The delivery of the NQF is guided by set objectives and guidelines to ensure consistent and effective function.
I thought I would take the opportunity to provide more details of the process of Assessment and Rating in this weeks Newsletter.
ThankParents,youtoall
our families who have congratulated us on our recent assessment rating result. We are so very proud of achieving an Exceeding rating and extend our thanks to our educators and support staff.
• the National Law and National Regulations • the National Quality Standard • an assessment and quality rating process • national approved learning frameworks Early Years Learning Framework Belonging, Being, Becoming.
Ref: (ACECQA Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority)
REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL LINDFIELD NEWSLETTER 2nd September 2022
• a regulatory authority in each state and territory responsible for the approval, monitoring and quality assessment of services in their state or territory • a national body ACECQA, which guides the implementation of the NQF and works with regulatory authorities
The National Quality Framework aims to raise quality and drive continuous improvement and consistency in children’s education and care services through:
Dear
As part of the National quality framework (diagram over page) The National Quality Standard (NQS) sets a high benchmark for early childhood education and care. The NQS includes 7 quality areas that are important outcomes for children. Services are assessed and rated by their regulatory authority against the NQS and given a rating for each of the 7 quality areas and an overall rating based on these results.
By Chrsitine Irwin
Principal’s Message Continued...
we would like to thank all our
Wishing you all a great
Early Learning School Lindfield was assessed across the 7 Quality Areas by the Department of Education and was rated at an Exceeding Level . An Exceeding rating means that the service goes beyond the requirements of the National Quality Standard in at least 4 of the 7 Quality Areas, with at least two of these being quality areas 1, 5, 6, or 7. This is an outstanding result as it is the highest rating a service can gain from the Department of AsEducation.ateam, families who such an important part of the community, ongoing support. weekend, Christine Irwin, Principal
Reddam
for their
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Reddam
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Stage 1R By Heather Gaskall 4 ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world’ by Mahatma Ghandi Ciao, marHabā & , )ا بحرم(Bonjour
As part of their experiences the children have had an energetic time creating their own pasta, they have rolled and basted and pinched their play dough into some unique pasta shapes. All the while next to them they could observe the fresh pasta drying on the pasta drying rack. The children have practised their turn taking skills while waiting to use the rolling pins and brushes during their make believe cooking time. Further exploring the Lebanese culture, the children were invited to investigate Kibbeh which is traditional Lebanon foods. During the learning experience, they were offered playdough, rollers, and lentils, they were instructed how to put the lentils inside the playdough to simulate making kibbeh. In other adventures of learning the children have experienced some of the produce of the countries of interest like figs, bananas, apples, grapes and blood oranges. The children have shown great interest when we have introduced them to the various produce of the countries we have visited and eagerly line up to try the samples. We have seen some we know well and then there are some which are very pretty and taste different to what we are used to. Moreover, the children were invited to make fruit kebabs together as a group experience. Lebanese kebab, also known as Kafta, is a popular dish in the Middle East. To encourage healthy eating, we used some fruits that we usually have during our morning tea and afternoon tea time to simulate Lebanese kebab. Thank you Miss Doris for such a delightful and healthy experience. Our artworks for the week were also an Italian affair, Miss Jenny designed paint brushes out of spaghetti pasta. Then using the colours of the Italian flag, green, white and red. The children were then invited to swish and swipe their pasta brush across the page, seeing what patterns appeared. Thank you Miss Jenny for creating an interesting and different medium to use for our Missartworks.Jenny also introduced the children to a very famous landmark of Italy, The Leaning Tower of Pisa. She showed them pictures of it and talked to the children on how it leans but does not fall over. The children expressed their interest in listening to the fun facts while they then practised making their own towers from paper cups. Miss Jenny showed them how to stack the cups up and the children giggled as they playfully knocked them back down, what a fun game! During the week we also shared some of our favourite books as part of book week, a big thank you to all of those who bought in books to share. And thank you to the teachers who shared some of their childhood books. How cool you still have them.
Wishing all our families a wonderful weekend
Heather, Doris, Jenny & Jaycel
This week our little ones have once again found just how fascinating the heritage of our room is with continuing our investigations of The World Around Us by studying Italy and Lebanon. We all have enjoyed looking at the flora and fauna, cultures and costumes of the countries we have visited. For instance in Lebanon there are 3 main languages spoken, Arabic, English and French and of course in Italy they speak Italian.
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‘There is no wifi in the safari but you will not find a better connection’ Anonymous
The week was also spent playing outdoor games with their peers and educators. This made the children become more confident in their social interactions and as well as develop beautiful friendships amongst others. Additionally we would like to thank you all for taking the time to read and enjoy this week’s school’s experiences. We also would like to extend our appreciation to everyone for sharing their favourite books and coming in book characters as we celebrate Book Week 2022. We look forward to learning more about our natural environment by exploring the wild forests next week. May everyone have a lovely weekend Charity, Resie, May, Rowel, Mary and Anne
Using the natural hay and dried grass, the children enjoyed a natural art experience using these elements as a tool for painting. They practised their grip and stroking skills brushing the grass against their paper. The creative experience supported children to identify and understand their emotions, make sense of their feelings and express it non verbally and verbally.
This week was such a treat to the children as they have come to play again with their favourite wildlife animals, surely increasing their verbal expression and pro social skills as they enjoyed sharing the variety of learning experiences provided alongside their peers and teachers. The sensory display experiences also gave the children an opportunity to manipulate the resources, improving their sensory skills and demonstrating a connection to the world they live in.
Stage 1E By Charity Acera 8
Early learning about the world around them makes a huge impact on the holistic development of children. It brings children a sense of belonging to the world they live in through exploration and discovery of the different biomes. Positive interactions of nature and the environment teach children about their place in the world, and how they can protect it throughout their lifetimes. As our introduction to this world, we first explored the Savannah. It has been a great support to a wonderful variety of living things. Savannahs are present in areas that have a warm climate with a rainy season and a dry season. Savannahs and their abundant wildlife are famous in Africa, but savannahs can also be found in South America, Asia, and Australia.
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Stage 2R By Sara Haddadi 11
‘Education is the most powerful weapon that we can use to change the world’ Nelson Mandela
Young children develop a sense of initiative and creativity and are curious about the world around them. They are exploring their ability to create and communicate using various media and through creative movement, singing, dancing, and using their bodies to represent ideas and experiences. Digital technologies provide one more outlet for them to demonstrate their creativity and learning. So this week, we decided to incorporate technology into our program. To allow children to perform different roles and test their creativity and the reactions and responses of those around them, we offered children office themed dramatic experiences. 2R learned many things through trial and error and tried various scenarios and situations. We had telephones, old mobile phones, and computers for children to utilise aspects of technology in their play experiences. Our highlight of the day was creating art using the doodling robot. This robot contained a small motor that made it spin and shake to draw some spectacular patterns on paper. The vibration and spin helped this creative robot doodle a picture without guiding our hands. Moreover, the magnetic sensory trays allowed children to explore colours, quantity, patterns, and cause and effect! They slowly moved the magnetic wands across the surface to examine how many metal pieces the magnet could collect at once.
2R enjoyed balancing CDs on the cardboard tubes and creating some well balanced structures. They admired the bursts of colours they made with them as they moved them around. Inspired by CDs, these digital means, we created rainbows outside our classroom by simply placing a CD in front of the sunlight to reflect the light to the wall. We experimented with positioning the CD to get the nice rainbow onto the wall.
Inspired by the book 'Rusty the Robot' and stimulating playful imaginations, 2R used various loose parts to create robots. Loose parts are materials that, when given to our children, can become anything they wish, from designing and making a robot to constructing their den. Our little technologists used these materials freely to create, explore textures and develop curiosity and imagination. As these kinds of play have no directions and instructions, it gives children more control over their self directed play in any setting. It provides endless opportunities to use their own imaginations. It's our job, as adults, to find the right ways for our little ones to interact with technology. And to do this, we need to understand how technology impacts children and how to encourage proper use. The goal is for tech to have a positive effect on children’s behaviour and development, as opposed to a negative one. When used correctly, technology can have a very positive impact on a child's development.
2R Team
Happy Father's Day to you all, wonderful dads, and we hope you all have a lovely weekend!
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Stage 2E By Mia Doan 14 ‘Earth was a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky’ Buzz Aldrin 10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1
Have a fantastic weekend, Mia, Xanthe, Shandie, Chloe, Jing and Anne
BLAST OFF! Outer space provided endless opportunities for nurturing curious young minds. In the past few weeks, we have been discussing living organisms and natural resources across different lands. This week, we are captivated to look beyond our own small, blue planet and survey the rest of the Solar System, to gain a further appreciation for our natural resources. Teaching the Solar System and outer space for children to understand helps them realise how fragile and important their home is. By knowing how different and special each planet is, and the five important elements, they will be able to protect and conserve the lives on our mother Earth. Space captures children's imagination and curiosity with its rockets, moon landings, astronauts and different planets and stars. The children were truly intrigued and highly engaged in each provocation activity. Our friends come with a full bag of knowledge and share it with others. During the group time, we discussed the Solar System and the characteristics of each planet. Discussing some solar system facts about the other planets will allow the children to compare and contrast them to their home planet. Drawing on the distance from the Sun, our friends agreed that we cannot live on Mercury and Venus because they are too close to the Sun. Fun fact: even though Mercury is closer to the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in our Solar System. In contrast, Uranus and Neptune are severely cold to live in. We learnt to recognise each planet by its colours and through a series of sensory play. As it had been popular with children throughout the week, the ‘create your own galaxy’ frames kept our children busy. They used loose parts such as bouncy balls, space figures, stars, magnetic planets, and marbles to create the universe from their imagination. The children loved using the bouncy balls to test their catching reflexes and watch the movement and consequences of the circular shapes. In another favourite set of sensory trays, the children explored the colours of the night sky using black beans and salt which had been dyed deep blue and lavender, scattered with glittery stars as well as astronauts and alien figurines. These creative sensory experiences stimulated our curious scientists as they expressed their interests and asked questions to clarify unknown objects. The children used fine motor challenging utensils to strengthen their skills by manipulating, scooping, pouring and transferring sensory resources.
On the art table, we engaged in Planet Collage artwork. This artwork built up our symbolic understanding as different colours represented different planets. We recognised Earth, Mars, Sun, Moon and other planets during the small group art process. Scumbled foils created a beautiful texture on the paper and triggered our artists’ senses. Our friends enjoyed the process and were highly focused while making their pieces of art.
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‘Reading and storytelling with babies and children promotes brain development and imagination, develops language and emotions, and strengthens relationships’ Raising Children, 2020
Our art this week encouraged children to use ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ as inspiration. Using balloons and coloured paint, the children made patterns and representations of the caterpillar. Next week we use another classic book Possum Magic as inspiration in the classroom.
Focussing on Book Week the children were invited to dress up and bring in a special book from home to share with their peers. Bringing in a special significant thing from school helps children feel a sense of belonging as they share aspects of their home life at school. The children brought in a variety of books and were proud to share with their peers. Using books as our inspiration for our experiences, we offered the children a ‘Wombat Stew’ sensory tray with insects, sticks and leaves to add into the bubbling cauldron. Another sensory experience saw children using bicarbonate of soda and coloured vinegar to create their own ‘Elmer the Elephant’ visually. Using jars and green sand, the children were also encouraged to feed the ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’ as well as a way to extend on their hand eye coordination skill and transference ability. In our small groups we focused on dramatic book reading where children were able to act out characters from their beloved books. This was a great guided dramatic play as the children’s perspectives and roles change as they become the character.
Miss Grace, Miss Carina and Mr Callum
Stage 3R
By Grace Nolan 18
Campfires were still noted as an interest and as a result, the children were able to make a pretend campfire on the grounds and eat marshmallows as they tell stories.
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Welcome to our Week 5. This week we are exploring various cultures over the next couple weeks. This week we are talking about Lunar New Year and ask the children what language they speak at home such as Mandarin, English, Cantonese, Spanish, Taiwanese, French and AlsoIndonesian.thisweek was Book Week,so the children were encouraged to dress up as their favourite characters and bring their books to share with their peers.
’Hairy Maclary’ Show Business by Lynley Dodd Arley ’The Gruffalo’ Julia Donaldson Felix ’Thomas The Tank Engine’ Easton ’Naughty,Naughty Monster’ by Kaye Umansky Eden ’Highway Rat’ by Julia Donaldson Daniel ’Cutie Fruities and the Fruits of the Spirit’ by Rosie Greening Alison ’Peppa’s Pop Up Unicorns Eden ’ Frozen’ Julia ’Hot Wheels Thrill Rides’ Ashton
Next week we are continuing to explore the Chinese Culture We hope you have a lovely weekend
Our discussions have continued with showing kindness towards other cultures. They have enjoyed making connections between previous experiences and expanding upon their understanding of different people, places and things. The children were able to go on an adventure around the world using Google Maps to discover how far China is from Australia. This allowed them to begin to understand the mathematical concept of distance and start to look at some famous landmarks. The children showed interest and curiosity towards the ‘Summer Palace’, where we were able to brainstorm what is made out of, what it was used for and why it was made. Afterwards, the children worked in small groups to create their own version of the palace using loose parts including pebbles, blocks and other materials they could find around the Also,room.thechildren were provided with the opportunity to engage in a cooking experience where they could help their teacher make Moon Cake which is a special tradition of Chinese culture. The children were eager to help pour and mix the ingredients together as well as stir. They were required to use their emerging mathematical skills and understanding to determine how much of each ingredient we needed.
‘A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people’ Mahatma Gandhi
Stage 3E By Natalie Horstman 20
During our group time the children have continued their exploration of how to be kind towards other cultures by looking and observing traditional Chinese houses and buildings and working together to guess what they are made of. This allowed the children to broaden their understanding of the world around and also make connections to how different or similar these structures are to their own homes. The children were provided with the opportunity to draw a visual representation of their own houses, they each enjoyed sharing with each other where the front door is, living area, kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms.
Natalie, Laura & Kai
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This week our learning experiences included discovery trays filled with ice cubes, blue water and animal figurines to role play with. In our small world area, the children created stories about polar bears, penguins and orcas, based on the facts and information they had learnt from our stories and group learning. The children were also invited to construct penguin collages out of paper and mixed materials at our art table. They enjoyed using coloured chalk pastels to create the illusion of the Northern Lights against a silhouette landscape, which looked very effective too. This week, we are also celebrating Book Week and the children have been invited to dress up as their favourite book character and bring in the corresponding book to share. After several weeks of ocean investigations, we will start to explore the land on our planet next week, starting with our smallest creatures minibeasts. Enjoy your weekend! Rebecca Kim
Stage 4R By
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‘Each and every one of us can make changes in the way we live our lives and become part of the solution to climate change’ Al Gore
Throughout the week we focused on each pole separately, starting with Antarctica. We read The Emperor’s Egg by Martin Jenkins and Penguin by Anthony Dekker, learning many facts about these flightless birds. Next, we explored the Arctic and read The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale by Lydia Dabcovich, learning that polar bears pad across the ice hunting for seals, fish and small animals, and that the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) glow in the night sky, creating a rainbow of colours. During our inquiry we sadly learnt that due to climate change and global warming, the ice at both poles is starting to melt, causing our sea levels to rise each year. Polar bears are affected as they live and hunt on the Arctic ice, and without it, their habitat is disappearing, forcing them to migrate south to hunt.
This week the class continued to explore our oceans and focused on the North and South Poles. This week as we investigated which animals inhabit the North and South Poles. As an extension on our ocean inquiry, the children explored the icy waters at each end of our planet, discovering that there are a plethora of interesting creatures that brave the freezing seas.
First, we located where the North and South Poles are on Earth using our globe, studying the large sheet of white ice that makes up Antarctica. At the top, we saw that the northern parts of Europe, Russia and Canada make up the Arctic. The children listed some of the animals they knew lived in each pole including polar bears, seals, narwhals, penguins, walruses and whales.
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We all went a little ‘shape crazy’ in our classroom this week as we learnt about two dimensional shapes and three dimensional prisms. During our morning group times the children learnt to identify a variety of 2D shapes that are flat, and we counted the sides and the corners of a square, triangle, circle, oval, hexagon, rectangle and octagon. We also learnt the names of some new shapes including the rhombus, trapezoid, ellipse and polygon. We then transferred what we knew about these shapes to learn how they are used to construct the faces and sides of 3D prisms. Prisms are also known as ‘solids’ and the children identified many 3D objects around our Throughoutclassroom.the week, the children engaged with a variety of shape related learning experiences. Tessellating shapes and tangram tiles were used to create images, coloured counters were provided for the children to practise their patterning, and Tetris style puzzle frames encouraged problem solving skills and the process of trial and error. Finger gym rubber band boards allowed the children to create geometric shapes and strengthen their fine motor skills, and loose parts inspired large shape installations on our classroom floor.
Lauren, Priya, Faranaaz and Marlon
Stage 4E By Lauren Hall
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‘Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play’ Henri Matisse
Inspired by Kandinsky’s concentric circle art, the children created their own interpretations, using black markers and watercolours. They also practised their scissor manipulation as they cut out paper shapes to create pictures of their choice. In our construction area, the children worked in groups to make buildings, bridges and skyscrapers. There were many shapes and blocks to choose from in various colours and sizes, making the construction process enjoyable for the children as they realised their designs. The children thoroughly enjoyed the book series by Mac Barnett which included three adventures about Square, Circle and Triangle. The shapes featured in each other’s stories and provided life lessons about friendships, persistence and being kind. Another story we enjoyed was called Pezzettino by Leo Lionni, about a small orange square that wondered if he belonged to something larger in this world. Inspired by this story, the children created their own scenes using coloured squares of paper in the style of the storybook’s illustrations. Each day we also practised singing one of our all time favourite songs The Shape Song Swing a long Song where we used our arms and bodies to create lines, circles, squares and triangles. Thank you for a geometric week in our classroom! Next week we will use our knowledge and understanding of shapes to incorporate into our construction play.
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By Coach Lauren 32
Playball
By Chloe Lin Nǐ
Mandarin
At the beginning of the class, we sang Chinese nursery rhymes as usual. The children like to practice Tai Chi very much, because they can feel the relaxation of the body and the movement of energy in the body. In stage 4, the children performed very well in Tai Chi, and some The children also shared that their grandparents also practice Tai Chi at home; some children can already sing new songs together. The new song "Body Song" combines body parts and movements to familiarize children with the coordination of verbs and bodies. The lively melody and interesting dance movements make children learn Chinese happily. This week, we reviewed last week's Mandarin learning about body organs, including: trachea, heart, lungs, liver, stomach, kidneys, large intestine and small intestine. In Mandarin, we often call our children "Heart and Liver Baby（心肝宝貝xīn gān bǎo bèi “ Children are the most precious to their parents as their hearts and livers. Children are the irreplaceable existence of their parents in the world, so we will nickname the children's heart and liver baby. Ms Faranaaz shared with me that her grandmother always call her “ My little heart and liver” in her mother language from South Africa.
hǎo!
One of the three major Chinese festivals, "Mid Autumn Festival" is coming soon. I shared moon cakes with children, we can see mooncake gift boxes in beautiful paper boxes and iron boxes at Coles, Woolworths and Asian supermarkets. We can share it with our family, or we can give the gift mooncake to relatives, friends and elders to express our gratitude and blessings. Children are very curious about the tastes of mooncake, when you go to the supermarket, maybe you can bring home a delicious mooncake to try and telling me which flavor is your favorite.
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Drama By Xanthe Wills
This week in drama we continued on our theme ‘The Magic Train Ride’. This 5 week series is based on the book “Magic Train Ride” by Sally Crabtree. We began our class, as usual, by shaking the parachute. We collected our tickets to hop on the magic train and headed to our next destination Underwater! Stage 4 were asked “What is your favourite underwater animal?” We arrived underwater and had a look around. I played some music (Mahoney’s Debut by Alexandre Desplat and Aaron Zigman) for the children to move to and become different animals . We are constantly using our bodies to turn into different things during our drama classes! Some of our clever friends are mastering this tricky skill and I’m constantly impressed with the creative interpretations I’m met with each week. We turned into various sea animals that we saw in the book: sharks, octopus, crabs, starfish, turtles and more. When the tempo of the music changed, we changed animals moving our bodies in time to the beat of the music. Stage 1 did an excellent job at copying my actions for each animal! Following this, Stage 4 played a picture postcard game. I showed the children the pages in the book and asked them to recreate the picture. One at a time, the children came up to the “stage” and picked an element of the picture. We used our bodies to create waves, treasure boxes, divers and sea creatures. By the end we had a full picture postcard image! Stages 1 3 hopped out of the water and rolled out their towels to relax with me on the beach. We made a tall (imaginary) sandcastle, decorated with shells and leaves and, of course, a flag on top. Stage 1 3 were visited by a cheeky laughing kookaburra who liked to tickle their cheeks. We gave the kookaburra cuddles and listened to his unique call. We heard the whistle and needed to get back on the train. All stages were rewarded with a stamp for an excellent effort in drama today. I wonder where the train will take us next week!
