HomeFebruary Newsletter
From the Office
Hello Families!
2018 is well underway! We hope your children are all settling in well with recent room changes.
We are currently offering a referral incentive to our current families. This incentive is for two weeks free care to anyone who refers a new family to our centre (conditions apply). In order for current families to be eligible for two weeks free care a new family must:
1. Be referred to the centre by a current attending family
2. Be enrolled for at least two days on a weekly basis
3. Be enrolled for a period of at least 6 weeks prior to the fee deduction &
4. Have all CCB and CCR current and their account up to date.
Please feel free to come and discuss this with Evonne at the office or simply refer us and let your friends know to tell us you sent them.
Up coming Events:
Class Photos are available for purchase. You will find an order form/envelope in your child's room pocket. The photos will be taken on Tuesday 6th, Wednesday 7th & Thursday 8th of March. The photographers will be at the Centre in the mornings and will be leaving by around 10:30am so please ensure your children are in at the Centre before this time so as not to miss out on having their photo taken.
Clean Up Day is a fun and engaging way to teach young Australians about the responsible disposal of rubbish, resource recovery and the repercussions of rubbish dumped irresponsibly in the local environment. We encourage the Children to use our recycling bins just outside the foyer and our Centre worm farm. The children will also be encouraged to find rubbish in the playgrounds and place it in the bins.
Easter is coming up at the end of March and we will be having our annual Easter Bonnet Parade on Thursday 29th March, more details to come. You are welcome to start working on an Easter Bonnet with your children for the parade. As always we will have prizes for best Easter bonnets in each room.
We will also be having our annual Easter Raffle with great prizes. Tickets will be available to purchase soon so please keep an eye out in your child's pocket for these. Alternatively, you can donate something to the raffle and we will put some tickets in the draw for you to win.
Nursery
Hello to all our families and welcome again to another edition of Nursery newsletter. This month we are happy to have our new friend Crystal in the room and so far she has done pretty well in her new environment. We have seen our former children moved up to Toddlers room last month and they all are settled in their new room. Our babies who have started late last year and early this year have finally settled in and have formed trusting relationships with us. For now, we are still awaiting some new friends to start soon in our room.
We are enjoying learning about ocean creatures during our ocean "escape" this month. The past weeks we have had lots of sensory plays like water play, goop play, spaghetti play – all exploring our sense of touch as our babies love to explore with their hands (and mouth!)
We are extending our learning further with our "Under the Sea" adventure over the following weeks, where we will explore different ocean animals through paintings (art), action songs and books, where our babies can imagine what life is like under the sea.
As it has been so hot and humid the past week, we are staying indoors for most of the time. Our babies loved their active indoor play areas with large soft blocks, seesaws or just merely exploring their gross motor skills of climbing, crawling and walking.
Please feel free to speak to us about your child's interests and routines so we can add them to our program. We would love to hear from you.
Until next time!
Ms. Arleen, Ms. Courtney and Ms. Khushi
Toddlers
Welcome to another month in the Toddler room. We have welcomed a few new children this month which has been very exciting! The children have done such an amazing job at making their new friends feel welcome.
This month in Toddlers, our main focus area will be language and communication skills. We will be really encouraging the children to use verbal communication throughout the day; for example: naming everything - when the children are having a drink we will say "drink" "cup" "water" etc... Also, we will be reading a lot of stories and encouraging story telling through play using puppets, dress ups, dolls and other dramatic play props. Most of our planned activities will be group experiences to encourage social interactions between the children. It would really help if parents could also promote language and communication skills at home too.
We will also have other small focuses in the room which will be fine motor skills, colour recognition, shape recognition and sensory exploration.
The Toddler children have all seemed to settle into the new routine really well this year and we cannot wait to see what 2018 will bring!!!
If anyone has any questions, suggestions or concerns please do not hesitate to have a chat with myself (Miss Kim) or Miss Praxa.
Tweenies
Dear Parents,
We would like to welcome you all to the Tweenies room, especially to the new children and families that have started with us this year.Well, we have had a busy couple of weeks with helping the children settle into the room. I am pleased to say the children have done a great job settling into the room. Settling and forming close attachments with the educators has been a main focus for us as it is very important that children feel safe and confident with educators in the room.
So far, in the Tweenies room we have been learning about colours and shapes. We have also been enjoying the creative area the most, the children seem very interested in sensory activities and lots of painting activities.
We have seen a lot of emerging self help autonomy skills developing in our Tweenies children and we have been encouraging these skills during meal times, washing their hands and putting their hats and sunscreen on for outside play. We look forward to getting to know the children more and find out what they like to do.
We hope that you and your children enjoy the year with us, and if you have any feedback or ideas for us please let us know!
Miss Faapepe, Miss Sophia and Miss Cassandra
Junior Kindy
Our aim is to make every family welcomed, and to provide the best care for your child while attending in our Junior Kindy room.
This month we focus on the children settling into the rooms with the educators to ensure the children's transition goes smoothly.
We encourage all children to play with the groups at their own pace, and to get to know each other to feel both safe and happy while in our care.
This month we introduce the children to learning basic alphabetical literacy and exploration to help them recognise basic letter such as:
- Letter Hunt (finding letters in the sand)
- Tracing Letters
- Letter Painting
- Playdough with letters and shapes
- Recognising their personal first letter of their name – example, (Tracey starts with T)
- Sorting and matching letters
- Magnetic letters sorting
- Flash card etc.
We encourage every child to feel at ease, and to explore the room while playing with the variety of resources that are available for them to learn with.
The educators in the room will be encouraging the children to talk and converse with the educators and other children to help them as much as we can with their needs.
From your Junior Kindy Educators:
Miss Sarai, Miss Christine, Miss Vicky and Miss Hannah
Pre-Kindy
Hello and welcome to the Pre-Kindy room.
The children are settling into their new room routine really well and they are getting very enthusiastic with their learning of shapes, colours, literacy and numeracy with Miss Casey.
During February we have 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' as our monthly theme and you can see some of the work we have been doing on the wall at the back of our room. This theme incorporates shapes, colours, literacy and numeracy skills as well as learning about healthy eating. The children get very involved when we read 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' book to them and quite often call out the next line in the book. I was lucky enough to find a couple of caterpillars on my trees at home and the children got excited as they observed the large caterpillar start to make his cocoon.
Could you please name all of your child's clothing including sheets and shoes so they don't get placed in the wrong bag.
If you have not yet sent sunscreen with your child, could you please supply it as soon as possible as we use a lot of sunscreen with this extreme heat we are having.
If you have any queries please do not hesitate to see the room Educators. We are looking forward to working with your children this year!!!
Regards,
Miss Karen, Miss Casey, Miss Gayna
Kindergarten
Welcome to our new and existing families for 2018.
We have begun our learning journey together in hopes of working towards readiness for your child to attend Prep next year. Over the next twelve months in Kindergarten your child's outlook on life will open up as they gain a greater sense of independence and begin to explore the world and gain more confidence in their abilities and take on more challenges. Their level of understanding and communication improves and so will their enjoyment for learning new things. There will be a tremendous development in language skills and foundations in numeracy and literacy. We welcome parent input in many ways. So please feel free to communicate with us about your child, the curriculum or the room at any time.
Currently the children have been busy learning about their environment. We have built a herb garden and planted herbs. These herbs will used by our centre chef in her cooking which will then be given to the children during their meal times. The children are showing enthusiasm and are keen to water the herbs daily. Whilst the children have been watering the herbs they found a cocoon on a leaf. We waited patiently for the transformation to appear and soon enough a beautiful butterfly emerged.
This experience extended our learning into the Very Hungry Caterpillar story. For the past two weeks we have been learning about the days of the week, the colour and number of fruits the hungry caterpillar eats on certain days. We also explored the butterfly lifecycle. The learning which has taken place and the activities the children have taken part in can be found on "our learning journey" wall in the room.
Looking forward to a rewarding 2018 with your child.
Miss Renae, Miss Phoebe and Miss Allana
