From the Acting Director of Early Learning
Dear Families
I was recently at a function and someone asked me, “What do you love most about your work?” I took time to reflect on my journey as an educator and I responded quite simply, “Our community.” Many of my fondest memories at the ELC are those that are shared by the collective, and have helped to shape the community that we are now. I reflected on when the Centre was in the planning stages of its expansion, when the Friendship Garden was created, the family walk in Ferguson Park, our new Learning Community model and the ELC Festival, just to name a few.
I began to think about why these memories were so visible for me and it was because of the involvement from all stakeholders in our community: the children, educators, families and wider community members. It is where our progressive early childhood pedagogy is visible alongside the voice of the child, their identity and their sense of belonging.
As we began Term 4, we were extremely proud to be represented at the School’s opening of the new Science Centre last week where we were blown away by the facilities, vision and possibilities. The children in the ELC have shown great interest in the Science Centre when they visit the School campus, and we hope to be able to share this space with them in the coming weeks. We also had ELC representatives attend the School’s 125th birthday celebration at a special Assembly. We were proud to watch on as our oldest Old Scholar, 105 year old Lorna Henstridge, cut the birthday cake with one of our youngest students, past ELC friend, Emma.
Then, to conclude the first week back, many of the ELC staff and families attended the St Peter’s Girls’ 125th Anniversary Gala Ball. It was the most wonderful event and a memory that I will hold with me for a lifetime. It was the most beautiful opportunity for the community to celebrate the success of 125 years at St Peter’s Girls. I am extremely proud to hold the position I do at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC and I feel privileged to work alongside the most dedicated and inspiring staff team. I am excited for our future and the memories that will be created that will continue to enrich our community’s history.
I hope you all have a wonderful week.
Kind regards
Kirsty Porplycia
Acting Director of Early Learning
Thank You for Your Support
Dear Families
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for the care and love you have shown myself and my family during this time. Your support has meant the world to us and has been greatly appreciated.
I look forward to seeing everyone as I return to work this term.
Kate Mount
Save the Date
Friday 22 November: ELC Christmas Celebration
Monday 2 December: ELC Hat Ceremony
Thursday 5 December: ELC Farewell Afternoon Tea for Learning Community 2, 2.30pm
Friday 6 December: Last day of Term 4
Monday 9 December: Vacation Care begins
December 23 – 26: ELC Closed
ELC Christmas Celebration
Please save the date for our ELC Christmas Celebration on Friday 22 November from 5pm. Invites will be distributed in the coming weeks.
We look forward to celebrating a wonderful year with our beautiful community.
Sun Safety in the ELC
Please can your child bring to ELC each day that they attend a broad brimmed hat. If you do not have an ELC uniform hat, we ask that you pack another broad brimmed hat for your child to wear at ELC. As we move into the warmer months, it is extremely important that we adhere to our policies and procedures. If your child does not have a hat, they will be asked to play under the shaded areas or indoors.
Please note that sun cream application is also being undertaken regularly at the ELC; if your child requires an alternative sun cream, please provide this to your child’s teacher. We also ask that your child wears their correct ELC uniform, and refrains from wearing dresses or singlets where the shoulders are exposed. Appropriate footwear is also required and we ask that children wear sneakers or sandals that have a backing to them.
Children’s Lunch Boxes
With the weather warming up, it is important that your child’s lunches are prepared and stored safely to avoid the risk of food poisoning. Keep pre-made lunch boxes in the fridge until they are ready to be packed into your child’s bag. We ask that you pack a frozen ice block/ice pack in your child’s lunch box to keep food cold. Please consider healthy, safe lunch box alternatives such as fruits and vegetables, and please ensure your child has a drink bottle filled with water each day they attend ELC. The staff can refill the bottles if required throughout the day.
Learning Community 2 Farewell Picnic
Families of Learning Community 2 children are invited to the ELC for a picnic to farewell our friends and celebrate a fun and successful 2019.
Thursday 5 December
2.30 – 3.30pm
ELC Hallett Garden
Afternoon tea will be provided.
ELC Community Garden During Vacation Care
During Vacation Care, the children made some deep observations about the changes and growth they saw in the ELC Community Garden. Watch our video to see the joy on their faces.
We’ve included some observations below:
“Flowers! In the garden bed!” – Armelle
“They’re not fruit or vegetables. They keep the bugs away!” – Eloise
“You need to water them, or the plants won’t grow.” – Emerson
“We don’t want them to die. Because then they’ll be sad.” – Nina
“Water the plants . I’ll go get the water. You can’t waste it all, otherwise the other plants won’t get any.” – Lachlan
Henrietta Balnaves
Welcome to our Placement Students
Last term, we welcomed Yolanda Ma from UniSA into the Hallett Room for her single day placement visits. She has now started her four week component to her placement and will be with us Monday to Friday. This term, we welcomed Ibeth Sandoval into the Ferguson Room. Ibeth is studying her Certificate Three with Open Colleges and will also be with us for a number of weeks. We welcome Yolanda and Ibeth warmly into our learning environment.
Kirsty Porplycia
ELC Immunisation Policy
Under the Government’s No Jab No Pay policy, families must meet immunisation requirements to receive the Child Care Subsidy. Further information is available from the Department of Health by clicking here.
Children with high risk conditions, as well as children who are not immunised against them, may be excluded from the ELC in accordance with the ‘Staying Healthy: Preventing infectious diseases in early childhood education and care services’ guidelines. Please refer to our Exclusion Policy for further information.
Common illnesses requiring exclusion include:
Influenza
Chicken Pox
Conjunctivitis
Diarrhoea
Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease
High Temperature
Infectious Hepatitis
Measles
Meningitis
Mumps
Rubella (German Measles)
Scabies
Scarlet Fever
School Sores (Impetigo)
Upper Respiratory Tract Infection
Vomiting
Whooping Cough
Absences in the ELC
Student Absences
Please notify the School via one of the following methods for late arrivals/early departures and absences, ensuring a reason for the absence is included.
Text: 0428 601 957 (save to phone contacts as SPGS)
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Phone: 8334 2200 or phone the relevant room as per the contact list
Feel free to also include the relevant room teacher when sending via email.
ELC Room Contacts:
Bell Yett – 8155 5777
Ferguson – 8155 5776
Hallett – 8155 5775
Stonyfell – 8155 5778
来自黄老师的信息
亲爱的家长朋友们，
很高兴又迎来本学年最后一个学期，以下是ELC这个学期重要的一些日子：
ELC圣诞节节庆日-11月5日 晚上五点
ELC 转入小学戴帽仪式-12月2日
ELC 转入小学告别下午茶（学习社区2）-12月5日 下午2：30
本学期最后一天-12月6日
假期日托班开始-12月9日
Emma works in Learning Community 2 on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9am – 5pm.
Learning Community 1
News from the Stonyfell Room
Term 4 has started with much excitement as we begin our exploration of our Central Idea, ‘Shared memories can enrich a community’s history’. With the end of year and Christmas celebrations around the corner, we know there will be much to reflect on and enjoy as a community. Some of the things that make us special as a community are the very things that consume our time every day:
- Connecting with each other in both structured and spontaneous interactions
- Sharing Kaurna language through songs and rituals
- Visiting Ferguson Park and enjoying the natural environment
- Watching our Community Garden develop and grow
- Playing with good friends, and making new ones
- Sharing stories in the Friendship Garden
In Term 4, we have a special focus on Numeracy. You may have noticed we have some numeracy-based resources in the Stonyfell Room for the children to explore. Games, songs and stories enrich the children’s understanding of numbers, counting, size and shape. A particularly fun and engaging experience has been our Numeracy Walk. Led by Miss Edwardson, the children have been studying numbers from 1 to 10 and have been invited to look for representations of these numbers within the environment. The children have eagerly searched for and discovered numbers all around the School: on the tennis court fence, plaques, walls and signs. They have then used an iPad to photograph the special number they discovered.
“Look Miss Edwardson, a number!” – Lainey
“I’m 3!” – Isabella N.
“I can see it, that’s 3!” – Angie
“Look over here!” – Asha
“I found one!” – Alessandro
“Look, I see one over there!” – Cleopatra
As photography is a language of memories, we are also taking photographs of the children engaged in this experience and will include these in their portfolios for you to enjoy. This is how, together, we create a culture of discovery, of collaboration and of learning. Of how we create memories that will enrich our history.
Mel Angel
News from the Bell Yett Room
In Learning Community 1, we constantly seek opportunities to develop language and literacy skills in a variety of ways and across many contexts. Families, caregivers and early years teachers play a critical role in the development of children’s early literacy skills, as well as influencing children’s life-long attitudes towards reading. Reading together has been found to have a significant impact on vocabulary development, listening comprehension and an understanding of print concepts. Recent studies show the window of birth to age 6 is the most crucial period to develop interest and skills in literacy.
Across Terms 3 and 4, we have had a focus book that we read each day, our current being Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. By reading the same story every day, we are developing the children’s ability to:
- Follow a plot
- Predict
- Recite
- Understand repetition
- Understand the actions of characters
Literacy offers a significant amount of opportunities to connect with other areas of learning. In small groups, we have begun acting out the story with costumes, props and a negotiation of roles. We have introduced an illustration application on the iPad where, in small groups, the children have been animating different sections of the story and sharing at Morning Meeting. Educators have worked together to create a Where the Wild Things Are exploration table where we have been creating our own ‘Wild Things’ book, developing fine motor skills in writing and drawing.
Throughout our literacy experiences, we have witnessed the formation and strengthening of relationships through a shared connection of our stories. We recognise the opportunities for imagination, connection and joy through reading together.
Read-along versions of Where the Wild Things Are are available on YouTube. We invite you to read with us at home, and anticipate a very animated retelling!
Annabelle Redmond
Learning Community 2
News from the Ferguson Room
Term 4 Central Idea: Shared memories can enrich a community’s history
This term, our Central Idea has been carefully thought out by the teachers to provoke the children across our Learning Community to think about and explore the history of the ELC and to reflect on their own history as active members of our community. This Central Idea allows us to reflect on the year and the work the children have led though our many inquiry projects.
The educators have been working with small groups across the Learning Community to introduce the words memory and history.
Miss Caterina has introduced us to her ‘history bag’ that contains documentation from our past projects. The children were excited to explore its contents, learning more about the projects that have shaped many of our places in the ELC. Some of these have included:
- The Friendship Garden project which occurred in 2014
- The Path project with our Artist in Residence Christine Cholewa in 2018
- Our current ELC Community Garden project
We posed to the children the question: What is a memory?
Some of their explanations have been:
“A memory is when you remember when you are little.”
“It is something when you see a picture you can remember.”
“Something in the past.”
“I remember when I started in the Bell Yett Room.”
“I remember planting the garden.”
To support this learning, Mrs Williams has introduced the children to the Mem Fox story, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge as well as bringing in her old school hat that provokes special memories for her and her time here as a student at St Peter’s Girls.
At this time of the year, many of our children are preparing to transition to school; our inquiry is a wonderful opportunity to ‘remember’ and the children have started to reflect on their time at the ELC. This provocation has sparked great interest from the children and they have been delighted to share what they remember, which has included who they liked to play with, where they liked to play and the teachers they had. We will continue to explore these memories as well as the important places in the ELC and hope that this learning will continue to add to our culture and to the history of our Centre.
Laura Reiters
News from the Hallett Room
A Garden of Possibilities… Mathematical Possibilities
At the beginning of Term 4, the children in Learning Community 2 were delighted to discover our ELC Community Garden flourishing with plants. While some children observed and reflected upon the change, the children who attended Vacation Care were able to share with them their experiences over the previous two weeks through a video they created which has been included above.
We began noticing the children engage with the garden beds through the lens of observing similarities and differences:
“This garden bed has tomatoes but this one has pumpkins.”
“The pumpkin plant looks similar to a nasturtion.”
“The pumpkin plant and the cucumber plant look the same, it’s tricky.”
“The tomatoes have grown so big already.”
“I can see yellow flowers on the tomatoes, they weren’t there in Vacation Care.”
“The purple carrot plants and the orange carrot plants look the same.”
“But their stem is a different colour.”
Building on the children’s curiosity and desire to learn more about the plants, the educators have begun unpacking the abundant range of mathematical possibilities the garden is gifting to us. The children have been eager to share their observations around the growth of the plants and have begun developing tools to record and measure this growth.
Last term, the children undertook detailed investigations into the tomato plants, developing their knowledge of their world, observational and fine motor skills, and dispositions of curiosity and persistence. We will continue to develop this attitude of research as we explore the plants we are growing mathematically.
We invite you to please read the Ferguson Room newsletter article in which Miss Reiters introduces our Learning Community 2 inquiry for the term.
Nell Tierney and Leanne Williams