Posted October 2021
In response to COVID-19 and the initial lockdowns in Sydney, the team at KU Macquarie Fields started offering some of their preschool curriculum online for children and families who were not attending preschool.
Over time, the team’s capacity to consider new ways of connecting and learning has increased and today the team offers a ‘Pop Up Preschool’ to children and families each day as an innovative and fun way to stay connected.
There are familiarities in the way educators connect with the children each day, similar to a routine, just like the children expect when they attend preschool.
The children and educators engage in a range of different activities each day including reading letters from children, singing songs, dancing, reading stories, exercising, having picnics, taking part in science experiments and cooking activities and more.
Each child has received a letter from the preschool with a stamped self-addressed envelope inside. Once the educators receive the children’s letters back, they read them out to everyone in the Pop Up Preschool and pin the letters on to the display board at the preschool.
Each Pop Up Preschool is well planned, intentional and most of all fun. Each Monday the educators sit together and plan for the week ahead and families receive a notification in Storypark about what to bring each day so they can be prepared. The Pop Up Preschool experiences have been very well received by the children and families.