else gets into the water and how does…
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Field Biologists at work
In the past weeks, the GAP children have been talking about sciences like biology, chemistry and geophysics, and performing fun experiments in class. The children are always keen to explore outdoors, so…. We ventured out into the field as biologists searching for animals. And guess what? We found some never discovered before! With the discovery…
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Rainbow Pizza
The Monday-Tuesday GAP class thoroughly enjoyed learning about colours and vegetables, with Lisa-Marie’s innovative lesson about making a rainbow pizza. We did this in small groups so that everyone had an opportunity to participate. Making our own vegetarian pizza was fun and healthy, and it meant less packaging was wasted and it was more environmentally…
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Lantern Walk 2019
What a wonderful winter walk we all enjoyed. This year’s traditional German lantern walk was a magical evening. Many volunteers helped to put the event on: providing food, drinks, shopping, cooking and serving on the BBQ, cleaning, providing the audio/visual magic, and much more. The walk took us along a path lit by lanterns, to…
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Wiradjuri Echoes visit
Aboriginal Australian Duncan and his team from Wiradjuri Echoes visited us at the GAP, and we loved having them! Duncan spoke to us about Reconcilation Week and the Stolen Generation. We all agreed with him that children shouldn’t have been taken away from their parents. We talked about how we love our parents, and parents…
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Fire Fighter Visit
Our annual fire safety inspection turned out to include a whole lot of fun and education for the children at the GAP. We were invited to explore the fire truck and ask a lot of questions. The fire fighters were very pleased to hear that we had quarterly fire drills and that we are “blitz…
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Ostereier suchen
The GAP children enjoyed a traditional Easter egg (Osterei) hunt in the park. We reviewed the German words for each of the colours we found, and counted them all up. There were “ganz viel” (lots)! We love to be good friends, and we like to share and be fair, so we gathered all our eggs…
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Mental Health initiative
Spielwelt has recently established a relationship with BeYou, a national mental health initiative with an enormous number of resources for families and teachers, to promote and protect children’s mental health and well-being. At Spielwelt, we promote healthy messages throughout each session, incorporate our favourite topics like friendship, kindness, resiliance, affirmation, inclusivity, adaptability, respect, compassion, being…
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Another sustainability award from ACTSmart
We were suprised and delighted to be acknowledged once again at the ACTSmart Sustainability Award ceremony this year. Last year, we won the Energy and Water Star award, and this year we received “highly commended” for the Small Business award, presented by ACT Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Shane Rattenbury. Spielwelt has made over…
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German Author Visit
The children in our Thursday/Friday GAP class thoroughly enjoyed a visit from Almut Weiler Andersen, her daughter Hannah and teddy-bear Rosa. Almut is a native German-speaking preschool teacher working in Sydney, and she was the national winner of the Early Educator of the Year award in 2018. Almut kindly agreed to visit us at GAP, meet…