Dear Parents and Guardians,
Wunya and Welcome to our Newsletter for February 2020.
With a new school year commencing there are loads of adjustments needing to be made around routines and planning within the service and as a new first time 'Prep mum' myself I'm also experiencing this struggle and working to find the perfect 'work/life' balance.
Over the coming months, I have made the decision to reduce my start time in the centre on a Monday and Wednesday to a 9-5.00 pm rather than my usual 7:30-5:30 pm daily shifts. Tuesday and Thursday will be a typical 8am-4:30 pm. My Friday shift times will remain at the 6:30-3 pm each week. I have asked 3 of our senior team members in Miss Charmaine, Miss Sarah, and Miss Amy to support with any questions or queries along the way in the early mornings. Please feel free to e-mail me at any stage and I will continue to respond as soon as possible for any assistance you may require.
What Our Children Can Learn From Sibling Conflicts - Janet Lansbury
Over the previous week, I've sent out a parent survey. I thank each of you for your time in completing these as they support with our service reflections, areas for continued growth as well as celebrating our successes. It's always so kind and reassuring to be able to share your beautiful kind and thankful words with our team. I have observed a few points returned that I wanted to touch base on in the hopes that it provides further insight into what we do each and every day:
Breakfast Bar – Our centre license is to provide meals for the children within the service during morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea times. We introduced the breakfast bar across the service as an initiative to support families during the busy morning drop off periods between the times of 6:15 am-7:45 am. Families are welcome to self-serve from this area in reception each morning and we hope that it supports both yourself and your child each day. Alternatively, you are welcome to bring along your own breakfast for your child between these times provided the food is egg and nut-free.
Excursions – 2019 saw our Toddler room, Senior Toddler 1 room, and Kindergarten rooms explore their first excursion experiences of venturing outside of the service. Although these events are super exciting and provide wonderful opportunities around growth and exploration they also include many hours of planning, preparation, and risk assessments to ensure the safety of all children and educators at all times. Our Kindergarten room plans to conduct many exciting excursions in the future such as visiting the library, retirement village, museum, parks, etc and we look forward to continued growth in this area.
Reception Support – As mentioned up above my hours will be changing from my usual 9-11 hour day to an ideal 7.5 hour day. I will be on-site to support within the office during the above mentioned hours, unless I'm required on the floor within the rooms, off supporting/cleaning or meeting with educators or families. For some of you who attend early mornings and late afternoons you will not always get the opportunity to see me, nor will you to your child's educators at times, but please know you are welcome to phone the service, write a message in the room communication book or e-mail at any stage you require assistance. We don't have administration support within our Kidz Magic service so it's just little old me :)
Our Menu - One of the feedback received was around providing a vegetarian/vegan option with the meals which has raised with me the fact that our menu doesn't have this option displayed upon it even though it's available daily. With each meal for the day a vegetarian option is constantly provided. We have many allergies, intolerances and general requests that we work with each day and this request is certainly one of them. Over the coming weeks, we will be looking into providing a different menu each week rather than a rotating 4 weekly roster to allow for flexibility around seasonal fruits and vegetables and meat availability and costs. Once these flexible menus are ready our centre Cook will share with me each Friday the menu for the upcoming week and this will be on display for you to view.
Communication Books – Within each room, you will find on the parent information bench a covered exercise book called 'Communication book'. These books are your way to leave individual room messages about your child to the educators within the classroom. Unfortunately, the team will not be completing individual books per child as this would equal over 500 individual messages a week throughout the service. We have been so fortunate to be able to move from paper-based reporting to Educa and 2020 will be a significant year around embedding our documentation, sharing the roles and responsibilities amongst all educators within the service and building on individual child online portfolios.
Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions along the way. Your room Lead Educator is also able to support with your queries as well as providing support and advice if ever required.
Looking forward to an exciting year ahead!
Kind Regards,
Hayley Le – Centre Director Kidz Magic Capestone