Rediscovering the Great Outdoors

Early Childhood Educators’ Day for many is a new thing, over the last 28 years we have called it by many names including Superstar Day, Celebrate Day, Show You Care Day and Just Because Day.

We have a beautiful centre, with amazing equipment, supportive, committed families, and a strong extended community. Word of mouth is our advertising schedule, neighbours, cousins, extended families, and workplace groups are our clientele. A centre can be shiny and new, or a little worn like us, but we are nothing, without our educators.

Early Childhood Educators’ Day or week as we call it, is a massive celebration at our service. Our director Robyn is the queen of events. She feels that our educators deserve more than one day, and as we have so many part-time educators, she wanted to ensure everyone is honoured. This year as always, we asked the families and children to write notes to the educators which Robyn scrapbooked into a journal of memories. Robyn then printed an invite for the educators outlining the week’s events: • Individual flower bouquets, chocolates, and self-care packs. • Sweet morning with divine cupcakes and dessert bar. • Parents donated ingredients for a Mexican lunch with one of our lovely mums offering to cook and present the items for the educators.

• Individualised Zaraffa coffee and doughnuts. • Pizza lunch.

• Massages. • A crisp $50 note and goodies bag. An initiative this year was to do something nice for a colleague’s name that you pulled out of a hat. This was so much fun - balloons with notes in lockers, Uber Eats lunches delivered, flowers, Uber car called for educators without cars and gift vouchers. They all remained anonymous, and the diversity and personalised gifts were divine. We also celebrated our centre director Robyn - with a beautiful gift and framed artwork by the children with love notes. One of our traditions is to come together in the foyer and sing a song to the individual. Some would say why the need to say “thank you”. Easter, birthdays, and Christmas are the traditional times to show you care. Early Childhood Educators’ Week for me is a separate time, to celebrate the extra things that educators do every day to support the families, so in turn, the economy can keep pumping and people employed. If childcare stopped, Brisbane would stop - we are the village and we need to thank the people that open their hearts to the littlest hearts daily.

Tugulawa Early Education

At Tugulawa Early Education, the “heart” is woven through what we do every day, it features in our philosophy and vision, it forms part of our Acknowledgement of Country, and it is even in our logo. It comes as no surprise that the heart features heavily in our Early Educators’ Day celebrations.

In what has now become a centre tradition on this special day, our team write to one another. Each team member, including everyone from our centre chef, administration person and casual team are allocated another team member to write to. A mailbox is then created (think cardboard boxes, glue and collage bits and bobs!), and it takes up residence in our staffroom in the weeks preceding Early Childhood Educators’ Day. Each person then writes a card to their nominated person, containing a heartfelt message that lets their colleague know exactly why they are so important to our team. These cards get incredibly creative, most of them handmade with such care and thought. On Early Childhood Educators’ Day, our Co-Directors open the mailbox and go room to room, hand-delivering the cards. This small part of our celebration is much loved, shines a light on each person’s personal contribution and with a little sprinkle of attention and care for another, you make their day. And that is where the heart is.

Kids ELC

Early Childhood Educators’ Day is one of the most significant days we celebrate on the Kids Early Learning Centre calendar!

It provides Kids ELC a chance to show appreciation to our dedicated educators for the valuable role they play in educating and nurturing children. It is a profession that requires much commitment and understanding, to support with shaping young minds to be independent, responsible, and caring. Inspired by the concept of servant leadership, our support office team dressed as ushers this year to visit and show our teams just how much they are valued. We rented two Hummer limos and travelled more than 3,100 km to visit our 12 centres across Queensland in just 17 hours, to ensure we could personally thank every member of the Kids ELC team. SVIP (Super Very Important Person) passes were given to all educators, gifting them a luxurious experience which included enjoying a great time and music, as they connected with their colleagues. To create a one-of-a-kind experience for our educators, each Kids Early Learning Centre came up with a fancydress party theme, to match our day celebrating how “The brightest stars are those that shine for others!” In addition, our amazing leadership teams enhanced the design of the staff retreats to strengthen and re-energise our positive team cultures.

We were so pleased to see so many hugs and smiles. Brooke Hammond, one of our educators from Eagleby Kids ELC expressed how blessed she felt to have such supportive leadership, always showing appreciation and gratitude. Kotene also shared that he felt, “Blessed to be part of an amazing tribe, we were showered in love and support from our parents, support office and centre managers.” Thank you to our Kids ELC team of passionate educators for your wonderful contribution towards early childhood education and care. Every day you create such a fun and educational environment for our children and families.

Rediscovering the

Great Outdoors

Melita Jones-Fisher > Child and Family Therapist

In recent years, the rise in mental health incidents has become a cause for alarm. Worldwide trends are emerging where more people are being treated and diagnosed with mental health disorders than ever before.

While debates rage around what influences technology, social media, parenting styles and economic status (to name a few on a very large list) have on people’s mental health, parents are often left wondering what action should or could they take now to prevent their children from becoming one of the statistics. Sitting about and waiting for someone to find the answer is probably not the best course of action. Research rarely produces quick answers, and nor should it. However, the problem with sitting idle while waiting for answers means that more and more children (and adults) are at risk of being affected by poor mental health. As such, this article aims to explore one possible course of action parents could consider taking in the interim.

Research versus what we already know

It appears society’s view has become, at times, clouded by the belief that research is the pinnacle of future mental health directives. While there is no argument that knowledge is a powerful tool that improves and better informs society, it can, on occasions, act like doctrine that ignores historical facts that have and continue to support positive mental health. Thankfully, trends are starting to emerge whereby many, including researchers, are starting to re-examine their understanding of human development and how exposure to experiences such as physical activity can positively impact mental health and overall wellbeing.

What has exercise got to do with it?

For decades, theorists have been fascinated by human development, particularly that of small children. All typically developing children follow a similar path in the way they develop socially, emotionally, cognitively and physically. Research also supports the idea that none of these skills exist independently of each other, meaning that social, emotional, language, cognitive and physical capabilities are all interconnected and are equally reliant on each other to mature to their fullest potential. A quick conversation with anyone from a previous generation will regale listeners with tales of tree climbing, street roaming, dam building, bike riding, hole digging fun. Driven by natural curiosity and a shared sense of adventure and exploration, children of previous generations were presented with one of the most amazing gifts – they were able to fine-tune a range of fundamental skills without