March Newsletter

From the Office

Happy Easter Everyone!!!

The Easter Bunny will soon be here so we have been planning our special Easter Celebrations for Thursday afternoon the 29th March 2018.  The Easter party will start from 3:00 pm.  The children can wear their Easter hats and participate in some fun Easter activities on the veranda's in the playground.  All family members are welcome to join us for the Easter celebrations.

We will be drawing the Easter Raffle Thursday afternoon at the Easter party.  Please ensure you have bought a few tickets to be in the chance to win one of the 3 prizes.  If you would prefer you are welcome to place a donation into the raffle and some tickets will be placed in the draw to win for your contribution.

We hope to see you all there and have a wonderful Easter long weekend!!!

Nursery

​Welcome to our March newsletter. The year has certainly started at great speed with a lot of activities occurring in our Nursery room within the first 3 months of the year. At this point, we would like to greet Zac, Mia and Wyatt who just celebrated their 1^st birthday – another milestone!

Some of the experiences we have been involved in so far include lots of child-initiated sensory play as they explore by themselves their sense of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing and we, their educators, extending them into activities like painting, singing action songs and listening to our favourite nursery rhymes. Our babies have found so much interest in blocks and legos for stacking, large soft foam blocks for climbing and crawling, home corner, sensory balls and musical instruments. We have seen emerging self help skills developing in our older babies and we have been supporting these skills especially at meal times like walking to the bathroom for nappy time, washing hands and holding their own drink bottles.

Please take a moment to look around the room and see what our babies have been up to.  May we also ask if you could please bring in a photo of your child as a newborn so we could put them up on our "This is Me" wall. Feel free to send in any stories or photos from your adventures at home, we would love to have a section devoted to family participation and this would enable us to add and incorporate in our Nursery programme.

Till next time!

Your Nursery Educators:

Ms. Arleen, Ms. Courtney and Ms. Kushi

Toddlers

​This month in the Toddler room we have welcomed quite a few new friends, the children have done a fantastic job at making our new friends feel welcome!

Our main focus in the Toddler room this month has been language and communication skill. We are really trying to encourage the children to use language to communicate not only with the educators but with each other in play too. We have been doing this by planning group experiences to promote interactions with others, role play and group/individual reading. We ask for you to encourage this at home too by naming common objects around the house, reading books with your child and encouraging them to ask for things eg: "drink" "food" "toy" etc... this will continue to be the main focus in the Toddler room over the next few months.

Other areas we will be looking at this month include: 

gross motor skills (balance/coordination)

Fine motor skills

Cognitive skills (puzzles/colours/shapes)

If you have any ideas, suggestions or concerns please feel free to have a chat with Miss Kim or Miss Praxa next time you are at the centre. 

Tweenies

​Hello to all our Tweenies parents,

I would like to say a warm welcome to all our new families that have joined our journey in the Tweenies room.

We have had such an exciting month of March, full of fun learning experiences, that has helped us gain more learning skills in our early learning development.

This month our main focus has been learning all about the Jungle which the children have shown great interest in. We have been exploring through activities that relate to this topic, and have been learning about the different animals that we would find in the jungle.  I'm proud to say the children have absolutely nailed this topic and we are excited to extend on the children's learning next month.

We are also encouraging self help skills in the room such as helping to pack away toys and belongings, putting their own hats and shoes on, etc.  If you are wanting to start toilet training with your child please see one of the room Educators to discuss the process and we can answer any questions you might have.

Please parents if you have any question don't hesitate to ask us about anything. We are here to help if needed .

Thank you

Your Tweenies staff,

Miss Faapepe, Miss Sophia & Miss Cassandra

Junior Kindy

Welcome to our March Newsletter. This month has been both fun, and full of achievements in our Junior Kindy Room.

This month, we are focusing on the children's room routine, to be comfortable with their own space while bonding with the room Educators.  This should help the children with adjusting to the day to day routine while in our care.

Our Toilet training has been a huge success, and we thank the parents for working together with us while achieving your child's toilet training goal.

We also introduced the "Learning Journey Experience"with the children, starting with "Numeracy Exploration" and "Basic Numbers" such as- counting numbers 1(one) up to 10 (ten) numbers and more. Further examples included:

• Number Painting;
• Tracing numbers;
• Sorting numbers;
• Matching numbers;
• Counting tinny buttons; and
• Counting Cupcakes, etc.

Adding to the "Learning Journey Experience", we also introduced "Cognitive and Language Skill Development ", by teaching the Junior Kindy children about:

• The days of the week, such as "today is "Thursday, 12 of March";
• Counting how many children there are today in the room;
• Counting and singing songs such as " I,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish a live", "Five little ducks, 5 cheeky monkeys, etc; and
• Today is- sunny/cloudy/rainy day.

We included some "Sensory Awareness" that included the touch of the "toy farm animals', the feeling of sand, the aroma of rosemary bush, and the texture of play-dough.

Parents and Guardian please feel free to make any suggestions of activities to incorporate into the program.

Thank you!

Room Educators: Miss Sarai, Miss Christine, Miss Vicky & Miss Hannah

Photos of our Learning Journey:

Pre-Kindy

​A huge welcome to all of our new families. We are very much looking forward to getting to know you all. I cannot believe it is March already. In the Pre-Kindy room this month we have moved on to a construction theme. How did we get here? Miss Karen, Miss Gayna and I have noticed a strong interest with the children and their desire for the transport area as well as construction area. We have mashed these together to create a strong, engaging, learning environment.

We have explored many different experiences over the last few weeks. The children have challenged not only themselves in trying new experiences, they have encouraged their friends too! This theme incorporates many different aspects of a child's development. Over the last few weeks they have developed their numeracy skills when completing the number tracks with the cars, and understanding colours, shapes and patterns with the shape nuts and bolts, and pattern blocks.

Stimulating the children's learning through touch, we created some sensory experiences, where we made with the children some dirt dough and cloud dough. We added the CAT trucks and cars to boost their imagination and creative skills. When engrossed in these play episodes, the children develop their communication skills and strengthen their relationships with other children. We have extended our fascination with cars and created some beautiful car paintings. The children enjoyed the most part of washing the cars after the painting had finished. Yes mum and dad, they're now ready to help wash your cars. The children have also been sharpening up on their fine motor skills and balance control when doing collage using magazine pieces they have cut up using the scissors.

Encouraging the construction play, we have used the tools, tool bench and wooden blocks to mimic a work site for the children to enter into dramatic role play. We also replicated a real life experience of hammering nails. Via the children's choice, we also explored the train tracks, foam blocks, duplo blocks and connector sticks and many more. In our outdoor area's we have continued with our construction theme with the children increasing their curiosity with the waffle blocks, large foam blocks, wooden blocks and the large lego blocks. We have set up a dramatic play space in the sand pit adding trucks, cones, planks, tubes, hard hats, vests and googles. This experience explores aspects of the children's identity through role play. Over the last 2 weeks the ongoing learning throughout these play experiences have helped develop their problem solving skills, co-operation, independence, persistence, imagination, creativity, numeracy and literacy skills, fine and gross motor skills, balance, communication, identity and many many more.

Just a reminder to 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 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 see Karen or myself.

Till next time!

Kindergarten

​Hi and welcome to our families who have recently joined us or returned from holidays!

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

Last month we mentioned that we built a herb garden and planted herbs for our centre chef to use in her daily cooking. The herbs are growing well due the children showing an appreciation for living things and watering and caring for them daily. Please come and take a look at our eatable herb garden which the children take pride in daily. This is a great way to start a conversation with your child about their day at Kindy.

What have we been learning about?

The beginning of the Month saw us end our learning of the Very Hungry caterpillar and extend our learning into the 4 seasons as March is the beginning of autumn. During this learning we studied the difference in the seasons and the months of the year that relate to these seasons. As we are doing allot of hands on tactile learning our inquisitive minds allowed us to experiment with our 5 senses. The children were provided with opportunities to explore their 5 senses through experiments where they had to use all 5 senses to describe popcorn and determine which item was sugar and which was salt. These experiences allowed the children to respond verbally to what they see, heard, felt, touched and tasted.

Lastly, don't forget about the Easter Bonnet Parade coming up on Thursday 29^th March. Hope to see some parents there. Until then that's all from us in Kindergarten.

Miss Renae, Miss Phoebe, Miss Allana and Miss Josie