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May Newsletter 2020

From the Office 

We are happy to see things starting to return to normal with many of our families returning to their work and the children returning to our Centre.  It has been great to see everyone again and be able to enjoy all of our fun experiences with you all.  

Although we are slowly seeing pandemic restrictions being lifted, we are still wanting to ensure all of our staff, children and parents entering the Centre are kept safe and healthy, so we would like to remind everyone to keep following the health and safety guidelines.  

If you or your child are sick with flu-like symptoms, please do not attend the Centre until you have been seen by a doctor or been tested for Coronavirus and cleared as not contagious.  We are trying to limit the amount of social contact between people entering the centre, so we ask that only one parent or guardian enters the Centre to drop off and pick up their children, and to please only stay for a reasonable amount of time to complete the drop-off and say Goodbye. Also please ensure to use the hand sanitiser provided upon entering and exiting the Centre.

Thank you to everyone who is following these guidelines, it is greatly appreciated!

I would also like to thank our team of staff at Doolandella Early Learning Centre for staying positive during this health crisis.  All of our staff have maintained a clean and safe learning environment, full of educational, fun experiences for the children. The work you do makes a difference and has been recognized and appreciated by many.  You may notice their hard work put into the rooms and playground spaces.  Please see photos of some of the new timber equipment and planter boxes Miss Renae has created and photos of the sensory garden that Miss Casey has been busy setting up as a veggie garden for the children to look after along with the set up of the worm farm.

Until next time...

Welcome again to the latest edition of Nursery News. Firstly let's extend a warm welcome to Ethan and Henrik who have both recently started in our room.

We are so happy to see that all our babies are enjoying exploring the room, the different learning areas and toys. Happy birthday to the babies who have recently celebrated their 1st birthday; Tashvik, Eli, Daniel, Miles & Keelin.

Our children have really blossomed over the last few weeks from crawling to walking, gaining confidence and independence.

Over the past three weeks we have been discovering all about sensory play which includes play dough, shaving cream play with cars, Mud play and Slime.  These sensory activities support language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills and social interactions.

May we ask parents to make sure all your child's belongings are properly labeled with your child's name. Hats are also needed as we take our friends out for a fun and sunny outdoor play.

Your Nursery Staff

Miss praxa, Miss Arley & Miss Laura

Hi everyone, welcome to the Toddler Room Newsletter. This month we are happy to say that our friends in the room are starting to return to the Centre, it is great to see you all again.

This month we have been learning about nature; doing lots of activities which have included recognition of the colours green and brown and there different shades.

Our sensory activity was Play-dough which the children were able to go and pick some flowers that they wanted to add to the play-dough. The children enjoyed manipulating the dough as well as smelling the flowers they had added.

We used our fine motor skills to finger paint our leaves.

The children's gross motor skills are improving each day, some children have shown us how they can now jump!!

We are also continuing our discussions about washing our hands, and how to use our gentle hands when playing with our friends. All the children are improving with their communication and listening skills, they like to have discussions with each other when playing.

Please remember to pack extra clothes as well as a jumper, for those colder days. Also if you have any enquiries please feel free to come and see either Miss Cariad, Miss Faapepe or Miss Khushi

Thank you from the Toddler's Educators!

Hello and welcome to our Tweenies Parents and families,

First of all, we'd like to welcome all of our friends who have come back into our service during this tough time.

This month we have been focusing our learning on the very hungry caterpillar. This involved us providing a variety of fun and exciting activities that promote the children's fine motor skills, creativity, sensory development, hand-eye coordination and so much more. We also read the very hungry Caterpillar story with our friends during our group time experience.

These are some of our activities that the children enjoyed:

  • Caterpillar Balloon Painting
  • Counting Caterpillars
  • Hand print Caterpillars
  • Fruit loop Caterpillars
  • Caterpillar hunting in the sensory garden
  • Play-dough Caterpillars


In addition to this months learning, we have introduced to the children an activity where they are learning to recognise themselves and their fellow tweenies friends with facial recognition name tags by creating a "Our Time In Tweenies wall".

A few reminders:

The weather is cooling down so please pack a jumper in your child's bag.

Also, please make sure you bring a hat for your child each day and ensure all of your child's belongings are labeled. `

Kind Regards,

Tweenies Educators,

Miss Sarai, Miss Phoebe and Miss Florence

Hello Pre-Kindy parents,

We hope you have all been keeping well over the past month, it is exciting to see many of our friends returning back to our class as we have missed you all very much!

Within the past month, we have focused on our numeracy and mathematics through planned experiences such as; games and art & craft to help focus on recognising numbers one to ten, as well as practicing our counting 1-20 and with shape recognition too. We did several activities such as tracing, cotton bud number painting, matching numbers and shape games, making shape monsters and creating our own shape pizzas! All these activities were to engage the children in learning and beginning to become familiar with numbers, counting and shapes.

Throughout the month, we read a book called, "Hermans holiday" which was about a bear who takes his friend camping.  From this story we had a group discussion about holidays which then lead us to having our own camping experience. The children seemed very interested in this roleplay and it was great for them to build on their social skills as well as creativity and imagination. We set up tents, made dinner on our barbeques and even made our own (pretend) fire as we sang songs with a ukulele and toasted marshmallows too! The children showed so much enjoyment through this roleplay that we have decided to continue on with this, by making different roleplaying themes each month.

The children have nominated for a supermarket theme this coming month. We will be involving this theme into our program and will be planning art experiences and getting creative as we make our shop. We ask if you have any recycled food boxes or packages that we can add into our shop we will be collecting them, please be mindful of our food allergies, therefore, no packaging which contained nuts or egg products, thank you.

As you may have noticed we have changed the room around to keep children interested and focused in the environment and also to try and encourage self-help skills and independence.

This coming month we will be moving onto literacy to help the children become familiar with letters and writing and tracing. We will also continue on with our show and tell as it is a positive way to involve the class in communication and listening, as well as building self-esteem and confidence.

Lastly, as we are coming into cooler weather we ask that parents please pack a jumper and warmer spare clothes in your child's bag and please ensure that all clothing is labeled. We look forward to another fun month ahead in Pre-Kindy, if you have any concerns, ideas or feedback please come and chat with one of our classroom staff members.

Thankyou,

Miss Chloe, Miss Cassandra, Miss Dipali and Miss Esther. 

Welcome to another month in Kindergarten!

As you are aware COVID-19 has had a huge impact on our Service with a reduction in children's attendances. However, it has not impacted the way in which we have educated and cared for your children during the pandemic.  As term 2 commenced all Kindergarten classes have been combined in the Kindergarten 3 room with Miss Renae facilitated the curriculum planning whilst Miss Casey & Miss Jazmin contributed by coordinating activities in the outside environment. Your child's participation in the curriculum has been documented in your child's profile which can be viewed at any time via the Educa online portal. If you do not have an Educa login to view your child's progress please see Evonne or Gayna in the office as they will assist you with gaining access to your child's profile.

What's been happening?

Over the past three weeks we have been learning about road safety and modes of transport (Land, Air and Water). During this time the children have participated in many hands on activities which has provided them with new skills and several dispositions for learning. They also used their inquiry and problem solving skills during science experiments e.g. hot air balloons. Numeracy and Literacy skills have been evident in their learning of letters H, R, M & D and Numbers 9, 10, 11 & 12. Scissors skills are developing in the children as they have practiced cutting hexagon and triangle shapes.

As children's interests change so does the way in which we program activities for the children. As we have been learning about modes of transport the children's interests have ventured towards Emergency Services (Police, Fire & Ambulance) and their roles within our community. This week we began our learning of the Police and their role. The children have acquired a new understanding and importance of dialling 000 in the event of an emergency. They are aware of the different Emergency Services roles and who to ask for if there is a fire, someone breaking into a house and if someone is unwell. During activities the children were able to use their creative skills to sketch a bad guy for wanted posters as well as make and paint police cars. The children also role played as Police officers catching the bad guys and taking them to jail.

Miss Casey and the Children have been busy establishing a worm farm and compost bin. They also planted new winter crops in our garden bed. The fertiliser produced from the worm wee will be used on the new seedlings planted. The children will participate in weekly composting and daily watering of the new seedlings which allows us to embed sustainable practices within our Service. This will also allow the children to understand the importance of caring for their environment at Kindy.

This week schools began opening up for children to attend allowing opportunities for parents to return to work. We have had several children return this week from all Kindergarten classes and numbers exceed the classroom capacity to stay combined in Kindergarten 3.Therefore effective Monday 18/05/2020 all Kindergarten 1 and 2 children will return to their own classrooms.

Reminders!!!

  • 1.Label Items - Please remember to label your children's belongings as items such as bed linen, shoes, hats and jumpers are being misplaced. Other children within the service have similar items therefore it needs to be labeled.
  • 2.Hats & Bed linen – Several children have had no hat or bedding. These two items are a daily requirement for a child to bring to Kindy. During scheduled sessions of physical activity outside if your child does not have a hat they are unable to participate in the programmed activities. They remain on the veranda due to our sun Safety policy.

On a final note, as the weather is getting cooler please ensure you dress your child appropriately as per weather conditions e.g. shoes, and jumper.

Looking forward to more learning opportunities with your children for the remainder of Term 2.

Miss Renae, Miss Casey & Miss Jazmin

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