HIGHWAY CHILD CARE & EARLY LEARNING CENTRE
OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU
Your child’s enjoyment is our number one concern.
Each of our team will take personal responsibility to ensure that your child has an enjoyable experience at our Centre.
Please let us know if anything is wrong as we will endeavour to fix it for you, or if we can do anything to make your
child’s experience more enjoyable. We hope you and your child enjoy your time with us.
NEWSLETTER August 2018
NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

August is one of the busiest times of the year and one of the most exciting times. We participated in Science Week with our children and preschool in particular have begun looking at underwater creatures and insects.

Ask the children about the new turtles, stingrays and whales they have in their room.
Book Week
We celebrated Book Week with lots of exciting ideas on Treasure.
The 2018 theme is “Find Your Treasure”.
Our baby room will celebrate by telling new stories for the children and nurturing a love of story time with adults.

What Is Treasure?
Something we hold dear…?
Something we enjoy…?
Someone…?
Memories…?

Have you thought about what children Treasure?
We had many experiences planned for the week with
Pre-school children making a trip to the library; to children having a character parade each day at 11am. Toddler and preschool children will participated treasure hunts and following maps, and eventually finding their own treasure.
Get ready to dress up as your favourite story character for Book Week on Friday 24th August 2018
DATES TO REMEMBER
Mon 23rd July Term Three starts
Sat 11th –Sun 19th Aug Science Week
Sat 18th August Book Week:
Theme: Find Your Treasure
Tues 25th Sept Photo Day
Wed 17th October Parent Night
Thurs 3rd Nov Grandparents and special friends day
Wed 5th Dec End of Year Party

Staffing
Jasmine will be away from July until the 3rd September. During this time Loan and Jayanti will be caring for her group.
Lynn will be away from the 23rd August and returning on the 23rd September during this time Nicole and Masooma will be cooking for the children
Professional Development

In July we were successful in applying to continue the Re-Imagining Childhood: Birth to 3 years project. This means that we will continue to focus our program on the rights of young children and what it means to be a citizen in our Salisbury community when you’re very young.
A few of our educators were fortunate enough to see Carla Rinaldi –author of Re-imagining Childhood present samples of the work done in Reggio Emilia with the infant toddler centres. This is inspirational in our work at the moment.
For our parent night this year we will be presenting the work we have done with children through the course of this project.
Stay tuned for more information about the project and parent night. We look forward to seeing everyone there.

Did You Know?
Changing Bookings
If you change your permanent booking you must fill in a Complying Written Agreement (CWA) and go into your MyGov account and confirm the new booking

All other changes to bookings such as casual days and holidays go on the usual variation form found in the foyer of the front office.

Activity Tests for Families
Most families will have their information sorted with Centrelink by now and be up and running with the new Child Care Subsidy.
There are still some families having who did not apply for enough hours in their work activity questions so just to remind you here are the things you need to consider:
What are the hours of work you do; including travel time to and from work
Are you self employed- what hours do you need care
Are you doing unpaid work in a family business
Are you undertaking training to improve work skills
Are you undertaking a course of study
Are you volunteering anywhere; reading at the school, church activities
Are you actively looking for work

You can update and change your activity hours at any time via your MyGov account or MyGov app on your phone.

Parent Committee
We are always looking for parents to join our parent committee.
In 2018 we would like to have meetings once per month. The meetings would be from half an hour to 1 hour long.
AS we are embarking on a new journey within our service curriculum development it would be a great advantage to have parents’ input in this.
You would be very welcome.

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

BABIES ROOM

Over the past month in the baby room we have been busy playing group games including: row, row, row your boat, round and round the garden, and a variety of ball games. Hazel loves to do row, row, row, your boat giggling with delight as she tickles her friends at the end of the song.
Another game that has been quite popular has been round and round the garden. If Estella hears the song being sung she quickly sits next to her friend, holds out her hand, uses her other hand to trace around the palm of her hand, showing that she’d like a turn too.
On cue, Lauren sings the song and Hazel traces her finger around Estella’s hand. Estella giggles with delight as she gets tickles under her arm.

This links to the Early Years Learning Framework outcome: 1
Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.
These experiences link closely to the birth to three project. We can see the development of the model for empathy, cooperation and respect now and in the future and we take the opportunity to nurture that development through play.

Lauren, Amanda, Lisa & Bronte
2 – 3 YEAR OLD ROOM
Toddler children have been busy in our garden area over these past weeks .We have been planting and looking after our new herb garden. We planted snow peas, parley and mint We have been checking in each day to watch the seeds grow. When they are ready for cooking, we will take them to the kitchen for Nicole or Lynn to use in our lunch.

This next story was a big adventure that began with Kolang, he found many round log pieces in the garden & decided to pick one up, then he looked around & decided to put the log piece up onto the pallet platform. He paused & looked at the log smiling, he ran off to collect another one. Xavier was close by watching on, he decided to join Kolang & began to collect log pieces as well, & one by one the platform was filling up. Kolang noticed that Xavier was following his idea & smiled at his friend, soon Pride, Mia, Eli & Aury saw what was happening & decided that they too would love to help. Together the group worked, collecting logs, waiting for each other and finding space to put more logs on, all of a sudden the platform was filling up, the logs were harder to find and soon they realised that every piece had been used. There were more ideas to come…

Everyone climbed onto a log and began to balance, the children stepped from log to log, carefully waiting and looking at each other to stay together in the game, it was a lot of fun and took a lot of time but in the end as they stepped on and then jumped off, Kolang, Xavier, Pride, Eli & Mia clapped & cheered as they had succeeded in their mission.
This relates to the Early Years Learning framework; Practice – learning through play: Play provides opportunities for children to learn as they discover, create, improvise and imagine. When children play with other children they create social groups, test out ideas, challenge each other’s thinking and build new understandings. (Belonging, Being & Becoming page 15)

Reminder
Please remember to pack plenty of spare clothes and hat for your child to enable them to have the option to play in the garden area.
If your child is toilet training you will need to provide extra underwear and socks, and plenty of changes of clothes in case of accidents.
You are welcome to join us at any time and come along with us as we test out our ideas in play.

Jess.T, Jasmine & Zahra
PRESCHOOL

Term three began and the preschool room children continued with their love and interest for nature. Our outdoor environment is designed for children to try out their physical skills using their gross motor muscles, their balance and coordination, as they climb and test new boundaries, and spatial awareness as they hide, swing, build and ride, within a safe environment.
We have balancing beams, bridges, rocks, planks, sand, mud and trees for shade. We often have mat time and sing outside under a tree or share a picnic lunch made with as little paper rubbish to dispose of.
Children are taught how to wash their hands with soap and to conserve water.
We create toys from natural materials collected by children, parents and teachers and incorporate them into the program.
Involving Children in Sustainability and recycling is not new, but something we will continue to reinforce through intentional teaching.
When we introduce the word ‘sustainability’ and discuss this with the children they knew a great deal about the actions they took that contributed to the preservation of our resources.
This is what our children knew and understood about their actions: ‘Look after our garden. Planting’ Amelia ‘we put paper and cardboard in the blue bin so we re-use them
‘Saanvi ‘We don’t squash the garden. And the clouds won’t get water so they can’t rain. We don’t rip our books. Daddy turns the water off when we brush our teeth’ Felix When asked how can we be more sustainable in our everyday life? ‘We put scrap paper in the blue bin’ Felix We tip our left water in the garden’ Kody, Logan ‘We open the door to get fresh air’ Felix ‘When I go somewhere else my mummy turns the TV off ‘ Felix

This learning relates to EYLF Outcome 2: children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment

For Book Week we went out to the Library to engage with their Story Telling Time.
We heard some wonderful stories and played a game where we had to search the library building for the characters from familiar stories.
It was great fun!
We travelled on the center bus and children were able to identify familiar signs as we drove to the library.

This supports   EYLF Outcomes 2.1.4 children can develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation. This is evident when children broaden their understanding of the world they live in. EYLF Outcome 5.2.7 Child actively uses, engages with and share the enjoyment of language and texts in a range of ways and To ensure we have a clean and beautiful earth to live in we will continue to encourage and engage the children in extended conversations that support their own understanding of the world and the environments around them. We provide many natural elements aimed to assist children to understand the natural world they live in and the care that it requires.

In the upcoming weeks, we will celebrate Book Week and we will give more information in the near future.
Looking forward to the next month learning, growth and laughter.
Vlora, Kylie & Loan & Brittany

FOOD AND NUTRITION

Fussy Eaters
You already know that eating a balanced diet is best for your child.
Through a little bit of deception you can add vitamins and minerals to your child’s meals.
The perfect place to begin is to identify what your child likes to eat now. Make a list and use this as a foundation from which to grow their food choices.
Even the fussiest eaters have a selection of foods that they enjoy.
Choose a couple of recipes and stick to them for a while. If you offer too many different types of food then you run the risk of confusing them. You may have to offer the same meal up[ to ten times before they accept it.
The following recipe for chicken noodle soup is part of our new winter menu. Hopefully the children will enjoy it because they love pasta.
Chicken Noodle Soup
1 onion finely diced
300gm diced or minced chicken
1 grated carrot
310g tin of creamed corn
2 tbsn of reduced salt chicken stock powder
1 packet of spaghetti

Fry the onion and chicken until thoroughly cooked in a non stick saucepan (or use a little cooking spray in a standard saucepan).
Add the rest of the ingredients except the spaghetti.
Bring to the boil and simmer for about ½ hour until the carrot has gone very soft.
Break the spaghetti into short pieces and ad to the soup.
Cook for approximately 20 minutes until soft. Serve with wholemeal bread for dipping.
Lynn