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April Newsletter 2020

From the Office

Hello Families and friends,

We hope the Easter bunny found you all! I'm sure Easter looked a little different for everyone this year with social distancing restrictions and not being able to travel. At the Centre we also had to do things a little differently, with not being able to have our annual Easter Bonnet Parade, however, the children certainly still had lots of fun and participated in lots of Easter activities.  You will notice some of the children's beautiful Easter artworks displayed on the walls of their classrooms.  The Easter egg hunts were a big hit with the children also!

We would like to thank all of the parents who have purchased books for their children through the Scholastic catalogues over the last year. With every order placed, we accumulate a small amount towards the Centre's Scholastic book account, which we can then use to buy some new books for the Centre. We now have $75 saved and will be purchasing a collection of wonderful new stories for the Teachers and Educators to use in their classrooms.

If you are at home self-isolating and don't want to miss out on book club, you can now order from the virtual catalogue by clicking here https://scholastic.com.au/book-club/virtual-catalogue-1/ Please ensure orders are in by Friday 11th May. We hope you enjoy!

As a Centre family, we would like to thank all the parents/guardians for all of your help and support with keeping the Centre as safe and hygienic as possible for our Educators and the Children.  If not already doing so, can you please ensure that only one parent/guardian enters the Centre for drop off or pick up of your child/ren; ensure you use hand sanitiser on entering and exiting the Centre; please spend as little time in the Centre as possible and avoid close contact with other children; and do not enter the Centre if you or a family member are suffering a contagious illness.  We thank you again for helping with all of these extra precautions during the pandemic. 

Until next month...

Nursery 

Welcome to the Nursery Newsletter April update. 

Over the last month, we have focused our learning on Health and Hygiene.  This is more important recently due to COVID-19 so we are helping the children to wash their hands more regularly than normal.  The babies are getting very good now when asked 'Lets wash your hands' they will make their way to the bathroom basins and put hands out for soap.

In the last few months some of the babies have started walking and trying to say simple words.  So, we continued to assist and help to develop their fine and gross motor skills, basic language skills and hand-eye coordination through our weekly planned activities. We love watching the children improve in these areas!

Every week we have had activities that involve being creative, using our senses and muscle movement. Some of the learning we have been doing includes; using our creative minds with painting and collage; we encourage language skills through counting numbers 1 to 5; in the construction area (include blocks, foam blocks and bristle brisket), by putting the blocks together, the children are creating simple ideas using their own imagination and enhancing hand-eye coordination. 

The babies seem to be loving free choice with indoor activities, to explore their environment and play with things that they are interested in; pulling themselves up on the shelves and pulling toys onto the floor to play with.  In our outdoor play environment, the children have been enjoying interacting with each other while riding the bikes, playing on the cars and on the swings. They are building their confidence and good relationships with other children, not only form their own class but from Toddlers and Tweenies as well. 

We welcome parents and families to share your ideas or suggestions with us anytime.

Until next time...

Miss Praxa, Miss Arley & Miss Laura

Toddlers

Hello and Welcome again to the Toddler Room. Hope you are all well and safe during this unusual time we find ourselves in. Please be aware that all Educators at the service have undertaken the 'Infection Control Training Course' to ensure the safety of everyone at the service.

After our "All About Me" activity last month, we moved on to Easter Activities and using educational flashcards. During the flashcard activity, we have been doing colour recognition and colour sorting. Educators were saying the name of a colour and children were asked to find that colour by pointing to the correct flashcard. Some children were verbally saying the colour name. Most of the children were able to identify the Primary and Secondary colours.

During Easter activities, the children were getting encouraged to get crafting – to colour, draw and create eggs and to take them home to place on their walls. Children had a lot of fun during our carrot foot painting. We painted one of the children's foot orange and made a print on the paper, then added green paper for the stalks.  This is displayed on our room walls for parents to see. We also encouraged children to get their hands in the sensory bin which had lots of interesting objects including lentils, little yellow chicks, easter eggs, toy carrots, etc. this helps develop fine motor skills and senses.

This week the toddlers were outside in the yard enjoying the beautiful weather and challenging themselves to some age-appropriate gross motors activities such as stepping stones and beam balancing.

If you have any experience that your child has enjoyed at home relating to colour exploration, please don't hesitate to share them with the Toddler Staff and we can add it in our programme as family input.

As the weather changes every day, we would like to ask parents to bring your child's jumper in their bags and if there is anything you would like to speak about your child, please do hesitate to come and see us.

Thank you

Ms. Cariad, Ms. Faapepe and Ms. Khushi

Tweenies

 Hello Tweenies families and friends and welcome to April newsletter.

This month has been full of exciting new things for the Tweenies room, as the children had the opportunity to engage in experiences that helped them to develop their skills - such as teddy bear crafts, painting, collage, stamping, cutting, puzzles, counting and sorting. The children have really been enjoying this focus point in the room and we will be continuing to explore the Teddy Bear topic for the month to come.

Just a friendly reminder to make sure that your child is bringing a hat everyday as we have noticed a few children without theirs. As the weather is starting to get a bit colder please ensure they have a jumper in their bag as well as their hat.

Toilet Training – Some of the children in the Tweenies room have been doing such a great job with their toileting. We would like to thank our Tweenies families for their support in making our job easier with your child's toileting.

We would like to ask for you not to bring a lunch box for your child as the Centre provides morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and a late snack. And lastly, if your child is sick, please keep them at home. Please if you have any concerns come and see Sarai, Phoebe or Florence. We are here to help. 

Stay safe and be happy. 😊

Miss Sarai, Miss Phoebe and Miss Florence.

Pre-Kindy 

Hello Pre-kindy families and welcome to our newsletter for April!

We have had so much fun this month, continuing with our focus on colours that we started towards the end of March, and of course - Easter! The colour's we looked at over the last few weeks were green, yellow, red and blue. The children enjoyed many fun activities and crafts using these colour's and we spent a lot of time identifying colour's in our everyday environment.

We were also very busy with Easter - creating Easter Bunny cards, Easter baskets, Easter tracing worksheets, colourful egg sensory trays and painting chicks. We then enjoyed our Easter Egg hunt around the room, finding all the different coloured chocolate eggs and gummy lollies to share. We hope the children shared some with you at home!

This week we have started focusing on numbers and counting. We have programmed number matching games, number art activities, tracing numbers and object-number matching at the discovery table. All of our children are able to count up to 10, with many counting past this number, but we are also focusing on number recognition. We have been mixing numbers so they are not in order and the children identify what each number looks like. This will be achieved through the different activities we have planned and using sight cards during group time.

Throughout the past couple of months, we have also been tracing shapes, letters, numbers and colouring in. This is to encourage fine motor skills and correct handling of a pencil using the pincer grip. We will continue to include these activities every week to build on the hand muscles required for writing in Kindy.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our families for their support, understanding and feedback during this hard time. Things have been very different and your support and kind words are much appreciated.

If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to speak to one of the room staff.

Kind regards,

Cassandra, Chloe, Dipali and Esther

Kindergarten 1

Hello to all of our parents and families. Welcome to our April newsletter for the Kindergarten 1 room. 

Over the last few weeks, we have been focusing on the health and safety of the children. Within this topic we have focused on what foods keep us healthy, what are germs, how to do hand washing and dental hygiene. The week of 9 & 10, we focused on sun safety.

We started week 9 off with a group discussion of their understanding of sun safety and how we can stay protected from the sun. During these 2 weeks the children gained their knowledge through hands-on experiences as well as art activities and group discussions. After the children completed and created their own sun protection poster, handprint sun paintings, designed their own hats, cut and paste experience and a science experiment to see what items would melt in the sun, the children had absorbed such knowledge. We compared back to the chart we had created at the start of week 9 and noticed the children had doubled their knowledge about the sun and how to stay safe from the sun.

During these weeks of themed activities, we also have been focusing on and teaching the children their curriculum learning by weeks. Each week the children will trace and collage the letter of the week, write and quantity match a number. Trace, write and cut out the shape of the week.
Week 9 provided us with the Letter: K, Number: 7, Shape: Star, and Colour: Black
Week 10 the children gained understanding of the Letter: E, Number: 8, Shape: Hexagon and Colour: Yellow.

Just a quick reminder to please ensure your child's names are on all items i.e. hat, sheets, shoes, and spare clothes. We like to make sure all items find their way back home. Please make sure you bring your child's hat and bag daily. Hats are a must as we are promoting sun safety and setting the children up for a positive future in their health and safety. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to come and see me.

Till next time!

Miss Casey

Kindergarten 2

Hi to all our fabulous parents in Kindergarten!

What's been happening in Kindergarten over the last month?

Prior to the holidays, the children learnt about the importance of handwashing to get rid of germs. During the learning process it was pleasing to see the children helping their peers and reminding each other to wash with soap and then dry their hands prior to eating. To reinforce the learning we performed several science experiments for the children to visually see the reasons for handwashing – Germs, Germs, and Germs. To extend on our learning of physical wellbeing the children learnt about nutrition and the 5 food groups which form the healthy eating guidelines. During this learning, we created healthy and unhealthy lunch boxes using real foods. We also had a visit from our local dentist who provided information on the correct brushing technique for good oral health.

Over the curriculum break, the children have built on their self-help skills by assisting educators in the clean-up of mealtimes by washing their own dishes.

As term two begins next week we will be learning new letters, sounds, numbers and shapes. During the term we will also explore road safety and transport as well as people who help us in our community.

Jolly Phonics – Early literacy and writing skills

Each week your child learns a new letter and sound using the Jolly phonics program. Jolly Phonics is a fun and child-centered approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics. The letters are taught in a specific order (not alphabetically). This enables children to begin building words as early as possible. This program continues through school enabling the teaching of essential grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills. I would encourage the use of this program at home with your child using this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djz82FBYiug

On a final note, I invite families to make comments in our Parent Communication Book. You might like to voice your concerns, happiness and ideas.

Looking forward to term two's learning journey with your child.

Kind Regards

Miss Renae 

Kindergarten 3 

Hello Parents, Families and Children of the Kindergarten 3 Group.

We have come to the end of our first school term and we have made new friends, grown more independent all while having fun doing it.

I introduced a book to the children called 'I Went Walking' this month. Throughout the weeks this book helped the children learn about colours, shapes, farm animals, listening, following directions and ordinal numbers.

Reading the book regularly to the children at group time encouraged deep engagement and focus. I used posters and figurine toys of the animals from the book to make group, story sharing, more fun.

As the weeks passed by, the group could read along and predict the next part of the story.

Each week the children had an opportunity to collage the different animals from the story with the colour they were in the book. Other activities including role-playing with the farm animal toys, constructing favourite animals from the story and singing farm animal songs. Planning and programing around children's interests is the best way to spark their enthusiasm to learn.

I am so proud of all the hard work Kindergarten 3 have displayed this month. Keep Going!

These are what activities we have been up to this month:

Indoor Experiences: Pom pom colour sorting and shape making, Bingo Dotter art, sharing and taking turns with toy vehicles. Reading, cutting out shapes, Easter Basket creation, playing with and in the ball pit and tracing numbers and letters. Building letters and numbers from pattern shape blocks, reading, playing restaurants in the Home Corner, building structures from Lego, shooting for basketball hoops, dancing – Just Dance, singing ('6/7/8 Little Monkeys', Open, Shut Them', 'Once I Caught a Fish Alive', '6/7/8 Little Ducks') and much, much more.

Outdoor Experiences: finding insects in the yard, cement chalk drawing, running races with teachers and peers. Mud finger painting, socialising and building friendships. Learning how to use the swing independently, animal figurine footprint painting, building and knocking down Waffle Block towers, playing chasing games, climbing the obstacle course, cooking, baking and treasure hunting in the sandpit, balancing on stilts, and much, much more.

Remember please bring to Kindy every day:

  • A Sun Safe Hat
  • Shoes and socks
  • 2 sheets/blankets in a bag
  • 2 sets of spare clothes

Thank you for your cooperation.

Don't forget to check out our Educa website to view our daily Learning Journey and monthly observations.

Have a Great Month.

Miss Jazmin

Kindergarten 3 ECT

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