From the Director of Early Learning
Dear Families,
Every two weeks the ELC team collaborate to bring you a newsletter that represents the news from each room including program updates and special events that might be occurring in the centre and special articles that we think are relevant to you. We encourage families to read the newsletters and note any upcoming events in their calendars.
The first half of the year has been extremely busy with many of our major events occurring in this period. The second half of the year offers a couple of special events that we hope you can participate in.
These include:
- Welcome Morning Tea
- Father’s Day Breakfast
- Christmas Presentation and Twilight Picnic
These events are supported by The Friends of ELC, our volunteer community group in the ELC.
In addition to the social events we also offer some sharing opportunities between educators and families. At the end of this term Parent Teacher Conversations are offered to all families so that they can share the learning progress of their child. To support this communication each child has an ePortfolio that we update regularly during the term. This will form part of the evidence of what is discussed at the special meeting at the end of term.
I hope that everyone has settled well into the new school term. We have been very impressed with our new two-year-old group who have quickly made themselves at home in our ELC. It certainly helps hosting transition visits and of course many have come from Playgroup or have older siblings in the centre. These all act as part of our setting children up for success.
I encourage you to spend time in the playrooms asking the educators to expand on the learning program that they have outlined on their notice boards and in the newsletter pieces. Learning at ELC is so exciting and rich and we love to share this with you.
Have a wonderful term and I look forward to seeing many of you on Thursday at our morning tea from drop off in the ELC.
Kind regards,
Kate Mount
ELC Wine Orders
Thank you for all of your wine and olive oil orders. Due to popular demand we extended our final orders until the end of the holidays.
Orders have now officially closed. In the next few weeks we will be printing and processing your orders, labelling and delivering. We hope to get the wine to you towards the end of August.
This fundraiser has been a big success so we are truly appreciative of your support.
Friends of the ELC
Introducing Mud to Early Learning!
Yes, you read this correctly. We are going to be creating a new mud kitchen specifically designed for messy play. Fitted out with protective clothing, the children will have the opportunity to mix, splosh, invent and experience mud firsthand! With the help of Liam from Property Services you will see our Mud Kitchen being installed over the next couple of weeks. Much research was done to plan and create this place for creativity and sensory wonder!
Mixing soil, water and a range of other natural materials has a foundational role in early childhood which has deep importance and endless possibilities for wellbeing, development and learning. The breadth and depth of what these experiences offer young children is truly remarkable. Mud kitchens provide something quite different from digging in soil, whilst also being much more easily managed. A mud kitchen includes elements of the much loved home corner and cooking from indoor play, they work all the year round and are free from restrictions with maximum benefit.
Working alongside the introduction of our Mud Kitchen we are going to be celebrating International Mud Day on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 August. Mud Day became an international event in 2009 after a meeting between Gillian McAuliffe from Australia and Bishnu Bhatta from Nepal. They got together to talk about ways they could encourage feelings of community and appreciation for the world around us. They wanted to help the children of the Earth feel closer to each other and what better way to do this than to do it through Earth itself.
How should be celebrate:
What better way to start than by getting dirty. One of the most creative and fun activities we could introduce would be to make our own mud in Ferguson Park. We plan to visit the park in both large and small groups to explore an array of activities that can ignite children’s imagination and increase awareness of their senses. Some of our ideas include: mud sculptures, mud pies, mud cakes, muddy swamps, construction sites, streets, roads, towns, jungles, outback Australia, floods, dinosaur land, drawings, paintings, garden patches and an archaeological survey.
We encourage you to embrace Mud Day and come and join in the fun. On both days please dress your child in old clothes, pack rain jackets and gum boots and please provide many spare clothes. If you have any questions please email or come and see me in the Bell Yett Room. We are really excited and look forward to hearing joys of delight from our mud explorers!
Nell Tierney
Coordinator of Mud Explorations!
ELC Dates for the Diary
- Thursday August 5: Welcome Morning Tea from 8.45am
- Monday August 8: Hallett Friends to Odeon Theatre 10am
- Wednesday August 10: ELC Community Planting Day
- Thursday/Friday August 10 &11: Mud Extravaganza in the ELC
- Wednesday, August 31: Father’s Day Breakfast from 7.45am
- Monday, September 19 , Tuesday, Septmember 20 and Wednesday September 21:
- ELC Parent Teacher Conversations (schedule to come later)
News from the Stonyfell Room
Welcome everyone to Term 3. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new families into our ELC community. The educators in the Stonyfell Room have enjoyed taking this first couple of weeks to get to know you and your children. This time is extremely important to building our foundation for our relationships and developing trusting connections. We also are excited to welcome back our existing families and children and to begin to start our learning and exploration for this term.
Our Unit of Inquiry is “People are connected to their planet”. This inquiry will enable us to unpack with our children what their world looks like to them. We have started the term by focusing on the connection of our home to ELC. This has meant that we are able to do multiple things. Our new children can begin to understand that the ELC is now part of their world and our existing children have been able to further extend on what they know about their world around them. This has been reflected in our literacy focus.
During the past two weeks we have begun focusing on our homes. Our homes are at the centre of our world, they are places of love, trust and family. We are wanting to support our children to build the connection from home to ELC and how the ELC is part of their world. Our focus text Home by Carson Ellis is a simple story depicting different homes, homes around the world and fictional homes. This text has meant that we have been able to create discussion about our homes and build a foundation of learning.
I asked some of our children if they have a home.
“I have a new home.” – Saskia
“I have a little home.” – Jiaen
“My home has a kitchen and mummy cooks in the kitchen.” – Sanisha
This discussion has meant that we can gather an insight into our children’s understandings and view of their world and will inform our program over the coming weeks.
The Stonyfell educators have planned to drive this connection further by exploring what other places and spaces we know about that fit into ‘our’ world. We will be mapping our world around us. To support this ‘image’ we will link our literacy focus into our children exploring actions that they can take to look after their world. This includes caring for our belongings and our environment.
To support our inquiry, our numeracy focus will explore our world and how we can observe and document patterns in the world around us. This will be done in multiple ways such as explorations into Ferguson Park where the children can identify and create their own patterns.
If you have any questions regarding our programing or the learning that is occurring in the Stonyfell Room please feel free to speak to any of our educators or email me directly on lreiters@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au.
Miss Laura Reiters
News from the Bell Yett Room
Welcome to Term 3 in the Bell Yett Room. A new term always brings much excitement as we welcome new friends and their families. We are thrilled with how quickly the children have settled into their new learning environment, already developing relationships with their peers and educators. This has been largely due to the way our existing Bell Yett children have supported our new friends by inviting them to join in their play, guiding them in our routines and transitions and acting as positive role models throughout the day.
We have already begun exploring our inquiry for the term. Our central idea is “People are connected to their planet”. Our investigations will build upon our previous learning, with a focus on developing a strong connection to our natural world and developing some sustainable practices. We are eagerly anticipating our Mud Day celebrations which will have a strong connection to our inquiry. We invite you to read our program for more detail regarding our learning experiences.
Leanne and Nell, along with some ELC and Junior School colleagues, were involved in a Primary Years Program (PYP) professional development course the Sunday and Monday before term began, focusing on assessment in the early years. This opportunity provided us with valuable and meaningful theory and practice that has already enriched our learning program. When we plan our PYP Unit of Inquiry we are guided to begin with the end in mind, a term often referred to as ‘backwards by design’. This challenges us to clearly articulate what knowledge, attitudes, skills and concepts we want the children to develop throughout the term. Once we have this end in mind, we can plan intentional learning experiences that are going to support us to achieve our goal.
The PYP places emphasis on the value of Formative Assessment. This is the process by where we observe children during their play and small group learning experiences, record our observations, share and reflect on what we have recorded and use this information to guide our future planning. This term the educators are excited to be using a Floorbook as one tool for Formative Assessment. We anticipate the Floorbook also being a tool for families through which you can see firsthand some of the learning experiences your child is engaging in. We invite you to spend some time sharing this book with your children. Your feedback also has a valued place in our program. We would love for you to share with us any observations you have of your child that may be related to our Unit of Inquiry. We are looking forward to learning in partnership with you and your children this term.
Leanne Williams and Nell Tierney
News from the Ferguson Room
Welcome to Term 3! We are delighted to greet our new families from the Bell Yett Room and welcome back our existing families. Immediately we see the children becoming members of the Ferguson Room as they begin to make new friendships and connections. Our inquiry this term will see us delve into how people are connected to their planet – an issue that is close to our hearts and pedagogy at the ELC. From the learning in Term 2, we plan to lead the children into this inquiry, continuing what they have learnt and building on their past knowledge.
A big part of our inquiry involves visits to Ferguson Park. We would like to ask that your child always has spare clothes in their bags as we encourage the children to get involved emotionally, intellectually and physically with their environment! We would also love parent helpers to accompany us into the park, so if you would like to be part of this, please see one of the Ferguson educators to let us know your availability. Our connection with Ferguson Park plays an important role in extending children’s skills and attitudes in a variety of ways.
We are excited to share your child’s journey with you and we work hard at communicating what we have been exploring throughout the day. You are invited to look at our program above the sign-in sheet and read our ‘Conversation Starters’ at the end of the day. We hope that a little snippet of what we have been doing will help you start these conversations. We also use the pigeon holes to communicate any information.
If you have any questions, please see me as soon as possible or email me for any further information.
Pamela Foden
News from the Hallett Room
There is an air of excitement in the Hallett Room as we commence Term 3. It is wonderful to see that the children who have moved across from the Ferguson Room have settled in so quickly and the continuing children in the Hallett Room have their chance to be the leaders in the room.
We have been straight to work in the Hallett Room commencing this term’s unit of inquiry “People are connected to their planet”. We have begun by talking about connection. The children have had some very deep and interesting theories about what connection is.
‘The trees are connected to the ground, the dirt connects them.’ – Charlotte
‘The road is stuck to the ground.’ – Isla
‘The trees are connected to the ground through dirt and water.’ – Matilda Purvis
‘The stem and the leaves are connected, and the flower is connected to the middle.’ – Sophia
‘I drew the trees, they are connected to the wind.’ – Ishana
‘Even with the sky above us we can be connected.’ – Neko
‘Every different land has the same floor.’ – Lola B
This inquiry is all about sharing resources with others on the planet, however we are looking closely at our local environment so that the children feel ownership over their space and therefore feel empowered to act, to protect or to look after their environment. Our hope is that by the end of the term, the children will have a greater understanding of how we are connected to the planet.
Sarah Croston-Melling
Magic Moment
The Hallett children were very excited last Wednesday when Mrs Thomas visited with her new baby, Eddie. Edward Charlie Thomas was born on May 28.