Welcome to our April News! Easter is fast approaching, along with a string of public holidays. Please be sure to note that we are closed on the following public holidays :
Friday 15 April
Monday 18 April
Monday 25 April
Monday 2 May
Class of 2022 Kindy Shirts
Our Kindy shirts have arrived. All eligible children in our Kindergarten program will receive a Class of 2022 Kindy Shirt. These will be required to be collected from the office.
Studio News
All of our little nursery children have settled into their setting so well and it has been really lovely being able to form such strong bonds with them.
We are excited to start engaging the children in some messy play experiences where they can build on their sensory development. As we start to do this, we ask that you please start packing lots of spare clothes that we can change the children into after these experiences and we also want to ask that you dress your children in clothing that you are OK with getting dirty and messy. Remember – if your child has gone home with messy clothes, they have had the best day ever!
We also want to remind parents about medication and us administering pain relief. We are able to do so for teething, getting over infections etc, however, we first require a medical certificate from your doctor advising us that the pain relief medication is for this purpose. We can not administer medication to bring down a temperature. If this is required, your child should remain at home until their symptoms are gone. If your child starts to get a temperature while in our care, we can only administer pain relief if you have verbally agreed over the phone to collect your child immediately.
We are excited for the month ahead and once again, we love working with our Bottlebrush families!
Hello Families
Welcome to the month of April with the current news about your child's learning and efforts. We hope you all had a great month. Children have been having fun and a lot of learning through various activities. We are having a busy and exciting month. First, we would like to welcome our new friend Pratyush to our room. We all are making sure he is feeling comfortable and safe in the new environment and ready for the learning.
Continuing with our health and hygiene - effective hand washing plays a vital role so we are washing our hands every time we need to, so as to keep the germs and infections away. This month we all are doing a lot of Easter activities. During these Easter activities, the children are getting encouraged to participate in different Art and Craft activities- glue, colour, playdough and draw etc. We have been doing colour recognition and colour sorting activities using different colour pompoms and tongs. We are also focusing on children's self-identity and belonging.
Just a friendly reminder: Please label your child's belonging including hat, bedsheets, bottles, lids and dummies etc.
As the weather is getting cooler so please pack full sleeve clothes (Jumper etc) for your child in the bag.
If your child has some special dietary requirements, please don't forget to mention those to our educators.
If you wish to start toilet training for your child, please talk to us and we can support your child's toilet training.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding your child's learning then feel free to discuss with one of our educators.
Till then stay tuned
Miss Monica Miss Kalpana and Miss Emma
Hello Families.
We welcomed new friends to the Eucalyptus room ( Aakriti, Skylah, Shivansh, Harvey, Milad, Nelson and Emma)
Children have been learning the first letter of our name through making Alphabet collage, singing ABC song or Alphabet games.
We have been doing different sensory and science experiments such as storm in art, snow fluff, milk art, frozen dinosaurs or homemade playdough. Doing science and Sensory projects help develop a child's resourcefulness, particularly their skills at goal-setting, planning, and problem-solving.
In the past few months children have built up their friendships with their friends and we are so pleased to see children are happy to come each and every day.
To develop children's social development, we have provided different opportunities for children such as playing as a group, making group art, cooking or dancing together.
We would like to thank the parents who have filled up the form of 'ALL ABOUT ME". Children are so proud of their families and are pointing out their parent photos to others. Children have learnt how to introduce their family to their friends by using the 'ALL ABOUT ME" form. Children have developed a sense of self-worth.
Children have also been learning how to use safety scissors which helps to develop their fine motor skills and hand and eye coordination.
We have recently celebrated Holi day. Children enjoyed making different colour handprints.
This month we started to celebrate Easter by reading a book about Easter, Easter egg colours, making an Easter bunny or dancing to Sleeping bunny and we will have an Easter egg hunt and Easter hat parade too.
Next few months we will focus on children's listening and cognitive skills. We also will do more cooking classes too.
Toilet training in the Eucalyptus room has been going well. Please let us know if you want your child to start Toilet Training as well.
We will continue to explore your child's different interests and create a happy learning environment.
Educators: Miss Clara , Miss Ruth, Miss Priya and Miss Nihdi.
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We can't believe it is April already. All the children have settled by now and every day we see happy, smiling and excited children on drop off which is amazing.
The playdough has been very popular in our room and children also love to participate in making it. We have been doing a few different play dough themes such as under water play dough, jungle play dough, Easter play dough. The children also love to use different play dough mats, such as monster mats, Easter eggs mats, number mats and alphabet mats or aboriginal art mats. One of the best benefits of play dough is its calming and soothing effect.
We have been talking lots about days of the week, weather, alphabet, shapes, numbers and colours. As you might have noticed we also started with alphabet recognition, and we would love to continue during the whole year. Children are very eager to learn alphabet and the letter sounds in a fun playful way.
Another favourite activity is dramatic play using finger, paper or hand puppets. Here are our most favourite Songs and rhymes: Cheeky monkey and Mr Crocodile, Five little ducks, Five currant buns, Three jelly fish, Five monsters, Five speckled frogs, Finger family, Australian animals… Best benefits of playing with puppets are language and social development together with numeracy and counting skills.
We do sing and dance on lots of songs as well and here are some of our favourites, which you could sing with the children at home: Freeze dance, I like to sing, Can you be a kangaroo, Alphabet song, Once I caught t a fish alive, Fruit salad, Watermelon, Rainbow song, Wiggerly woo, How many raindrops, Hot potato….
In March we created a lovely big display for Harmony day, which is on our wall. We also created our little houses with family pictures which children adored so much and opened so many times, that some are already torn.
We have been talking about different animals, so far jungle and water animals. Animal topics really attracts children and we would like to continue and explore farm, forest or Antarctic animals as well in the upcoming months.
We have been concentrating on Easter currently and creating lovely arts and crafts as well as planting the grass seeds and we can't wait for our Easter hat parade this Thursday
We would love to hear your feedback and if you have any good ideas that we could do with the children in the room, please let us know.
Have a nice and safe Easter
Paperbark Educators
In our wattle room, the children have developed great friendships as they have been engaging in group experiences together and interacting with their friends building on their language/communication skills. During our group times, we have been focusing on learning about the days of the week and talking about what day it is day. We also have been continuing learning our ABC and numbers through daily experiences such as tracing laminated alphabet letters using white board markers where the children can practice how to write and get familiar with each letter of the Alphabet. This develops on their fine motor skills and cognitive development.
As the children have now settled into their room and made friendships, we have been able to see how they have been using their imaginations and language skills throughout their play experiences by engaging with one another whether they are cooking in the home corner or playing with the baby dolls. It is great to see how the children are talking to each other and supporting each other.
Further on, we will continue to engage in experiences where the children can further develop on their reading and writing skills so practicing tracing alphabet letters and numbers and getting familiar with what each letter and number looks like.
It has been great seeing how our wattle children are growing every day, becoming confident and involved learners within their new room.
Please remember to label your child's belongings.
If you have any questions, please approach the educators in the room and they will be able to assist you.
Thankyou
Miss Simran, Miss Sukh and Miss Fazia
Kindergarten News
We have had a busy start in the Kindy 1 room settling in and becoming familiar with our new environment. We have had so much fun getting to know all our new friends and our educators.
To start the year we have been focusing on getting to know our friends by participating in fun hands-on learning activities that are All about me and our families. We have become familiar with our facial features by observing ourselves in the mirror and copying what we look like in various creative ways.
We have also been focusing on hand-eye coordination skills, fine motor skills and feeling safe and secure within our environment. These were achieved through fun play-based activities.
Towards the end of the term we started to focus on letter and name recognition through connecting letters with words that we were familiar with. We used familiar objects to create our own version of the word and letter that we were focusing on. We will continue this throughout term 2 as this forms part of the Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guidelines, exploring literacy in personally meaningful ways.
Towards the end of term 1 we introduced our daily calendar and show and tell sessions. Through daily calendar group time, children are exploring days of the week, numbers, months, seasons and weather and gives confidence in participating in group settings. Confidence is also encouraged through our show and tell group times that have also started this term. We are all excited to show our special items and confidently talk about it and ask questions from our friends. Due to the popularity of show and tell we will be implementing an allocation days so that each child can participate weekly. We will have this allocation list next to the Ella program allocation list this week. Please check for your child's day and send along something special on these days.
Mr Callum and myself look forward to continue our learning throughout term 2 and if you would like to discuss anything please feel free to do so.
Have a great Easter and a restful break.
Dear Parents,
Welcome to April's newsletter! Term 1 has now finished and learning goals for your child have been set. The goals are set based on the developmental milestones of your child, according to the Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guideline. If you would like to work on the goals at home, you are more than welcome to discuss them with us!
In Term 1, we have started the All About Me project, talking about what they want to be when they grow up. The popular occupations in Kindy 2 are policeman and doctor. Therefore, these are the occupations we have been focusing on. The learning included exploring the tools and the uniforms that they use and wear.
In term 2, the All About Me project will continue. In the doctor theme, we will be exploring bones, healthy food, and doctor literacy such as the doctor's language, patient checklists, Medicines, and eyechart. In the police theme, we will be exploring the fingerprints and police literacy such as learning our emergency contact and discussing what counts as an emergency etc.
To promote children's sense of identity, language skills, and investigation skills, we would like to implement Kindergarten Journal in Term 2. Each child will have their own Journal and be given a theme to draw each month. The theme of April is Garden. Please take this opportunity to discuss this topic with your child before they do the drawing. 5W1H is a great tool to support your child in focusing on the important information in a given topic. This helps them to understand questions and communicate effectively with others. 5W1H stands for Where, Who, When, Why, What, and How. Your child will have a turn each month to do a show and tell to talk about the drawing in their Journal.
The questions can be -
- Where did they get the seeds from?
- Who plants in the garden?
- What have they planted?
- How do we look after them?
- When do they bloom?
- Why do we plant them?
"There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing"
As we all love to have fun, we would like to implement Wet Weather Play. If you would like your child to enjoy it, please send them with a raincoat, gumboots, and a wet bag. If this is not the play that your child would enjoy, it is totally okay to not participate.
Lastly, we would like to say a big thank you to all the parents for all the support you have been providing us. During this unprecedented time, the well-being of your child and ourselves are both imperative in providing a high quality of education and care. If your child has developed any symptoms, we ask that you please remain at home.
Warmest regards,
Miss Cherry and Miss Elfin