JUNE 2016
3 AUGUST - Teddy Bear’s Picnic 26 AUGUST - CLOSED - Public Holiday Term 3 events calendar to be advised soon... Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guideline – 4B A Kindergarten child who is a confident and involved learner shows increasing confidence and involvement in learning.
“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.”
Children who are confident are motivated to engage in more experiences. They expect to have successful and positive experiences because they have done so in the past. For example, a child may have successfully completed puzzles with some help from her dad before being able to do it on her own. Feeling confident helps children do well in all aspects of their life, both now and into the future. Confident children are more able to build positive relationships, do better at school and become happier, successful adults. This is important in developing and maintaining good mental health and wellbeing.
HILLCREST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE EARLY LEARNING COMMUNITY LONG DAY CARE / KINDY
How can parents support a child’s developing curiosity and confidence?
21 Bridgman Drive REEDY CREEK Q 4227
Parents and carers play an important role in supporting children’s developing curiosity and confidence. Some ways they can do this are by:
PO Box 2503 BURLEIGH WATERS Q 4220
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Arranging safe and interesting play spaces where children are free to explore and see the effects of their actions.
07 5593 4226 hillcrest.qld.edu.au
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Interacting with children so they can see that what they do gets a response (e.g., when I laugh Mum laughs too).
kindy@hillcrest.qld.edu.au
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Answering children’s questions appropriately. It’s ok if you don’t know the answer. You can always suggest that you both find out together.
HOURS OF OPERATION
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Asking children questions to help them solve problems and promote further learning.
KINDY DIRECT LINE
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Working with children at first, then giving them more space as they become more confident in their own abilities.
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Helping children to experience that learning is fun.
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Using rewards and praise selectively. Focus on the child’s effort rather than the outcome and emphasise that putting in effort will help them get better at what they’re doing.
— MARY POPPINS —
6.30am – 6.00pm
5655 0910
Sourced from Kids Matter – Australian Early Childhood Mental Health Initiative. www.kidsmatter.edu.au
HILLCREST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE KINDY CAPERS 2016 | 1
kindy news “The goal of
Early Childhood
education should be to activate
the child’s own natural desire to learn.”
— MARIA MONTESSORI —
SIGNING CHILDREN IN AND OUT
LOOSE PARTS DONATIONS
Please remember to sign your child in and out each time your child attends Kindy at Hillcrest Christian College Kindy. This is a requirement from CCB purposes but also for our own centre safety purposes to ensure that each child is signed into the service for the day.
As part of our centre philosophy we are embarking on the continual improvement of our outdoor space. We are looking to add to our loose parts collection. If you happen to have any of the items that you are willing to donate it would be greatly appreciated. Kindy would love items such as nuts, bolts and washers, button, wool or fabric, carpentry table items, mixing bowls and kitchen utensils.
MID-YEAR REPORTS / PARENT-TEACHER INTERVIEWS All Kindy children should have received their Mid-Year Reports from their class teacher this week. This reports gives all parents a picture of their child’s progress from the first semester at Kindy. Parents are also able to access a digital copy of their child’s Mid-Year Report on the Parent Lounge. Please go to My Family and then view school reports. Our Kindy teachers will also be holding parent teacher interviews in term 3. This is an opportunity for all parents to discuss any concerns that you may have regarding your child and also for the Kindy teachers to provide informative feedback about your child’s progress in Kindy. We will be sending out information and an opportunity for parents to book at parent teacher interview in early term 3.
POLICY REVIEWS In the Kindy admin area the policies that are currently under review are: •
Policy - Emergency Procedures
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Policy - Arrivals and Departures
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Policy - Excursions / Incursions
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Policy - Pets and Animals and the Service
If you have any feedback or input into any of the above policies please let us know. We value and appreciate your feedback and contribution into our policies reviews.
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Please drop any donations to the Kindy admin office.
LIBRARY BORROWING ROSTER With the parent feedback that we have received regarding the rotational library roster we have decided to trial a monthly library roster to save confusion on when each Kindy class has their library day. By doing a monthly Kindy roster each Kindy class will know that what their day is for the month and each child will be able to have their library book for the week. The library roster for term 2 is below. If you have any questions regarding the roster please don’t hesitate to talk to Alicia or your child’s Kindy teacher. JULY 2016 MONDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
18th July – Kindy 1
21st July – Kindy 2
22nd July – Kindy 3
25th July – Kindy 1
28th July – Kindy 2
29th July– Kindy 3
AUGUST 2016 MONDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
1st August – Kindy 1
4th Aug – Kindy 2
5th August – Kindy 3
8th August – Kindy 3
11th August – Kindy 1
12th August – Kindy 2
15h August – Kindy 3
18th August – Kindy 1
19th August – Kindy 2
22nd August – Kindy 3
25th August – Kindy 1
Gold Coast Show Day
29th August – Kindy 2 SEPTEMBER 2016 MONDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
1st Sept – Kindy 3
2nd Sept Kindy 1
5th Sept – Kindy 2
8th Sept – Kindy 3
9th Sept – Kindy 1
12th Sept – Kindy 2
15th Sept – Kindy 3
16th Sept – Kindy 1
“I love Kindy because I get to do salt play and playing in the
sandpit.”
— ALEX —
HILLCREST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE KINDY CAPERS 2016 | 3
kindy class news fire. The children learnt who could use these artefacts and how they were used to survive by hunting and gathering. The children were each given the opportunity to hold the artefacts to investigate and explore them closely.
KINDY 1 NEWS Can you believe it!? We are half way through the year already! What a wonderful few months we have had here in Kindy 1. In May we started a book focus on ‘Rainbow Fish’. These books brought about opportunities to learn about identity, friendship, being selfless, kind, caring and ways in which to socialise. The children really got involved with reflective thinking and contributing to discussions. We created our beautiful rainbow fish wall, which we all worked on collaboratively. The art activities involved with our rainbow fish wall provided the children with lots of opportunities to extend on their creativity and imagination, fine and gross motor skills along with their extending on their prior knowledge. We then moved onto our human body focus where the children learnt about their bodies. It was wonderful to see that the children had some prior knowledge on this topic and were able to share this with the class. We were lucky enough to have Thomas’s mum Natalie lend us a stethoscope and medical supplies to explore. This also provided the perfect opportunity to talk about keeping our bodies safe and healthy. We began daily brain gym and music n’ movement to start the day which the children are loving! This allows the children to extend on their gross motor and cognitive development. We ended the month of May with a fun filled Under 8s Week! Throughout the week we packed in lots of fun! We had a teddy bears picnic day, crazy hair day, favourite colour day, story book day and a beautiful shared lunch to end the week. The children had such a ball on the various days getting dressed up in their costumes, messing their hair and sitting together as a large group sharing a variety of beautiful foods. This month we were so lucky to have a special visit from Taz and his mum Mel who did a wonderful talk about the Indigenous Koombumerri culture. She welcomed everyone with jingerri, which means welcome in the Yugambeh language. The Yugambeh is the language of the Koombumerri people who are from the Gold Coast region. Mel painted all the girls with three stripes, red for the bloodline, white for the spirits and yellow for the sand. The girls then had a carpet snake, which is the totem animal for girls of this area. Mr Brad painted the boys with the same stripes but instead of a carpet snake they had a dingo paw drawn as this is their totem animal. We learnt all about a variety of original artefacts including boomerangs, weapons, items for carrying and digging things and items for making 4 | HILLCREST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE KINDY CAPERS 2016
As we move through the month of June we have begun a new focus on “Around the World”. This began after Luca returned back from Kuwait, which is where his dad is from. This sparked lots of discussion amongst the children about where they had been in the world and where their families are from. It was amazing to see just how many nationalities we have within our small class! Over the next few weeks we will be learning about different countries, their cultures and languages. So far we have learnt how to say hello in 5 different languages (Japanese, Maori, Yugambeh, Chinese and French!). Thomas and Indie have also both brought in flags and souvenirs from their parent’s respective countries.
KATIE MATHESON Early Childhood Teacher
KINDY 2 NEWS Across the last month we have had the opportunity to explore a number of focuses that have stemmed from the children’s interests and imaginations. We have transformed our home corner into several different areas to extend on a keen interest in dramatic play. As an interest emerged in pretending to write and post letters, the children worked collaboratively with their educators to create a post office. Together we discussed the children’s prior knowledge of how a letter is sent and delivered and we brainstormed the things we would need to make for the post office. As we worked through our list over the coming weeks we also had many great opportunities to incorporate literacy activities into our day as the children wrote letters and postcards, researched their street names and created mailboxes with their names on the front. We also had great parent input as we received packages, envelopes and letters for the home corner, as well as photos of the children’s street signs. We then moved into a very different focus of dinosaurs! This focus has allowed for lots of hands on sensory activities which the children have loved! We’ve had frozen dinosaur eggs with the challenge of melting them with different materials, dinosaur slime and dinosaur small worlds. We have also explored the numeracy concept of measurement as we looked at how big a
t-rex’s foot was as well as measuring out how massive some dinosaurs really were! Once again we began to transform our home corner to reflect the learning in our room. The children were very excited to have a jungle growing in our home corner and shared many great ideas for things we could add and create. We enjoyed a nature walk throughout the school to find branches, leaves and flowers for the area and were able to discover some new areas of the school. Our jungle car in particular was a big hit and we had lots of great helpers taping boxes together and painting it with a zebra print. We have seen many adventures be had in the jungle car, with safari tours, zoo keepers and even mechanics fixing it when it breaks down! This has allowed the children to build upon their social and emotional wellbeing as they create and assign roles and play collaboratively. We have also been extending on the children’s social and emotional development as we have introduced bucket filling and dipping in our classroom. We have been exploring how our words and actions affect others positively or negatively as we visualise everyone with an invisible bucket that needs to be filled by others kindness. We have been looking at ways that we can fill each other’s buckets as well as how we can sometimes take out of someone’s bucket as well. We have found that this has become everyday language within the classroom and the children are initiating conversations with one another about how their bucket has been filled with a kind act or emptied over a disagreement. We have also loved sharing the stories that have been contributed by our families about how the children are bucket fillers outside of Kindy.
all early childhood should definitely be fun! We then wore our favourite colours to Kindy on Wednesday, followed by favourite story book day on Thursday. Sharing our favourite books with our friends promoted a love of reading; when children are read to daily they acquire positive attitudes towards literacy and they observe what good readers do leading to the development of early reading behaviours. The week culminated in a shared picnic lunch between all three classes representing our belonging to our Hillcrest Kindy community. This wonderful theme of belonging and valuing diversity was reinforced by a special visit from Melissa (Taz’s Mum). She taught us about the local Indigenous culture of the Koombumberri people. We had our faces painted so that we could be part of her tribe, and had the privledge of inspecting and holding some beautiful Indigenous artefacts used for hunting and gathering food. These included boomerangs, spears, digging sticks, collamons, woomera, nulla nulla and a bull roarer. We are currently continuing our learning about Indigenous culture through art studies, stories, ICT’s and imaginary play. We are also striving to embed Indigenous perspectives in our room’s program with the introduction of our ‘Yarning Space’ (which was called the group time mat). We are using it as a respectful place to share stories that help us to reconnect with the land in which we were born, valuing each family’s history, culture and stories to continually improve our ability as a service to ensure each child remains strongly connected to their family, their land and community.
HOPE GATELY Early Childhood Teacher
We look forward to seeing what’s in store for Kindy 2 as we approach the second half of the year!
ALANA HURST Early Childhood Teacher
KINDY 3 NEWS During May we had a wonderful time celebrating Early Learning during Under Eight’s Week. The theme for this year was “Everyone Belongs”. We began Under Eight’s activities with a Teddy Bear’s Picnic. This allowed the children to share something important to them with their friends helping them to feel confident in their identity. The following day was Crazy Hair Day enabling the children to be confident, silly and have fun together; after HILLCREST CHRISTIAN COLLEGE KINDY CAPERS 2016 | 5
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