September News

Hello families,

We would like to welcome our new friends JJ and Amy in the room. All of the children are excited to see their new friends. We also wish our little friend London all the best and hope that you are doing well. We all miss you. The past few months have been another wonderful period for all of us. Children seem to be knowing each other more, building the relation of friendship which is visible from their play and interaction.

We have been encouraging children to show love, care and respect to each other every day by using gentle hands, nice tone of voices, helping out and showing nice gestures like cuddles and smiles to one another. We have also been focusing on taking care of our belongings and surroundings. We ask children to be gentle with toys, books and pack them away after they finish playing. The children have started to understand that. We hope to continue to enhance that with the children.

Since we have started the inside outside routine, children seem to have developed their confidence to independently explore around, mingle with a larger group of different aged children and different educators. The outdoor time has also been beneficial for the children to calculate risk and take risk physically like climbing, jumping, balancing, walking and crawling. We also have our quiet outdoor time where children can relax and get involved in their own play, observe the natural environment which children have loved.

Children have been engaged in exploring various objects like goop made out of corn flour, playdough, materials of various textures and colours which required them to investigate, manipulate, think and imagine. We have also been doing activities like painting and collage which help children develop their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination and know the cause and effect relation. Children have really enjoyed doing these activities.

Singing songs and dancing is part of our daily routine. Children now know the songs and perform the actions. They have even chosen to dance in pairs and groups having a wonderful time.

We have been focusing on reading books. We encourage children to take part in the reading time whereby their language and speech could develop.

As we are trying to embed the diverse cultures of our children in our daily program, we are now trying to introduce the music and songs of different languages. We have been playing Nepalese and Persian music in the room. We would encourage you to please bring in any music or songs that you have, it would be great for children to get exposure to the diverse music.

As we are coming to the end of the year, children have developed so much physically, emotionally and socially. We would like to transition the children who are over 15 months old to the toddlers routine as this will help them settle in the toddlers room next year. We will be making the sleep time from 12 pm to 2 pm everyday starting in two weeks time. If you have any queries regarding this please talk to us.

If there is anything you need to talk about please do come and see us. Any suggestions and ideas are always valued as we believe in working in partnership for the betterment of the children.

Thanks

Miss Jo and Miss Noni

Notes from Miss Joanna

Hola Familias, the last couple of weeks have moved quickly and we have explored and learnt so much! The children have shown confidence within the room as we have made a few changes to the environment, these changes were made to ensure that areas of interest were available to all the children in the room.

2We have been focusing on language with the children for a while now and I have heard an increased amount of verbal interaction among the children. I found the Toddlers responded to songs and stories, I have introduced plenty of songs that have become favourites and part of daily group times…

Songs

Five cheeky monkeys, Slippery fish, Here comes the bus, Tell me a dream time story and Australian animals.

If you would like the song lyrics and tune please let me know and I would be happy to provide you with these.

Yarning

What is it?

The use of a yarning circle is an important process within Aboriginal culture and Torres Strait Islander culture. ... By using yarning circles as a teaching and learning strategy, children's understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and ways of working are enhanced.

How are we achieving this?

We have slowly integrated this as part of daily routine, we acknowledge the custodians of this land. We also explore dream time stories, sing songs, utilise clapsticks for music, explore topics using the deadly cards resource.

What else have we been up too?

We have had little projects within the room that have been so much fun. Cars, trucks, buses and tunnels have been a highlight over the weeks. The children have created tunnels with blocks, cardboard, blankets and recycled cylinders. We definitely put our imaginations into gear to use anything to create tunnels.

We touched base on the galaxy for a few days, it maybe something we pick up again with the children later.

Where do we want to go?

In the next couple of weeks would like to begin our own garden bed for the toddlers, in the senior playground they have started a beautiful garden and established a worm farm and compost that the toddlers contribute to daily. Our goal is to create a garden that the toddlers can water and see growth from, encouraging them to learn and care for their natural environment.

If you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can achieve this please feel free to speak to myself (Miss Jo) or Miss June.

We are also beginning a family wall with the children, we would love to have a photo of your family displayed.

Thank you for reading our newsletter and look forward to the next couple of months ?

From Miss Joanna Hernandez

A lot has been happening in Junior Kindy.

We sadly said Goodbye to Miss Nishi and welcomed Miss Bijal into the room.We have made some great new changes to the room appearance and small changes to our routine.

Our indoor/outdoor routine was working really well.  We are just changing a few things to fit better with the new dynamic of the room, so it's a still a work in progress.

The progressive Morning Tea with toddlers is working well, the children enjoy taking charge of their own wellbeing, and deciding when they eat. 

The children have been given more responsibility with their own belongings, which they love, they help make and pack away their beds at rest time.We have been working on stuffing socks far into shoes when they go in the basket, so they are easier to find. We have been working hard on our independence and self-help skills as well as hand washing properly, before meals and after changes.

I would also like to remind you, we have limited spare clothes at the centre, and children in nappies need 1 to 2 spare clothes normally. Children that are toilet training I would say 3 to 4 changes of pants and undies, more is best. If your child goes home in spare clothes,  we please ask that you return them as soon as possible. 

It has also been brought to our attention that the art smocks we have aren't protecting the children's clothes all the time. The Centre art smocks are a bit large on the Junior Kindy children and can slip off their shoulders etc. .So we are asking if this is a concern of yours ,you are more than welcome  to provide an oversized shirt that can get paint on it. We are happy to keep them at the centre.

Miss Tash, Miss Bijal & Miss Amy

What a busy, exciting month we have had.We decided we would begin a gardening unit.Well haven't we been busy since then!We had many construction helpers to aid Miss Tracy in putting the garden beds together.We read stories about Sunflowers growing and Jack and the Beanstalk – this was very exciting for Jack to hear his name in a story!We filled the gardens with soil and planted some seedlings as well as some seeds. Amongst our plants were lettuce, basil, carrots and dill.Each day we go out and water it.Sometimes in the afternoons we sit, watching, waiting for it to grow.We've had some discussions about how great it would be to see a Sunflower grow so that may be one of our next steps.Branching from gardening we were given the opportunity to make and maintain another worm farm.This led to lots of discussion and discovery about worms and how to care for them.We decided that we would feed them on certain days – Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.They don't like citrus and they don't like meat or dairy!Since then we have even been able to collect some worm juice which we can put on our garden to help it grow.We watch the worms and have pulled them out to observe and draw them.It is very interesting to see how they move!Through our garden and worm observations we have also found many insects which led us into some insect discoveries.There are lots of interesting clips on You Tube Kids about insects which have helped us learn a lot.We have also used books and the EVO app on the IPad. Flynn P found a dead bee in the playground which we examined with a magnifying glass and then tried to draw.Did you know bees actually have long tongues they use to collect nectar?And we found a very important lesson – without bees there would be no trees!So as you can see we have been very busy with some fantastic, fun learning experiences.

I think one of our favourite moments though was National Science Week.We participated in so many interesting, exciting science discoveries.Working from our gardening we made sprout houses using cotton balls so we could watch how seeds sprout.We used celery and coloured water to see how a living plant drinks up the water (it turned the celery colourful).This showed us how living plants drink water and keep it in their leaves to survive.We also tried some other experiments – colourful volcanoes, salt and glue rainbows and colour mixing in shaving cream.It was such a fun, busy week.

We are ready for some more fun discoveries and can't wait to see our garden grow!

Miss Tracy and Miss Zubaida