HIGHWAY CHILD CARE & EARLY LEARNING CENTRE
NEWSLETTER August 2019
NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR
Established in 1945, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) is a not-for-profit, volunteer run organisation which aims to engage the community with literature for young Australians. Each year the (CBCA) brings children and books together to celebrate CBCA Book Week. The CBCA presents annual awards to books of literary merit, for outstanding contribution to Australian children’s literature. In 2015, the CBCA celebrated 70 years of enjoying and promoting the best of Australian literature for children and young people.
This year across our service all children are invited to bring with them their favourite story to share with their friends. All children are invited to also dress in their favourite story or characters theme any day, all week long if they wish to. Some planned learning experiences for the children are: creating a super hero, get away reading nook in the baby room and the preschool room are looking at finding the book ‘Heads and Tails’: Insects by John Canty which is in the category of book of the year for early childhood
DATES TO REMEMBER
Monday 19th Aug Book Week Begins, Theme is ‘Reading is my Super Power’
Thursday 29th Aug National Literacy & Numeracy
Week Begins
Sunday 1st Sept Father’s Day
Wed 4th Sept International Literacy Day
Friday 13th Sept Full Moon Festival
Thursday 19th Sept Talk like a Pirate Day Fundraiser
Tuesday 1st Oct Photo Day
Friday 4th Oct Space Week Begins
Sunday 27th Oct Diwali begins
Wed 30th Oct Parent night (This is the new date)
Monday 11th Nov National Recycling Week begins
Wed 4th Dec End of year Celebration/Party
Professional Development
The South Australian Collaborative Childhood Project aims to assert South Australia as a leader of early childhood education & child development, within Australia and the Asia Pacific, by making visible high-quality early childhood practices and policies. We are proud to have been apart of this journey since 2017. Jess T & Jasmine attended the final presentation day of the SA collaborative project on 30th July where we represented our Birth to three years educators (Baby room and Toddler room) and their journey of research with our youngest citizens over the past 12 months. As educators we have a strong pedagogical commitment to supporting children’s emotional wellbeing & ensuring that a sense of belonging & citizenship is promoted through our practices. We look forward to sharing this journey of research with you at our Parent night at the end of October.
Staffing
Lauren finished up last Friday (16th August) to embark on her next chapter to motherhood; we wish her well and look forward to meeting bubs in a few months’ time. Jasmine Harmer is on leave and returns Mon 2nd Sept. Jayanti, Bronte and Amanda will remain in the baby room and over the next 2 weeks will be joined by Loan who will support the team in a leadership role until Jasmine returns. A letter was recently given to all primary care givers to send home with each family, introducing two new experienced educators. We are excited to welcome Kelly and Desirae and have them as a part of our team.
Did You Know?
he dentist is coming Wednesday the 11th of September 2019. consent packs are read for all families
|
IMMUNISATION
Is your child up to date with immunisation?
Remember that children who are not immunised will be excluded during any outbreak of a government scheduled preventable illness within the centre
Sustainability
Sustainability fun facts
A used aluminum can takes only six to eight weeks to be recycled and appear back on the shelves.
Making glass from recycled material requires only 40% of the energy necessary to make glass from sand.
BABIES ROOM
Over the past few weeks the children have been discovering their own reflections in the new mirror blocks that we purchased. Louis and Alexander started to crawl up to it and smile at themselves, Louis looked in the mirror and he saw Purnota over the other side of the room, so he looked up at her and then back at the mirror and she was there again! He giggled with delight as he kept looking in the mirror and then back at his friend.
Sienna noticed that Tyler was in the bouncer playing with the rattle toys, she sat and watched him for a moment and then she had an idea, she got up and carried the wooden mirror and placed it next to him. Tyler smiled as he looked and then noticed himself in the mirror, Sienna bent down and joined him in looking in the mirror, she then looked back at Tyler with a smile on her face as if to say ‘you’re welcome’.
This relates to the Early Years Learning Framework outcome: 1 Children have a strong sense of identity.
Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect. Show interest in other children and being part of a group. Last week was Science week and the children had opportunities to join in some fun experiments e.g making cloud dough, gloop, slime, feeling different textures and making a volcano! This week is book week and we invite all the children to dress up as their favorite super hero and bring in their favorite book so we can read it and share it with everyone! We look forward to sharing more stories about these events on our face book page and in our next newsletter.
Lauren, Amanda, Bronte & Jayanti
TODDLER ROOM
Back in July the toddler room children celebrated NAIDOC Week. We spent time investigating Aboriginal symbols, their meanings & how they are represented in art works. Children had opportunities to express their own understandings of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags through the language of paint as they joined in mark making with the colours of the flags. This then flowed to national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s day on the 4th August ‘we play, we learn, we belong’. As we continued to research and learn together about the native culture of our land, we decided to make our own clapping sticks to add to our musical instruments for our center. This will also guide us in embedding this learning and cultural research as an ongoing aspect of our program planning and learning with the children and the community. Through this ongoing research we have been continuing to build on our knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal words and share some dreamtimes stories.
We also joined the babies in making some damper, that lead up to wonder if we could add in some Aboriginal herbs to make some more flavorsome choices and to our delight, they tasted very yummy with Aboriginal jam and we shared it with the older children in the preschool room as well.
Our other significant event was being a part of national tree day. The children had opportunities to learn more about the importance of our trees and our responsibility to care for them and our environment. Having already many large trees in our environment we decided to contribute to this day by planting seeds in our vegetable garden & planting some new flowers throughout our garden. This gave the children responsibility to be a part of taking care of our environment and to share the responsibility of keeping our garden beautiful.
This relates to the Early Years Learning Framework
Learning outcome I. Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active communication. This is evident, for example, when children begin to recognize that they have a right to belong to many communities.
Learning outcome 2. Children are connected with and contribute to their world. This is evident, for example, when children demonstrate an increasing knowledge of and respect for natural and constructed environments.
Zahra, Marie, Andrea & Madelyn
PRESCHOOL ROOM
This month in the Pre-school Room we have expanded our knowledge about different insects, celebrated NAIDOC week, started exploring different shadows with our projector and got hands on with our garden getting it ready for upcoming spring. With the changing of weather throughout winter our outdoor environment has changed and we have noticed the leaves falling from the trees, the cooler breeze, water from the rain and along with these changes we have seen an influx of insect activity! We have dug for different insects; we have turned over logs and wooden stumps to find insect activity and even found some in our sandpit. The constant finds have sparked many questions and stirred a curiosity about these living insects that share our outdoor environment with us. The children had found a Curl Grub outside and asked many questions; ‘Where is his home?’ asked Caleb, ‘What’s the brown stuff coming out of his mouth?’ asked Jasmine and ‘Why is his bottom bigger than his head?’ asked Abrahim. These questions sparked a mini investigation into what the Grub was, what does he like to eat? where is his home? and why does he look the way he does? ‘What should we call him?’ asked the Educator to the children. ‘Let’s call him Trug.’ said Noah as we embarked on our journey of new enquiries with Trug. The interest in Insects has led to an insect table in the pre-school room with photos of the children and their exploration along with some robotic insects, insect literature and some insects in resin for the children to investigate closer.
During Science week last week, we experimented with three main concepts over the week for the children to share their thoughts, ideas, theories and join in conversations together as the experiments came to life’.
Book week’s theme this year is ‘Reading is my secret power’, we will be looking at the different children’s literature nominated for the shortlisted books in these two categories: Book of the year early Childhood and the Picture Book of the year. We look forward to all of the children having the opportunity to come along in costume & bring along their favorite book from home to share.
This is working towards the Early Years Learning Framework, learning outcome 2: Children become socially responsible & show respect for the environment, children respond to diversity with respect & children become aware of fairness.
This is working towards the Early years learning framework, learning outcome 4: Children develop disposition for learning such as curiosity, creativity, enthusiasm, persistence and imagination
Vlora, Kylie, Brittany, Masooma, Sheridan & Loan
FOOD AND NUTRITION
Healthy Eating Pyramid
The Healthy Eating Pyramid is a simple visual guide to the types and proportion of foods that we should eat every day for good health. It contains the five core food groups, plus healthy fats, according to how much they contribute to a balanced diet based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines (2013).
The layers of the Healthy Eating Pyramid The foundation layers include the three plant-based food groups: vegetables and legumes, fruits, grains. These layers make up the largest portion of the Pyramid because plant foods should make up the largest portion of our diet – around 70% of what we eat. Plant foods contain a wide variety of nutrients like vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. They are also the main source of carbohydrates and fibre in our diet. Older children, teens and adults should aim to have at least 2 serves of fruit and 5 serves of vegetables or legumes each day. From the grain’s food group, choose mostly whole grains (such as brown rice, oats & quinoa), & wholemeal/ wholegrain/ high cereal fibre varieties of bread, pasta, crisp breads & cereal foods (over highly processed, refined varieties). The middle layer includes the milk, yoghurt, cheese & alternatives and the lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, legumes food groups. Foods in the milk, yoghurt, cheese & alternatives group primarily provide us with calcium and protein, plus other vitamins and minerals. This food group also refers to non-dairy options such as soy, rice or cereal milks which have at least 100mg per 100ml of added calcium. Choose reduced fat options of these foods to limit excess kilojoules from saturated fat. Foods in the lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, legumes section are our main sources of protein. But each food also provides a unique mix of nutrients, including iodine, iron, zinc, B12 vitamins and healthy fats. We should aim to have a variety of meat and non-meat options from this food group. The top layer refers to healthy fats because we need small amounts every day to support heart health and brain function. We should choose foods that contain healthy fats instead of foods that contain saturated fats and trans fats. Choose unrefined polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats from plant sources, such as extra virgin olive oil, nut and seed oils. Limit the amount of saturated fat you consume and avoid trans fats. We also get healthy fats from foods in the other food groups, such as avocados, nuts, seeds and fish, so we only need a little bit extra from oils and spreads each day.
Healthy Choice Beef Fried Rice
2 tspn sesame oil
400gm beef rump steak cut into thin strips
3 spring onions, thinly sliced
1 small carrot, finely diced
1 bunch of broccolini, trimmed, cut into 3 cm pieces
125gm can corn kernels, drained
100gm diced ham
3 tspn soy sauce
2 tspn white sesame seeds toasted
1 bunch of bok choy
400gm rice
Method
Heat water until boiling and cook rice.
Heat a frying pan over high heat. Add 1 tspn of oil and swirl to coat. Add half the steak and cook for 2 minutes or until browned. Transfer to a bowl. Repeat with remaining steak
Heat remaining oil. Add spring onion, carrot, broccolini and bok choy. Cook stirring for 2 minutes or until softened. Add corn, ham and cooled rice.
Return beef to pan with soy sauce and sesame oil. Toss until well combined and heated through. Top with sesame seeds. Serve
Lynn & Janet
Health Notices/News
Children’s dental care
Cleaning children’s teeth
* Start cleaning your baby’s teeth as soon as they come through using a clean cloth or a small, soft toothbrush
* Clean your baby’s teeth twice a day – each morning and before bed at night use a small soft toothbrush to clean your child’s teeth & gums
*children under 8 years old will need some help brushing their teeth.
Using fluoride toothpaste
* You do not need to use toothpaste until your baby is 18 months old. For children aged 18 months to five years, use a pea sized amount of low fluoride children’s toothpaste
*encourage your child to spit toothpaste out – but don’t rinse.
Tips to stop your child from getting tooth decay
* Breast milk is best. If you are not breast feeding use infant formula
* If your baby has a dummy, do not put anything sweet on it
* Clean your baby’s dummy under running water, not in your mouth
* put your baby to bed without a bottle
* do not put anything sweet in baby’s bottle or cup.
If you are bottle feeding
* take the bottle way when your child has finished feeding
* Baby should stop using the bottle by 1 year of age.
Food and drinks
Look for foods that are good for young teeth:
* choose healthy snacks such as fruit, vegetables, plain yoghurt and cheese
* Plain tap water is the best drink, avoid soft drinks, energy drinks, flavoured milk and cordial & limit juices
*reduce sweet biscuits, ice cream and cakes*
Where possible, choose sugar free medicines
Lift the lip
* lift your baby’s top lip once a month to look for early signs of decay
* White lines along the gum line can be the beginning of tooth decay
* If identified early, the progress of decay can be prevented. Please seek dental advice if you notice any changes in your baby’s teeth. You can make an appointment for your child from 12 months of age, check the SA Dental Service clinic list (PDF 43KB)(opens in a new window) to find your closest clinic