From the Office

Renae
Gayna

Hello families and welcome to our August News.

This month we have had Gayna join the Admin team. Some of you may know Gayna as one of our Educators who worked closely with your children to enhance their learning and development. Gayna will be available to all our parents Monday to Friday between 8.00am and 4.30pm. 

Evonne has decided to extend her maternity leave to spend quality time with her children Ida and Simon and she will return in January next year.

Renae will remain in the position of Centre Manager until Evonne returns. Renae is available in the office Monday, Tuesday and Friday as she works as a Teacher facilitating the Kindergarten Curriculum in Kindergarten 2 Wednesday and Thursday. Allana is now in the Kindergarten 3 class where she assists the Educators in the room with managing and developing plans for children with additional needs. 

  • EKKA Fun Day
  • We have just celebrated our 5th Birthday at Doolandella on Friday 16th. Thank you to the families who joined us for the celebrations. 

If you purchased Show Bags they can be collected from the front office.

Nursery

Welcome to another month in Nursery! 

Firstly we would like to extend a warm welcome to our new friends Leon and Grace.

We have been focusing on Gross Motor development. At a young age physical development is an important part of a babies development. We always encourage babies to participate in physical experiences and explores the outdoor environment to develop fine and gross motor skills by using bikes, cars, little stepping stones etc.

Reading books with babies is a comforting and relaxing experience. Babies enjoy reading books and love seeing the pictures in the books. Reading assists them to creatively build their knowledge about different features and ideas in the world around them. Over the next few weeks we will continue building on the children's interests as well as fine motor, gross motor and social interactions.

If there are any questions or concerns regarding your child's progress or development please feel free to discuss this with us. Have a fantastic month

Until Next time

Miss Praxa, Miss Arley, Miss Chloe. 

Toddlers

Hi to all our families and carers. We are happy to give you again another update about what has been happening here in the Toddlers Room! 

This month we welcomed two new friends: Sebastian and Melody who have been doing great in their first few weeks in our room.

This month of August we have started on our new theme "All About Me" - This theme addresses skills and concepts that are important in growing up such as: recognizing and learning our name, learning our body parts, personal hygiene (e.g. washing our hands, wiping our nose with tissue and covering our nose and mouth when we sneeze and cough), and most of all knowing that every one is unique and special. Our young children also get to know their individuality and learn about differences among their peers.

In the Toddler Room, it might look like just child's play, but toddlers are hard at work learning important physical skills as they gain muscle control, balance, and coordination. Each new skill lets them progress to the next one, building on a foundation that leads to more complicated physical tasks. Toddlers always want to do more, which can motivate them to keep trying until they acquire a new skill, no matter what it takes.

Thank you to all the parents who have shared a photo of your family with us. If you are still yet to bring in a photo, please do so as it is a way of us getting to know your child's family and the children enjoy looking at these photos.

As we continue on our theme "All About Me", we have also started talking about our families and our different cultural backgrounds. We shall be displaying a lot of visual pictures around the room in the next couple of weeks. It links back to Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world.

The room has now been set up into different sections where the children have the opportunity to engage in a variety of activities. If your child has any particular interests, please write it on the Parent Input form on the back of the door or discuss it with a staff member in the room so we can put these into our curriculum.

Until next time!

Your Toddlers Educators: Ms. Arleen, Ms. Faapepe and Ms. Khushi

Tweenies

Hello Tweenies families and welcome to our newsletter for August.

This month our theme is 'Jungle Animals' and we have enjoyed learning all about the animals we may find in the jungle and the habitats which they live in. We have learnt about animals that live in caves, on the ground, in trees and in the water. 

Many of the animals we are learning about have families called a 'herd' or 'pack' which has then opened up the discussion about our own families - who we live with, their names, our siblings and if we have any pets at home.

Some of our activities for this month have included animals in mud, jungle animal washing station, monkey collage, zebra handprints, lion paper plate paintings, elephant masks, playdough jungle and a jungle sensory tray. The children have loved exploring the jungle and we have many more exciting activities planned for the rest of the month!

We are very happy to report that many of our children have started toilet training or showing interest in sitting on the toilet when their peers do! We have found this to be a great way to encourage toilet training - if they are sitting next to their friends on the loo! If you are interested in toilet training for your child, please speak to one of the room staff so we can start planning together.

If you have any questions or queries about your child, please do not hesitate to speak to one of your educators.

Kind regards,

Cassandra, Cariad and Margaret

Pre Kindy

Hello to all the Pre Kindy families and friends, firstly we would like to welcome our new friend Yash Patel who has joined us on our journey this month.

As for our learning journey this month, we have continued to explore with our letters along with numbers each week. During group time we are discussing about words such as our friend's name, fruits, animals that start with the letter we focus on each week. Therefore, we plan a variety of activities that encourage each child to use their fine motor development such as art crafts, cutting, tracing, colouring, sorting, counting and drawing, hand and eye coordination skills and concentrations.

Just a reminder, please remember to label all your child's belonging such as bed linen, shoes, hats, clothes (jumpers) are being misplaced. Other children within the service have same or similar items therefore all items need to be labelled. 

During scheduled times of physical activity outdoor if your child does not have a hat they are unable to participate in outdoor play. They remain under the veranda due to our sun protection policy. Lastly, as the weather is still cold please ensure your child is clothes appropriately as per weather conditions.

Thank you.

Miss Sarai, Miss Sophia and Miss Esther.

Kindergarten 1

Hello Parents, Families and Children of Kindergarten One.

Wow, what a great start to the 3rd term of the year. We've learned, experienced and created so much already.

The first 2 weeks of our term the children were learning all about themselves. What is my name? How old am I? Where do I live? Who is in my family? Where was I born? Where is my family from? What do I look like? What are my favourites?

It was interesting for us to watch the group create their own Self Portraits with paper, felt pens, glue, googley eyes and wool. The children also drew a picture of their family using a lead pencil and later painted it.

This month we had a lot of fun learning about our Planet and its countries, and where our families come from.

The children were intrigued when we reconstructed a huge world map on the carpet and pointed out different parts. They were eager to piece together their own world map by cutting, matching and gluing. After watching educational videos about the continents, countries and oceans the children have been discussing our world. They have been making connections between country of origin and physical appearance and have also been talking about what country they are from.

It was interesting to watch the children discover all the different types of flags hanging in the room. This led into children colouring in their family's country's flag. To colour the flags correctly the children needed to search for their flag in the Kindergarten One room or research it on the Tablet with one of the teachers. This sparked conversations around, the similarities and differences between them, shapes, colours, nationalities and countries.

This is a quick glance of what we have been learning about:

Week

1

2

3

4

Week beginning

15 July

22 July

29 July

5 August

Letter and Sound

Jj

Zz

Ww

Vv

Number

19

20

0-20

1

Shape

Circle

Oval

Diamond

Colour

Orange

Blue

White

Topic of Interest

All About me

Our Planet: Continents, countries, flags.

Where is my family from?

Kindergarten One Loves Learning and Discovering New Ideas!!

Indoor Experiences: Upper and Lower Case Letter Crocodiles, independently handwriting, piecing back together their own world map, colouring-in flags, creating our name as a mosaic, free drawing, completing giant number and alphabet puzzles with a friend, working as a team to keep the room tidy, threading, making shapes with sparkly pipe cleaners, creating self-portraits and family portraits, opening and exploring the Alphabet Soup, matching the number cows, tracing around natural items, dancing, singing, colour sorting, saying letters in our name, and much, much more.

Outdoor Experiences: Completing the brand new obstacle course, playing Tag with the whole group, investigating the see-saw, bouncing and doing tricks on the balancing beam, Duck, Duck Goose, socializing and building friendships, Tug-O-War, animal role playing, chasing games, pushing our friends on the swings, watering the gardens, and much more.

We continue reading every day! Reading is so important in education and we love it!! If you have any books to donate that would be appreciated.

Our Favourite Songs and Dances

'Baby Shark'

0-20 Counting Songs

'Freeze Dance'

'Wash Your Face in Orange Juice'

'Elmo's Alphabet Rap'

'Friends Song'

Until next time we meet, have a Great Day!

Miss Jazmin and Miss Phoebe


Kindergarten 2

Hello and a huge welcome to all of our new families to Kindergarten. We are all excited to have new friends and are looking forward to getting to know you all.

So what's been happening in Kindergarten 2? The last two weeks of July seen us finish our all about me theme where we explored the countries relating to our children's culture. During this learning the children engaged in different activities pertaining to each child's culture including cooking experiences, culture flag art & craft and exploring celebrations & traditions of these cultures.

The month of August has seen us learning about farming and animals that live on the farm. This learning was extended from the children's interest from the Ekka. To extend on this learning we have been learning about different animals that you may find on the farm which include cows, sheep, and pigs, horses, goats and chickens. The children participated in several learning experiences of creating cotton wool sheep, painting chickens yellow with thin brushes and marble painted pigs in mud. They also used their problem solving skills to piece together animal paddle pop stick puzzles to create an animal.

Furthering the children's knowledge about these animals we expanded into the products which are produced from these animals. During discussions the children talked about how milk, butter, yoghurt and cheese come from cows, eggs and meat come from chickens, wool and meat come from sheep and bacon comes from pigs. The highlight of these learning experiences can be found on your child's Educa profile where they participated in milking a cow and then made butter from whipping crème.

Throughout the rest of August we will continue our learning of farm animals and other products which can be produced from land for example crops / vegies. We will be making bread and designing our very own Mr & Mrs Potato Heads using real vegetables e.g. potatoes, corn, beans etc. which are products produced on farms.

Looking forward to a continuation of learning with your children.

Miss Renae, Miss Casey & Miss Karen

Kindergarten 3

Hi everyone

This month we welcome Miss Allana to the room. She comes with a wealth of experience relating to children diagnosed with learning difficulties e.g. Autism (ASD). She has joined our Kindy 3 team to assist the children who require additional support as well as re educate staff on effective behaviour management techniques and learning support programmes for children with learning difficulties.

In the kindergarten 3 room new children are getting familiar with educators, new routines and transitions. They are showing positive approaches towards learning. They are building relationship with each other. For the children that moved from pre-kindy, we are providing opportunities and supporting them to develop their self-help skills, fine motor, gross motor and communication (confident to talk with their peers and adults).

As you know we already have put the kindergarten curriculum outside of our room on the wall. We are doing letter 'w,v,y,x,q, numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7(relation between counting and objects), shapes and colours. 

We were running topic of interest "The very hungry caterpillar". Children were watching visual story at group time, doing butterfly life cycle, colouring and cutting and pasting activities.

With the weather warming up by rest time the children are only requiring a light sheet for rest time. Please keep the warmer blankets for their night sleeps at home when it is cold.

As we are having to share lockers please ensure you are taking your child's sheets home if they are not in the next day, this is for health reasons to reduce the spread of germs.

Doolandella ELC provides meals that are healthy and meet all your child's dietary requirements. Please ensure if your are sending food for your child that it is named and placed in the lunch basket in our fridge. No lunch boxes should be placed in the fridge. Food from home should be healthy and align with the daily intake requirements, packets of chips will not be served to children in place of a healthy meal. We have children with anaphylaxis and are allergic to nuts. Please DO NOT SEND FOOD CONTAINING NUTS.

If you have any concerns about your child's learning development or programming please feel free to see me.

Thank you

Manpreet, Dipali and Lana