Dear Families
Welcome to Term 2 of 2022 at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC!
We are excited to share another fantastic term together, and to welcome our families back into our Centre. We hope you enjoy exploring our carefully curated spaces and documentation at drop-off and pick-up time.
We kicked off the term with a joyful community event, feasting on zeppole and cannoli last week at our Mother’s and Special Friends’ Morning Tea. Thank you to all the families who were able to make it. We look forward to many more community events this year in our beautiful Centre.
We are excited to share with you our Term 2 Central Idea:
Welcoming transformation can support the development of knowledge and wellbeing.
We invite the children to reflect on this fascinating topic exploring the concept of change. We will observe the transformation offered by the changing seasons in our everyday landscape, the weather and the growing ELC Community Garden. Opportunities to develop literacy and numeracy skills and scientific understandings will be embedded in experiences for children to record their observations, wonderings and theories, as they create their understanding of the cycle of life.
Welcoming transformation and change is a skill deeply connected with our emotional intelligence and resilience. We will continue our investigation on feelings and emotions, and the importance of naming and expressing them for our wellbeing.
We also want to give focus to some of the specific languages the children will be exploring this term across the ELC that symbolise transformation and offer us endless possibilities for our Central Idea. These include:
- The language of light (exploring the meeting of materials, light and shadows)
- The language of clay (exploring the material itself as it goes through a process of change)
- The language of food (experimenting with ingredients to create new foods and flavours)
- The language of Creative Arts (as we re-purpose our Stage space as an area for Dramatic Arts)
We also have many exciting events to look forward to this term, such as the beginning of our Transition Visits for our Mid-Year Reception girls, Reconciliation Week in Week 5, ELC Photos in Week 8 and our ELC Hat Ceremony in Week 9.
We look forward to sharing our learning journey with you this term at ELC.
Kind regards
Henrietta Balnaves (ELC Manager) and Caterina Pennestri (ELC Educational Leader)
Important Dates
May 31 – June 3: Reconciliation Week in the ELC
Saturday 4 June: Reconciliation Week Community Celebration
Wednesday 8 June: Mid-Year Reception Transition Visits Commence
Monday 13 June: Public Holiday (ELC closed)
Tuesday 14 June: New Family Welcome Evening
Community Joy at Our Mother’s Day Morning Tea
Thank you to our wonderful community of mothers, grandmothers, aunties and treasured friends, for sharing a morning tea with us last Wednesday. Everyone enjoyed the delicious food on offer, and it’s always a delight to see the children’s faces light up as they share their ELC with their loved ones.
Vacation Care Adventures
Vacation Care was a short but beautiful two weeks in the Centre, where children were able to wind down from the busyness of Term 1, relax in their spaces and enjoy spending time together creating in small groups.
There were many opportunities for creativity to spark, in Learning Community 1 the children explored in the ‘loose parts’ Atelier, investigated the changes happening in nature and created eggs out of salt dough, baking them and painting them for Easter.
The children in Learning Community 2 thoroughly enjoyed exploring our wider School campus, making the most of the tennis courts, oval playground, and beautiful school grounds.
As we noticed the change in weather, we also noticed changes in Ferguson Park. Children were keen observers of what was happening in our natural environment and enjoyed documenting their findings.
In addition, we planted seeds in our ELC Community Garden in response to our Learning Community 2 voting process that occurred in Term 1. As this term’s Central Idea is about concepts of transformation and change, the children will be watching the ELC Community Garden closely to see what sprouts over the next few weeks.
Henrietta Balnaves and Danniella Capaldo
Extended Hours Care Team
Discover Reception at Saints Girls
Learn about transition to school and the opportunities available for your daughter in Reception at St Peter’s Girls.
Our Head of Junior School Suzanne Haddy warmly invites you to an information session: Thursday 19 May, 8.45am St Peter’s Girls’ School Arts Centre
A tour of the School’s facilities will follow Suzanne’s presentation, and we will conclude with morning tea in the Arts Centre Foyer where parents are welcome to speak with our Reception Teachers.
This event has limited availability. Please register your attendance by the end of today: CLICK HERE
Important COVID-19 Information
Parents are now permitted into our learning spaces to pick up and drop off their child/ren, however must wear a mask, maintain social distancing and use the hand sanitiser provided.
If your child tests positive to COVID-19, notify us immediately. Please also advise the type of test (RAT/PCR), the date your child’s test was taken and the date symptoms started (if no symptoms, note ‘asymptomatic’).
Where possible, to help limit the amount of telephone traffic, please notify us via email or text:
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Text: 0428 601 957 (save to phone contacts as SPGS)
If you do need to notify us over the phone, please call the Front Office on 8334 2200.
If children are displaying symptoms, it is mandatory that we send them home.
SA Health guidelines advise that symptoms include:
- Fever (a temperature of 37.5˚C or higher) or chills
- Cough
- Loss of taste or smell
- Sore throat
- Tiredness (fatigue)
- Runny or blocked nose
- Shortness of breath (difficulty breathing)
- Nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea
- Headache
- Muscle or joint pain
- Loss of appetite
If children do develop COVID symptoms, they need to be tested for COVID-19 and require a PCR test with receipt of a negative result and resolution of symptoms before return to ELC can be considered. Children who have previously tested positive and have completed isolation in the past 12 weeks do not need to undertake testing.
Under updated SA Health advice, asymptomatic close contacts no longer need to quarantine. Therefore, children can attend ELC despite being a close contact, provided they undertake 5 RATs over the subsequent 7 days and receive negative results.
Join the Friends of the ELC
Thank you to everyone who attended our Mother’s and Special Friends’ Morning Tea last week. It was a lovely morning celebrating all the special women in our children’s lives.
ELC events like this are organised by the Friends of the ELC, a group of parents who meet once a fortnight over a coffee. My youngest daughter will be moving up to school next term so unfortunately my three and a half years on the Friends of the ELC will be coming to an end. We would love more volunteers to join this wonderful group of parents, it is a great way to meet other ELC families and make some lifelong friends.
If you’re interested in joining this fantastic group, please email Henrietta.
Nikki Geyer
Outgoing FELC Community Representative
Sustainability in the ELC
As we strive to embed sustainable values in everything we do here at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC, we recognise that the value of sustainability goes hand-in-hand with a strong, supported and connected community.
In an attempt to connect to our wider community through innovative and sustainable ways, the children at ELC have been discussing how we can share our things with others and reuse or repurpose items instead of throwing them away.
During Vacation Care, Learning Community 2 began designing their very own ‘ELC Community Library’ — a space where children and families can exchange books to share their favourite stories with their wider ELC community. In the early years, children’s literacy skills emerge through their capacity and confidence to engage with language in all its forms and mediums.
We agreed that a fantastic way to support the development of these skills would be through engaging with a wide range of quality literature and shared storybook reading in a sustainable way.
We have made a start by designing a prototype of the Library with illustrations and recycled materials from our Making Table, envisioning what we want it to look like.
We invite families to bring in any children’s books from home that you may wish to contribute to the ELC Community Library, in the hopes that you can one day soon take a new story home to read once our project is complete. A collection point will be available in the ELC Foyer.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you as it unfolds, and we thank you for your contribution to this community project!
You’re Invited to Our Starry Night Gala Ball
We are counting down to our Starry Night Gala Ball on Saturday 18 June to celebrate and support our fundraising efforts for a new Gym, including our ‘Saints Girls All-Stars’.
Don’t miss out on this amazing evening with our Saints Girls’ community.
7pm, Saturday 18 June
Adelaide Convention Centre
Tickets: $200 per person
Includes three-course meal, beverages and live entertainment
Can You Lend a Helping Hand in the ELC?
If you have an afternoon or morning spare, we would love more volunteers to join us as we explore Ferguson Conservation Park. We try to get out to Ferguson Park as much as possible to provide the children with rich learning experiences; however, this is deemed an excursion and requires higher ratios of adults to children.
Volunteering at the ELC is a fantastic opportunity to connect with the ELC community, and our treasured walks in Ferguson Park allow the children to deepen their relationship with their natural environment.
To be an ELC volunteer, we require a copy of a Working with Children Check (which can be processed free of charge through the School) and proof of COVID-19 vaccinations. If you would like to get involved, or have any other queries, please email me via hbalnaves@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
We look forward to seeing you at the ELC!
Henrietta Balnaves
ELC Manager
来自黄老师的信息
亲爱的家长朋友们，
欢迎来到了2022圣彼得女校ELC的第二学期！
我们很高兴能一起分享另一个美好的学期,欢迎大家回到ELC。我们希望您喜欢我们在接送大厅精心布置的学习空间以及展示的关于孩子们的学习纪录。
我们以一场欢乐的社区活动拉开了学期的序幕。在上周，我们在母亲节以及“特别朋友”的早茶会上一同享用了意大利的传统糕点，来感谢孩子们生命中那些“美丽的母亲们”以及“特别的朋友们”。我们感谢所有到场的家庭，我们期待着今年在ELC举办更多的社区活动。
我们很高兴与大家分享我们第二学期的核心理念：:
“欢迎生活中的转变”可以支持孩子对知识的学习及个人的身心健康的发展。
我们邀请孩子们思考这个有趣的话题，探索变化的概念。我们将在日常景观、天气和不断变化的社区花园中观察季节带来的变化。孩子们将记录他们的观察、疑问和理论，创造他们对生命周期的理解。
“欢迎生活中的转变和改变”是一种与我们的情商和适应力密切相关的技能。我们将继续研究感觉和情绪，以及感知和表达它们对我们身心健康的重要性。
我们也想把重点放在孩子们对一些特定“语言”的探索中去，这些“语言”象征着转变，为我们的中心理念提供了无限的可能性。这些包括:
“光的语言”(探索材料、光与影的交汇)
“粘土的语言”(探索材料本身的变化过程)
“食物的语言”(尝试用食材创造新的美食和味道)
“创造性艺术”的语言(我们将舞台空间重新定位为戏剧表演艺术的区域
本学期我们还有许多令人兴奋的活动，例如我们一部分即将踏入我们“年中小学预备班”孩子们的过渡访问日，第五周的“和解周”，第八周的“ELC拍照日”，以及第九周的“ELC入学戴帽礼”。
我们期待与您分享这学期在ELC的学习之旅。
Emma Huang works in Learning Community 2 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9am – 5pm.
News from Learning Community 1
We would like to extend a warm welcome to Term 2 for all our children and families. Last term’s Central Idea around connection allowed us to form a cohesive Learning Community where we welcomed new children and supported the learning and development of our continuing children.
As we embark on a new term, we take this opportunity to reflect on children’s prior knowledge, learning and engagement in order to plan for the needs and interests of individuals, and the children as a group.
This term’s Central Idea is:
Welcoming transformation can support the development of knowledge and wellbeing.
Within this, we will focus on the following lines of inquiry:
- Transformation in people
- Transformation in animals
- Transformation in the environment
In the initial weeks, we offer children provocations, providing them with opportunities to share their prior knowledge and understandings through a range of creative languages. Using our observations of the children as they engage with these provocations, we will further refine our inquiry as we move through the term.
We are looking forward to an exciting term as we learn and grow together.
Jessica Guimaraes and Jess Catt
Learning Community 1
News from Learning Community 2
As we welcome in a new term in Learning Community 2, we turn our inquiry focus to the concept of transformation. Our Central Idea this term is, ‘Welcoming transformation can support the development of knowledge and wellbeing’. To facilitate this idea, children are beginning by considering the questions:
- What changes are occurring around me?
- What is transforming?
This inquiry will encourage children to express what they already know and then extend their learning through play, literature and small group discussions. Children will begin to unpack the inquiry questions through daily walks around the School and in Ferguson Park, where they have already noticed changes to the natural environment.
They will also begin to explore how they are agents of change in a variety of ways, including experiences where they can change the shape of objects such as clay or playdough. As well, the children will pick up on transformation through music, sounds and dance, and they will continue to explore the transformation of the Community Garden.
On another front, children will explore how their emotions change, and how their actions and words can impact on others and their feelings. These discussions and experiences will help children develop important concepts and skills around self-awareness, self-regulation and how to improve relationships with others.
We recognise that sometimes change and transformation are difficult, especially among young children, and it is often challenging to feel at peace with what is happening around us. Therefore, during this inquiry, we also want to hold focus on persistence and problem-solving. We are asking ourselves to stop and be reflective throughout this inquiry and to share our thoughts on what has been successful and what has not. In this way, we hope to create some strategies to help children prepare for all upcoming transitions.
We look forward to sharing our journey with you.
Nell Tierney, Kathy McCabe and Laura Reiters
Learning Community 2
Find Out What Happens Throughout the Day at ELC
The ELC Learning Community Home Page is a dynamic online sharing space that invites you to participate in the communities’ learning as it happens. We use this tool to communicate important information with families and provide a window into the children’s life at the ELC, as educators share documentation of teaching, specialist lessons and spontaneous moments.
Accessing myLink for the first time:
Each parent has an individual username to access our myLink parent portal.
Your username is {ID+}@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Please note that the username is your ID number followed by @stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Your ID number has been provided to you in an email from the School
If you have not accessed myLink before or have forgotten your password, please follow these steps:
- Visit https://mylink.stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
- Sign in with your parent username
- Click on ‘Forgot my password’
- Make sure the ‘email’ address is your parent username, type in the code, then click the blue ‘Next’ button
- Enter your mobile number registered with the School, with the area code (Australia is +61), dropping the 0 at the beginning (e.g. +61 400000000). Then select ‘Text’
- Enter the security code sent to your mobile number
- Enter the password you would like to use and click ‘Finish’
- Return to the login screen at https://mylink.stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au to access myLink
Accessing the Learning Community Home Page through myLink:
- Access myLink as per the above instructions
- Click on the ‘MYLINK HOME’ tab
- Click on your child’s name tab
- Under ‘Class Contacts’, click on the ELC room name (you may need to enter your user name and password again)
If you have any issues accessing or navigating myLink, please contact our IT Hub via helpdesk@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au or 8334 2227.
ELC’s Online Etiquette Policy: please note that the ELC Learning Community Home Page and ELC News contain images and videos of other children. We therefore ask that you do not copy or share images or videos, especially on social media, if they contain other children.
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 below.
Please 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
ELC Immunisation Policy
Under the Government’s No Jab No Play policy, families must meet immunisation requirements to attend the ELC and receive the Child Care Subsidy. Families are required to provide all approved immunisation records to the ELC. Further information is available by clicking here.
Children who are suffering from illnesses such as those listed below must be excluded from ELC in line with our Exclusion Policy:
- 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