Tag: April

President’s Update

President’s Update

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Hello Families,

Welcome back, I hope you all had a restful break over the holidays and your children enjoyed the treats the Easter Bunny brought! There is quite a bit of exciting news to share with you so please read on.

ELONERA HAS A MAJOR SPONSOR

We are excited to announce that Matthew Cox, Director Buxton Mentone is a major sponsor of Elonera Preschool.

Matthew is an experienced Real Estate Agent with an incredible local knowledge and who in addition to the major sponsorship arrangements, has committed to a donation of $1000 on closing of the house sale and $500 for any rental property for ongoing management resulting from referrals via the kindergarten community.

So… if you or any other Elonera Preschool family (or friend) is thinking of selling a house or has a rental property requiring management get in contact with Matthew.

Matthew Cox
Director
Telephone: 9583-9811, Facsimile: 9584-6680, Mobile: 0413-102-224
mcox@buxton.com.au

www.buxton.com.au

WORKING BEE AND NEW HAND PUMP THANK YOU

Another fabulous working bee was held in the first weekend of Term 2. Thank you to all parents and kids who attended and provided their time, muscle and special skills! We managed a great deal in tidying up, installing the new blackboards and getting the harmony garden ready for our new water pump.

A special thank you to the Orchard Family and Reece Plumbing Caulfield for donating the new hand operated water pump and fittings and to the Grounds Team for coordinating all the works. I have no doubt our children are going to have heaps of fun using the pump and jumping in muddy puddles!

Reece Irrigation Caulfield
865 Glen Huntly Road
Caulfield VIC 3162

www.reece.com.au/irrigation

MUSIC BINGO

A reminder we are still looking for donations for the silent auction (small or large) for our Music Bingo night, Saturday 3rd June 2017. Sometimes family and friends may wish to donate, it can be a good and relatively inexpensive way to advertise a small business! Our events coordinator Jo is willing to follow up on leads or suggestions so don’t hesitate to be in contact with her via events@elonerapreschool.com.au.

OPEN DAY FOR ELONERA PRESCHOOL

Open Day will be held on Sunday May 7th 10.30am. Anyone interested in enrolling a child in 2018 or beyond is welcome to come and have a look around and meet the Teachers. Open Day also marks opening of 2018 enrolments for 3 year old groups. 4 year old programs are coordinated via the Kingston Council Central Enrolment Program, enrolments for 4 year old programs are open now. The Elonera website holds information for enrolment procedures, policies and links to Kingston Council.

SMALL IDEAS BOOKLET FUNDRAISER

Lastly, don’t forget to check out the Small Ideas Booklet (in the foyer). It is our ‘Win Win’ fundraising activity! Purchasing the booklet gets you lots of discounts and ideas for family friendly outings AND helps the kindergarten who receives a portion of the booklet sale. It will be especially useful for those rainy days to come and the next school holidays!

 

I hope you have a great month.

Lucinda

Director’s Update

Director’s Update

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We would like to welcome back all our families to Term 2 – and we look forward to another term full of exploration, creative thinking, socialisation and most importantly FUN!

I would like to say thank-you to all our families who attended the extraordinary working bee and assisted in the general tidying of the grounds, cementing in our new blackboards and moving the veggie beds. We are thrilled with the end result and it was wonderful to see our kinder community so actively involved in the continual progression of our beautiful grounds renovation.

What a busy last week of term we had with a very exciting visit from the Easter bunny. The children loved working cooperatively in order to discover all the plastic Easter eggs that the bunny hid around the yard for us to find. It was with great surprise and excitement that we also discovered he had left each of us a special treat in our decorated Easter baskets. It was fantastic to observe the children working together and supporting each other to discover the plastic eggs. This experience while fun (and yummy!) also assisted the children to explore concepts such as working as a team, sharing and verbalising their ideas and observations as they hunted together.

During Term 2 we will continue to support newly emerging social groups, friendships and interactions. Our focus will be on assisting the children to settle and explore experiences together and to continue exploring their developing negotiating and turn taking/sharing skills. We continue to link these concepts and experiences back to our Term 1 exploration of friendship and ‘the rainbow fish.’ We continue to encourage the children to actively use their verbal expressive language skills to ask others if they can join their play or subsequently to invite others into their play. Based on our observations and discussions with the children we will also explore the concepts of identity and self throughout the term. We will used a variety of mediums to explore representing ourselves and exploring the similarities and differences we discover in our community.

Throughout Term 2 the children will also participate in a term long yoga incursion each Thursday afternoon which will be taken by Kathryn from ‘Melbourne Kids Yoga.’ This is the third year Kathryn will be working with our kindergarten and she brings a lovely mix of fun, stretching, relaxation and calm into her program. We also look forward to continuing to include these concepts and experiences into our general program.

Term 2 is once again shaping up to be a busy period for all the teaching team at Elonera. We have a strong belief in the concept of ‘life long learning’ for our individual and team teaching practices. I will be attending a professional development session run by the Department of Education and Training in regards to the ‘Transition to School’ process and changes that have occurred in the relevant processes. I will also be participating in a 2 day mentorship program with the Victorian Institute of Teaching which is designed to extend my skills in mentoring provisionally registered graduate teachers to move to full teaching registration. We are lucky at Elonera to have two very passionate and engaged early childhood graduates in Ellie and Kaitlyn and they have both been a fantastic addition to our teaching team. It is an extremely time consuming and challenging assessment the graduate teachers must undertake to move to full registration and I am honoured and looking forward to supporting Ellie and Kaitlyn throughout this period. Lynne continues to immerse herself in her passion for music and movement in early childhood and is engaging in a variety of courses and theory based practice. Joanna also continues to undertake her Diploma and the feedback from her trainer is always overwhelmingly positive, and we are all proud of her hard work and achievements.

For more detailed descriptions and photos of the children engaged in their play and the specific experiences we are exploring please refer to our floorbook. Please also feel free to approach Lynne or myself at anytime for a chat or to discuss the individual learning and development of your child.

Thank-you, Gina

Koalas Update

Koalas Update

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The children were very excited and energetic as they have begun to settle back into kinder life after a lovely two week holiday. We have already had a very busy first two weeks preparing for the upcoming Mother’s day and settling back into the transitions and routines of kinder.

In Koala group we have begun our Bush Kinder program heading out to the beautiful Braeside Park every Thursday for our session. Our last day of Term the children were able to have an orientation session as an introduction to what would be occurring throughout terms two and three. Despite the unfamiliar environment and conditions the children settled onto the bush kinder “tarp” that now takes place as the “mat”. To bring some familiarity to this program we followed our normal morning routine of our welcoming song and seeing who was here so that the children could see that this was still kinder and that they felt comfortable and secure. The weather in true Melbourne form was a mix of wind, light rain and some sunshine and was a really great opportunity to test out our bush kinder clothing as the children turned up in gumboots, beanies, wet weather jackets and warm clothes and an abundance of excitement. During the session and leading up to Bush Kinder we have had many discussions with the children about different things that are important for our safety at bush kinder and we are continuing to explore these learning’s with the children through discussions and in their play. During our Bush Kinder sessions children have used the opens spaces to run, move and walk freely encouraging them to explore their environments confidently and safely. The children have also shows creativity, imagination and curiosity in that we have not taken any resources out with us. Despite not having any resources the children have established many differing games for example the children found a stick that resembled a broomstick and used this to ride around the environment. The children have also had many opportunities to take risks for example the children have shown a lot of interest in climbing trees. The children have also found many differing bugs and insects; this has allowed us to explore how we can respect other living things and their environments and also shows their sense of wonder and interest in this new environment. The children are really enjoying this environment and we can wait to share all the learning that occurs throughout the term.

Over the coming few weeks we will be exploring identity with the children and what makes us who we are. We will also continue to support children’s social skills and encouraging children to interact verbally to express their feelings and ideas with others.

Kangaroos Update

Kangaroos Update

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Welcome back to term 2 at Elonera!

The Kangaroo children have settled back into life at kinder very enthusiastically. We have been having lots of discussion around the change of season, learning about Autumn and watching the colours change on the leaves. The children enjoyed collecting sticks and coloured leaves from the kinder yard to use in our artwork in the room.

The children have also been practising using their scissor skills in these colourful collages, to cut pieces of red, yellow, orange, brown and green paper, cellophane and tissue paper, and assembling them with natural materials to make their own Autumn tree artwork.

The children have been excitedly learning many new songs and it has been great to see their passion when participating in these. We are planning on extending and challenging this area with the children, including songs that involve music and movement, which helps develop children’s concentration, coordination, gross and fine motor skills, memory and early literacy skills.

The programmed learning experiences continue to develop with the children’s ever expanding needs, interests and abilities. Any input into this is always welcome, as learning is always enriched when it is based on real life experiences.

We always aim to include outdoor play as often as possible, even in inclement weather, providing it is safe to do so. A reminder to ensure warm clothes and/or a raincoat are brought to kinder each session to allow outdoor play to be a possibility.

 

Looking forward to a busy and exciting term ahead.

Kaitlyn, Jo and Lynne

Grounds Update

Grounds Update

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THANK YOU to all families who came to our extraordinary working bee on Sunday 23 April!

It was a fabulous day and we got a lot done! Garden beds moved, pirate ship painted, harmony garden painted, chalkboard holes dug and chalkboards installed! The harmony garden creek bed was completely cleaned out, and concrete laid, ready for our fabulous new hand pump. All on top of our regular maintenance jobs!

Thank you to all families who attended, many hands really does make light work.

We hope to have the harmony garden finished in the next couple of weeks, so it will be back in use with the new hand pump for our children to play and learn with.

Mosaic Preparation

For the next stage of our renovations in September, we will be working towards creating a large piece of mosaic art to liven up our entrance way. Please start to collect any old, broken or leftover tiles, china or crockery and mirrors – these can all be used to make mosaics, and the more colours and types we have, the better it will be!

We look forward to working with our children throughout Term 2 to bring this masterpiece together! We will shortly put a box in the foyer for you to drop pieces into.

Don’t forget to check your rostered dates for Grounds Duty – when all families attend, it really doesn’t take long at all.

Many thanks for your support

Michelle and Ines (Grounds Team 2017)

Elonera Pre School
P. 9580 2193
85 Davey St. Parkdale, VIC