Hello and Welcome to the May Edition of our Newsletter. I would first like to welcome all of our new families to the centre. I hope that you are all settling in well and we look forward to getting to know you over the next few weeks. Wow what a busy month we have had. This past month has been filled with lots of learning, engaging activities and plenty of parent participation allowing all the children to grow, develop and learn new things in much fun, interesting and engaging ways. They have discovered new skills and have formed great bonds with their peers and educators that they see each and every day. I hope you all appreciate the few changes that you see around the centre as we keep on trying to make the children's experience the best that it could be. Don't forget that if you have a Facebook account, you can 'like us' on Facebook and catch up what is happening day to day.
CCB AND CCR PAYMENTS
Please be aware the CCB and CCR payments that come through to the Centre depends on a number of factors that are more often than not out of our control. If your payments are coming through incorrectly, delayed or anything of this nature we are unable to change this and it is up to our families to chase it up with centrelink/the family assistance office. Our responsibility is to ensure that we have the correct information on file (the CRN and birth dates of both the child as well as the guardian) formalising your enrolment and that we are submitting all attendances to DEEWR. Regardless of how payments come through from centrelink, it is up to parents to ensure that their accounts are up to date. Have you already updated yourself with the changes of ccb and ccr to ccs??? Please visit Centrelink for more information.
OPEN DOOR POLICY
Parents and family are always welcome at the centre at any time. If you would like to come in and do an activity with the children, speak to the staff in your room. You may like to participate in activities including: Reading a story to the children – perhaps one from home? Doing some gardening Doing some culturally significant cooking Teaching them a new song Bringing in photos or souvenirs from a trip (overseas or interstate) or visit (zoo or aquarium) with your kids.
CAN WE TAKE THAT OFF YOUR HANDS?
We value children's art and early literacy and want the children to practice and engage in these experiences as much as possible. As a result, we go through mountains of paper! If you work in an office and have paper lying around that has printing on one side, we would love you to bring it in for us to help us encourage children to reduce, reuse and recycle as part of our sustainability plan for the service.
News from the Kitchen….
As part of Anzac day celebration children have been discussing these biscuits. Baking Anzac Biscuits helps children understand the importance of being a hard, long-keeping biscuit that could survive the journey by sea, and still remain edible. Here we have attached the recipe, if you would like to recreate your own Anzac biscuits at home. Please feel free to email any photos of children creating this delicious goodness at home.
ANZAC BISCUITS- recipe from taste.com.au
Ingredients
1 ¼ cups plain flour, sifted 1 cup rolled Oats ½ cup caster sugar ¾ cup desiccated coconut 2 tablespoon golden syrup 150 unsalted butter ½ teaspoon bi carb soda
Method Step 1 Preheat oven to 160°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Step 2 Combine flour, oats, coconut and combined sugar in a large bowl. Step 3 Stir the butter, golden syrup and water in a small saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth. Stir in the bicarbonate of soda. Add to the oat mixture and stir until well combined. Step 4 Roll level tablespoonful of the oat mixture into balls and place, about 5cm apart, on the prepared trays. Flatten until about 1cm thick. Bake, swapping trays halfway through cooking, for 15 minutes or until light golden. Set aside for 10 minutes to cool slightly before transferring to wire racks to cool completely