first academy preschool childcare centre … room the koala room ... the easter party our wombat...

FIRST ACADEMY PRESCHOOL CHILDCARE CENTRE 35 Carinya Road Girraween 2145 Ph: 02 9863 2361 or 02 9863 4361 E-mail: [email protected]

March, April & May 2015

www.firstacademy.com.au

Dear Parents/Families/

Welcome back to the new edition of our 2015 newsletter, And welcome to many new families and their children

who joined our big First Academy family.

WINTER is here! and it announced itself with the cold and rain that we experienced during the past weeks. Please

parents, send your children with appropriate clothes that will protect them against winter illnesses also make sure

to pack up the extra clothing in their bags.

I would like to advise parents that the centre's website is posted and live on the internet and you may visit it at this

address www.firstacademy.com.au. We would appreciate your feedback about all or any part of it.

Referring to our recent Easter Party Celebration, thank you so much for joining us to celebrate Easter with the

Easter Bunny. I would especially like to acknowledge and thank, Sanaya and Aaliya’s family for a variety of delicious

food.

Centre educators and children have been extremely busy over the past few weeks; they explored many different

possibilities and processes to bring back natural play similar to what the educators remembered as children. They

were enthusiastically looking forward to being able to implement these ideas into our service to ensure that we are

continuing to maintain our standards of care providing you and your family with the high quality child care. They

also had an in-house incursion where the educators and children had a very special day.

Our educators have participated in many evening sessions, whole day training, and development seminars about

creating natural play environment for children and to make our children’s learning visible to a range of individuals

including families, children and communities.

I would like to say happy Mother's day to all the mums in the centre and wish them a nice and happy day to enjoy

and I would ask you Mums & Dads to join us at our Mother's day Morning Tea from 7.00am – 10.00am. We look

forward to sharing this special occasion with you soon on Friday, 8th May 2015.

Please feel free to call the centre or talk to any educator or me about your child or their care service at the centre.

Thank you

The Director

Important reminders:

• Sign in & Out: Please sign your child in to the centre as soon as you arrive in the

morning and before you leave. It is a legal requirement by Government, that all children are signed in and out of the centre each day. It is checked during an audit and a family’s childcare benefit or rebate may be withheld if your child’s attendance records are incomplete.

Medication: Please remember if your child needs medication administered to him or

her at the centre, we must have a completed Medication Form. This ensures that we are taking the best possible care of your child. Medication. Forms are available in each classroom.

Staying healthy in childcare: There tends to be more illnesses during the colder

months than others. To help keep our centre and our children healthy, if your child is showing signs of an illness or just general unwell, e.g., yellow-green runny nose, irritable coughing spams, unidentified spots/rash, please see your GP before dropping them off. If we notice any sign of illness with your child whilst they are in the centre, we will contact you to collect them as soon as possible.

What do I need to bring to school? We would also like to remind

parents about what each child needs to bring to school every day: a hat, sheets for rest/sleep time, at least one change of spare clothes (in case of accident or messy play), and




Kangaroo Room In the Kangaroo room we continue to work on our letter writing skills, letter recognition and phonics. We

have been using “Ants in the Apple” which is an Australian learning program, which focuses on phonics.

Learning to read and spell requires children to know the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and they

are able to match each alphabet sound to its corresponding letter symbol. The easiest way for children to

make this connection is by song memory cues associated with songs and pictures, which is the basis of

the “Ants in the Apple” program.

.

During the month of March, the kangaroos have been very busy learning about creatures under the sea

to coincide with sea week, St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Teddy bears picnic and Easter celebrations.

During this month’s learning project the kangaroos learnt about creatures under the sea. They used the

magnetic sea board to learn about the different animals as well as use their imagination to create

different scenarios with the magnetic sea creatures. They worked on their fine motor skills in the play-

dough sensory experience. The kangaroos along with their educators made blue play-dough, sea

animals and shell were then added to further enhance their experience. With the use of YouTube and

other website the Kangaroos were able to gather more information about sea life. The Kangaroos also

had many art experience which they were involved in making rainbow fish, colouring sea horses,

painting and decorating jellyfish,

At the end of our project we had “Rangers on the Run” come and visit the centre bringing live sea

animals. Rangers on the Run encourages learning about the incredible animals who call the ocean their

(4 nappies or pull-ups if required). All of these items need to be clearly labelled with your child’s first name and last name.




home. The Kangaroos got to hold live sea animals, examine specimen samples, and discover a large

variety of marine artefacts and shells. We investigated marine habitats, animal adaptations and learnt

how to reduce our impact on the marine environment. The show was totally interactive and allowed

every participant to hold and touch a large range of marine animals.

For St Patrick’s Day the Kangaroos were all involved in a cooking experience, making a traditional Irish

dish called soda bread, The Kangaroos were able to get very creative with three different crafts, shamrock

collage, rainbow painting and shamrock shape stamping. We used YouTube to look up Irish dancing, the

kangaroos then put on their dancing shoes and did an Irish jig to some traditional Irish music. In our play-

dough activity the Kangaroos used green play-dough and green shape cutters to make our day very

green.

For our teddy bears picnic, the Kangaroos brought in their teddies so we could all have a picnic together.

Before our picnic we used YouTube, to listen to a song about a teddy bears picnic, The Teddy Bear's

Picnic by Jimmy Kennedy. Next Miss Leigh read “The Teddy Bear” written by David McPhil. The story is

about a boy who goes out for lunch and accidently leaves his bear behind and only recalls when they

return home. The family search for the bear everywhere. We then brought out teddy bears outside to

enjoy a picnic. We had sandwiches with our teddies. The Kangaroos were all very eager to show one

another their special teddy friends they had brought from home.




The Kangaroos had been working on their Easter preformances. The preformed four songs of our Easter

Party, The Anustralian National Anthem, Jesus Cares for Me, A Gift to You and The Way The Bunny Hops.

The kangaroos are learning about reptiles, Educators have lots of fun and interesting activities to get all

the Kangaroos involved in the learning process. We will continue to work on our writing skills, phonics,

and letter and number recognition during our school readiness programs.

Koala Room

The koala room children learnt lots of skills throughout this month, the most important skills were sharing, turn taking and friendship. Throughout the month the koalas created a collage with all types of colours and patterns, this allows children to explore ideas and concepts and then express it by making something. The educators have encouraged the children to extend their thinking across multiple patterns of intelligence for example, the koala children were asked to identify different colours throughout the room. We also encourage to develop higher thinking skills through games and coloured puzzles. Koala children learnt other skills such as enhance multicultural understandings, build self-esteem by showing their work to the other children and gain positive emotional responses to learning. The children also participated in the Easter party celebrations, they were involved in singing, common dancing and also the Easter hat parade. We hope that Mums and Dads enjoyed their children's performance in the party.




Wombat Room We welcome Amala, Veer and their families to the Centre. We continued our Sea Creatures Project.

Decorating a variety of Sea Creatures. We decorated dolphins, crabs, starfish, fish and jellyfish, getting

very creative using cotton buds, cotton ball, paint brushes, tooth brushes and sponges to collage,

paintbrush paint or finger paint them. The also did a group painting to create an ocean background to

place all of their sea creature craft onto.

Children enjoyed playing, building with the Large Lego blocks, playing with the Magnetic blocks. Looking

at books some pointed and named various pictures. All babies loved and showed lots of interest playing

with the coloured balls, also catching the bubbles. During the outdoor play, children enjoyed taking

turns, with their peers on the bikes and on the push cars. Playing with the balls and the Hula hoops. Also

climbing and going down the slide.

The children participated in ST Patricks Day Craft. Aaliyah, Aarav and Meera decorated shamrocks with

green paint and then sprinkled glitter over the wet paint to make them sparkle. They also did some free

drawing with the different shades of green texters on green paper. The Wombat children have also

done a variety of Easter craft, they did bunny hand prints, egg toy printing, painting Easter bubby

pictures using a variety of coloured paint, sponge painting and colouring in Easter egg pictures. They also

decorated bunny ears gluing on cotton balls and sprinkling glitter to create Easter bunny hats to wear at

the Easter party Our Wombat children also enjoyed being able to perform ‘Little Peter Rabbit, ‘Miss Polly’

and ‘Sleeping Bunnies’ at the Easter Party with the Koala children.




Next Month we will be doing Transport Project.

Birthday Celebration (EYLF 1, NQS 5.1.1, 5.1.3 & 5.2.3)

A big ‘Happy Birthday’ to the children who have recently celebrated their birthday

or will celebrate theirs in the coming months.

March: Angel(17th), Aarav(19th), Nirushan(19th),Amala(28th),

April: Bhavmeet(23rd), Sanaya(17th), Charan(17th), Varnikka(25th), Aaliyah(20th) & Saina(21st)

May: Praneesh(22nd),

Policy Review (EYLF 1.1, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 & 5.5, NQS: 6.1.2, 6.1.3, 6.2.1, 7.3.1 & 7.3.5)

First Academy Child Care Centre has a variety of policies which guide our centre’s operation. In each newsletter, we will include some policies which needs to be reviewed and updated. Our full policies can be viewed at any time by our families. Our policy folder is kept in the foyer and you are most welcome to ask questions about our policies to educators.

1. Infectious Disease Policy 2. Knock-down Policy 3. Back care and manual handling Policy




Did you know?

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until they reach 2-6 years of

age.

Upcoming Events

May:

9th April ~ 15th May Farewell Shorebirds*

10th Mother’s Day

22nd Walk-safely-to-school Day

26th National Sorry Day

June:

3rd King & Queen’s Day

8th Queen’s Birthday

16th Pajama Day

18th Ramadan

* Did you know over 5 million shorebirds migrate from Australia to breed in the Arctic? To celebrate their journey,

Farewell Shorebirds is a nationwide event that will focus on the fascinating lives of shorebirds running from mid-

April until mid-May, concluding on World Migratory Bird Day.




Factual information to correct some common myths

&

Misconceptions surrounding head lice:

Myth 1: Having head lice is a sign of poor hygiene?

Head-lice are not that fuzzy. Clean, dirty, short, straight, curly – all they want is blood! In fact, if you think

about it logically, it is probably easier for head lice to move around in clean head – without bits of

dirt/dandruff to climb over!

Myth 2: Head lice can jump & fly from head to head?

Head lice have no wings (so they cannot fly!) and they cannot jump, either. They spread by ‘scurrying’ from

head to head, or affected item to head (e.g., brushes, hair clips, hats etc).

Myth 3: Head lice live for months – that’s why they are so hard to get rid of?

Head lice live for 4-5 weeks from nit (egg) to adult louse. Females lay 4-5 nits per day in the last two weeks of

their lives.

Myth 4: You catch head lice from birds and other animals?

Human head lice are ‘host specific’ – they feed off the blood beneath the human scalp alone.

Myth 5: If you have lice, your head will be itchy?

Many people with lice don’t itch. For those who do, the itchiness may not begin until a few weeks into the

infestation. Since head scratching isn’t always present as a warming sign, many expert suggest that parents

do periodic lice check on their children.

Information retrieved from www.banlice.com.au

Thank you for taking the time to read our centre newsletter.

Please remember our door is always open and that we value family participation across

all aspects of our program.

first academy preschool childcare centre … room the koala room ... the easter party our wombat...

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