Homewelcome to the September 2017 newsletter
From the office.
Welcome to our new families and children. I hope your time at Mini Mees is an enjoyable one and your child makes lasting friendships.
If you have any concerns please do not hesitate to speak to myself or your child's Lead Educator.
Spring has Sprung and the days are getting warmer. As the mornings are still a little brisk and the children are in their warm clothes ,could you please make sure your children have cooler clothes to change into.
On Wednesday the 7th of September was Early Childhood Educators Day, The staff had a lovely morning tea, and enjoyed the cakes.
A Big Thank you :) to all the families that filled out our hearts. The staff have read these and enjoyed the feedback. It shows us how appreciated we are.
Nursery News
Wow where has this year gone, it's September already.
The last couple of months we have been focussing on supporting the children's independences and encouraging them to self regulate their own emotions. The children are all doing well and feel safe, secure and supported.
The children have been learning all about farm animals. They are learning to identify the animals by name and sound. They really enjoy role playing and singing "Old Mac Donald" with the Old Mac Donald puppets.
The children have been exploring sensory experiences with creative arts by painting and collaging farm animal templates.
The children have had fun playing in the garden/yard and getting messy in the sand kitchen with water and sand ?.
The children have been enjoying investigating different sensory experiences that have been enhancing their senses. The children have been exploring soapy water and expressing themselves through role play. They have enjoyed bathing the dolls, washing the dishes and having a car wash.
Lots of chatter has been happening in our room lately, the children are getting older and expresses themselves more vocally. The toddies are learning to extend and enhance their vocabulary and language development by word play, picture books and action songs.
Please remember as the weather gets warm to pack cooler clothes and also make sure your children have a few sets of clothes as we will be exploring more water and messy play as it warms up.
Thanks for reading, until next time...
Miss Hannah ?
Kindy Room News
To our families ?
The children in the Kindy Room have welcomed the Spring season by creating 'Our Flower Garden'. We have introduced environmental perspectives relating to Gardening - 'The Life cycle of a Plant' and 'The Worm Farm'. Environmental concepts are being explored as the children learn about connections between feeding the worms our fruit and vegetable leftovers and collecting worm wee to water our gardens. The children have been communicating their interests of planting different types of seeds and exploring the worms. The children have been watching the seeds sprout.. waiting for the flowers to grow..
Our Program Curriculum emphasizes concepts of 'ME' and social learning through play. We create social contexts by providing opportunities for 'Circle of friends' experiences to support friendships and social behaviors. These experiences are often initiated by the children - based in their interests and ideas.
The children's responsiveness towards our Name Recognition experiences initially provided opportunities to focus on the first letter of their name and now we are extending this interest by focusing on recognition of their whole name.
Although we advocate 'A spontaneous moment is a teachable moment' - we intentionally scaffold children's' learning and development through integrated learning experiences and play activities relating to Language/Literacy/ Numeracy, Music/Movement and Creative/Artistic opportunities to acknowledge children's' individual and group interests and play preferences.
The children's' responsiveness towards integrated experiences provides opportunities to promote the 5 Learning Outcomes within social learning contexts while supporting individual children to co-construct their own learning and explore their own creativity. We acknowledge individual children's' creativity and respond to their independent interests and ideas.
The children have been initiating social and physical play within indoor/outdoor environments while communicating their social skills and demonstrating their perseverance through physical play.
Thank you to all of our families who have been providing Family Feedback relating to their child's' interests. We have had families share information with us that their child is communicating interests of the Alphabet letters, their name and counting numbers as well as sharing their play experiences and new interests with their family members.
We encourage Family Input and will incorporate Family Input within our Program to support individual children's' potential learning and development.
Please support your child's' sense of Identity and Belonging by providing a Family Photo for our Family Diversity display.
A Family Photo is a meaningful way to support a connection between the centre and home.
Thank you
Miss Sharon & Miss Sandra ?
Pre-prep News
These past two months have been very busy for us!
We've enjoyed a visit from Magic Mike the Magician and even had our own EKKA day! Everybody loved watching all of the magic tricks and getting a chance to pat a real bunny – named Marshmallow. At our EKKA day we had lots of fun playing carnival games, doing some crafts and having our faces painted – our favourite part was probably taking home our own showbag which had lollies in it!
Everyone had also done some tracing and cutting practice, we've been talking about the letters in our names, and learning about rhyming words and syllables – which we are all very good at! Our favourite book at the moment is Skunka Tanka – it's a book all about syllables. We love stamping our feet and clapping our hands to the Skunka Tanka beat and laughing at Miss Laura when she gets all tongue tied because we make her read the words too fast!
Everybody had a great time making special gifts for our dad's and grandad's on Father's Day. It was fun giving the answers that Miss Laura wrote on the ties – even if some of them were a bit silly! We really liked helping Miss Laura write and draw the pictures onto the socks too – hopefully our dad's liked them as much as we enjoyed making them!
We look forward to another two months of fun and laughter here in the Pre-Prep Room!
Until next time,
Miss Laura
