Happy New Financial Year to everyone.

From the Office:

From the Nursery:

Wow, what a big two months it has been. We have welcomed a few new friends, welcome Vera and Tangaroa and their families. With the start of July we said goodbye to Alexandra as she headed off up to the Toddler room, it has been a pleasure to watch and help you learn and grow while being in the Nursery room, we look forward to seeing where you go from here as well as expect some visits.

We have been looking at different textures and sensory products recently, feeling the difference between hard and soft as well as visual appearance. We have also been exploring sounds through the use of the different toys, puzzles have been a big favourite as we turn the puzzle pieces into drums and tap them on the shelf and floor. We have also attempted to make our own instruments (rice inside cardboard tubes) as well as using our creativity to make instruments out of all most anything.

A big favourite was the goop/slime/play dough play. Those that wished to participate enjoyed exploring the different feel of the goop and how it squished beneath our fingers when we pressed it. If you would like to make it at home the recipe is:

1 cup corn flour

1/4 cup instant pudding

1/3 cup warm water

Mix half the corn flour, water and pudding until all combined, slowly add the remainder of the corn flour. Once all combined hand kneed until smooth and you cannot see the flour. If too dry wet hands and kneed into the mix, if sticky add small amounts of flour until a nice consistency is reached. Then you are ready to play and explore.

With the change of financial year Miss Bernadette and Miss Dana are asking each family to update their Facebook permission forms, this is to make sure permission is still accurate and current. If you have not signed a new form please come and see either Miss Bernadette or Miss Dana to do so.

Last month saw us have a few visitors attend Footprints for the day, they brought with them a big white van. Officer Emma and Officer Chloe from Ambulance Queensland Beenleigh station came out to have a talk with us. The children from the older rooms headed out to view the van and have a look inside (check out the photos and videos on the main Facebook page). We enjoyed having them come in and say hi. Having the officers come and visit helps us get used to seeing strangers in their uniforms and know what the uniform signifies help and that we should be afraid of them.

In the past few months we have also been working on our social skills, we are all enjoying being with our friends and learning off each other.

Miss Bernadette and Miss Dana

From the Toddler Room:

Hello Everyone, and wishing a warm welcome to all the parents for July 2018. Where's the month gone? We are already in July the days are going faster and the Toddlers are learning more exciting things while they are here at Footprints Sunnybank.

We have seen, some children complete their transition to a new room successfully and moving up from the Toddler room to the Junior Kindy room, we have Zalia, from the Nursery we give a BIG Toddler welcome to Alexandra. Alexandra is really having a great time with her new friends and has settled into the new room and routine - great work Alexandra. So many exciting things have been happening in our Toddler room, please read on to find out ....

For our group time learning session everyday, we are focusing on sharing and turn taking behaviour. I have noticed lately that the children do share toys with each other more so since we have been concentrating on this in our discussions.

I, as the educator have introduced more focused learning of the Auslan communication. Some of the children understand sign language more than when verbally talking to them and can communicate back using sign also. We find this a valuable tool with the children as when they haven't developed their spoken language as yet they are able to channel this communication another way and get less frustrated as they have avenues of communication available to them. Focusing on the children's language developments I try my best to encourage the children to say at least please and thank you.

Being in the middle of the year now, the children have been working hard at developing more and more of their fine/gross motor skills. We have been practising holding pencils, crayons and encouraging them to draw a few lines on the paper. Some of the children are still trying their best to hold the pencils, we have fun practising each day.

The favourite activity for the children at the moment is home corner play. The children spend a lot of their time in home corner and undertaking role-play, doing things such as cooking and serving their friends. Some of the children also pretend to go to the shops, where they take the home corner dolls with them - their 'babies'.

Toilet training familiarity has begun and I have been encouraging some of the children to sit on the toilet during the nappy change session. This is to help them get ready for actual toilet training that will begin in September when the weather gets a bit warmer. Thank you parents for your input in conversations as to being ready to work with me during this process.

As the weather is getting cooler, a request to all parents to please pack children warm clothes and enclosed shoes to keep them warm.

We are doing our best here at Footprints Sunnybank, to teach the children and meet their goals towards the learning frameworks. If you have any concerns about anything please do come and see me or Miss Glenda will be happy and able to help you.

Kind Regards,

Miss Rupa.

From the Junior Kindy Room:

Hello to all,

Wow it is now the middle of the year and not far till Christmas - how quick has the year gone ?! This month we have had fun celebrating our friend Ayaan's birthday and welcoming our new friends that have joined the Junior Kindy room - A BIG welcome to Edward, Rafay and Jasper. We also had to say a sad good bye to our friends that have moved to the next room Abigail, Ayaan, Polly & Purvi and said a warm welcome to Zalia who moved from The toddler room to join us in the Junior Kindy room.

The children have been focusing on learning to recognise their numbers, shapes and alphabet by using puzzles, where they had to show how they could match up the numbers, shapes and alphabet. Then as they were doing this some of the children were attempting to name what they had to match. The children also have been having fun developing their hand and eye co-ordination skill by participating in thing like the pegboards and using different materials to create with some amazing creations with different mediums and play dough.

We have also had some fun visitors come to the centre - such as the ambulance and paramedics, where the children got to visit and see inside of them and learn what they do. We also had fun with the police visitors who also had fun talking about what they do and showed the children some of the resources they used for their job.

A quick friendly reminder to our parents too that when you pack afternoon tea please do not have anything that contains nuts, popcorn or pack chips and also when packing food we do ask for healthy foods.

We also ask parents to remember the Junior Kindy room is the toilet training room, so we do ask parents to please remember for each time your child attends the centre that they need to bring 5 nappies, spare clothes and undies.

We would like to send a big thank you to the parents who took time out of their busy lives and came to the parent - teachers interviews, we do like feed back and suggestions/ideas of what you would like us to educate your children further with. Till next time

Thank you until next time

Miss Catherine and Miss Alison

From the Senior Kindy Room:

Hello everyone how have you been doing? We are very good and cannot believe that half of the year is already gone. First of all, I would like to say welcome to Abigail, Ayaan, Purvi, Polly and their families - who have moved up to our Senior Kindy Room from the Junior Kindy room. They are all settling in their new room and are getting used to the new room routine and we are working together with this day by day. I would like to invite parents of the Senior Kindy children to tell me more about their children's interest and also don't hesitate if you have any questions to ask me.

We are currently focusing on our personal and other's hygiene. We are learning how to wash our hands properly and how to clean our teeth and how many times a day we should clean them. We had a tooth fairy show to tell children how to clean our teeth and which food is healthy and which are unhealthy for our teeth and also for us. The children really enjoyed show and also showed their interest by giving answers to the questions that they were being asked by the visiting dentist and tooth fairy. We also had a chance to experience what an ambulance looks like inside and how it works as well as the paramedics. We were very lucky to know about emergency services and what wonderful work they do in looking after us all.

I would like to say thanks to the parents who made time for parent teacher interviws and asked me about their children's development and also shared their children's development and interests that they are noting with me.

Parents, please bring your child's warm clothes, extra clothes as it is getting very cold now. Could we also remember that we need to bring hats and drink bottles each and every day they attend so that they are equipped with everything they need to have a smooth day here at the centre.

We celebrated Alyssa's 4^th birthday on the 3^rd of July and would like to say congrats to the family and warm wishes to Alyssa.

Till next month,

Thanks Miss Amandeep.

From the Kindergarten Room:

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another newsletter here from the Kindergarten room.

For our group times we have been learning about the Arctic and we have been wondering why the seals can be swimming in the water to find food when the ice was frozen. To help us see how the water would freeze Miss Sinead help us to do an experiment to see how water freezes. The first part we filled up a big bowl and let it stay in the freezer until after our relaxing time. Here we saw that the water had frozen from the top and not the bottom of the bowl. We also saw how even in the middle of the bowl did not freeze.

We have been starting to learn about natural disasters, the way this topic came about was the children ask if we could play the song under pressure. In this song is from the movie happy feet 2. In this movie penguins team together with elephant's seals to help free the penguins that end up stuck in a big hole. To free the penguins that are trapped the elephant seals and penguins that are free must move so much snow to help break a block of ice. We asked Miss Sinead how could putting snow behind a block of ice would make it fall from there we saw videos of how an avalanche works and what could happen if an avalanche was to happen. We saw how fast the snow could move and how trees and houses if they are in the way could be covered in snow. From there we learnt about ways that could start an avalanche, one way was an earthquake. Miss Sinead and Miss Eseta showed us what could happen if an earthquake was to happen by using some wooden blocks, and one of our tables. Miss Sinead made a bridge and placed some cars on it, after that she shook the table and we watched the bridge fall with the cars. But then she showed that not every earthquake would make a bridge fall over as there are small earthquakes.

After seeing this happen we all made our own towers and bridges, so we could see and feel how much power we will need to apply to make the bridge fall over.

As it has been so cold in the mornings we have been starting to go outside for a play after our morning tea as it is warmer for the children to have a run around and play outside.

We also have been starting to help clean up after eating morning tea. We do this by sweeping the floor, wiping the tables, putting the left-over fruit into the compost bin/ giving some fruit to our worms.

Can you please check to see if you child need more sunscreen as some of our friend's sunscreen has ran out?

Thank you