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 October 2018
NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

As you are aware, Janine the Director has moved on to other opportunities after 12 years. We appreciate all that Janine brought to the Centre and wish her well in her new venture.

Also I am excited to announce that Jess Towe has been appointed to the position of Director and the Educators and I am very excited to be working with such a knowledgeable and skilled leader. In addition, Jasmine Harmer has been appointed to the role of Assistant Director and Co Educational Leader with Jess.
Both are very skilled and supported completely by the whole team and I know will uphold children’s rights and continue with our Reggio Emilia journey.

Carpark
For some time now we have been attempting to provide safe off street car parking for families. We are delighted to let you know that we are purchasing the house at the rear of the Centre and have had plans made to demolish the house and have a gated carpark for staff and parents when they drop off and collect children.
The plans are currently before Salisbury Council and hopefully once approved we will progress quickly.
We will keep you updated.
Judy Atkinson
Approved Provider
Hi everyone, many of you have known me for a few years, I have been a part of this fabulous team here at
Highway for 16 years now and I am both proud and honored to take on this new challenge of being the Director. Coming up next week we are having our annual parent evening, this will be a great night and the educators from each room are finalizing their presentations for the evening. They are looking forward to sharing with you their project learning that they have embarked on with the children this year, you will also have the opportunity to catch up with your families Primary care giver and have a look at your child’s journey of learning in their learning folder. At the beginning of next month we will be having our Grandparents and special friend’s day – this is a wonderful opportunity for the children to invite their families to come and play, have some afternoon tea that the children and educators prepare in the morning and share in our beautiful garden and play spaces.

As you wander through our garden you will notice a lot more colour, one of our goals is to share our love for our natural environment with the children and use this as a research project together. Loan is the lead educator driving this project and there is so much to learn about plants and flowers. Currently we are researching the life cycle of vegetable plants for example Mustard leaves and snow peas and just last week Loan and the children planted corn, the first focus we have is how to care for and look after our plants. Our aim is to share knowledge and learn about the plants and to gain an understanding of their importance in the environment and to us.
DATES TO REMEMBER
Wed 24th October Parent Night

Fri 9th Nov Grandparents and special friends day
Wed 5th Dec End of Year Party
Staffing
You may have noticed some new faces around the center. We are delighted to say that we have converted 2 of our casual qualified educators to permanent, their names are Masooma Juma and Iqbal Sandhu, they are continuing to get to know all of our families and children and both are working as part of our team to maintain collaborative partnerships with families to build a strong, inclusive community within our service. We will soon be updating our Educator photos wall in the front foyer to reflect our current team, highlighting their qualifications and professional development skills…. Watch that space
Professional Development
At the beginning of November this year, Jess Towe and Judy Atkinson are travelling to Italy to join a study tour in Reggio Emilia. The purpose of this trip is to gather a more in-depth understanding and knowledge of the Reggio Emilia Approach to learning and teaching in the early childhood years.

This brings me to our center research project, over the past 18months we have been on a journey of research in collaboration with other centers in SA. This is a continuous journey that supports the rights of each child as a citizen from birth, viewing the child as competent & connected to adults and other children, and in a perpetual state of active learning.

I am delighted to inform you that we have been selected to continue this journey of research together for another 12 months. We will be collaborating as a team and with other services to build a collaborative culture across the sector, researching the Reggio Emilia Principles in order to consider how these principles inspire us and our Pedagogy and practices
Did You Know?
Our service is committed to improving outcomes for children. Our educators are responsible for mentoring students in the Centre and ensuring that they role model the highest quality practice. We support a range of organisations in their training of future educators such as Flinders University, Magill University, and Child Care Services Training.
We also recognize that students bring new perspectives and learning into our practice which can be inspiring.
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

Sustainability
Why sustainability?
The National Quality Standard 3.3 requires the service to take an active role in caring for its environment and contribute to a sustainable future.
Children develop positive attitudes and values by engaging in learning experiences, joining discussions that explore solutions to the issues we face, and watching adults around them model sustainable practices.
What is sustainability?
Sustainable practices are things we can do to help our communities, suburbs, towns, cities, farms, parks and open spaces. The best way to help children to care about the environment is to start in our own back yard. One person can make a difference in the world, a group of people making small changes can have a bigger impact.
How can you help the environment simply?
. Put rubbish in the bin
. Turn lights off
. Recycle
. Plant native trees
. Composting
. Walk to school or childcare if possible
. Use public transport
. Reusing
. Collect water from shower and bath
. Don’t use standby mode
. Buy recycled products
. Use green / blue bags when shopping
. Short showers
. Food scrap bins
. Drip irrigation for garden
BABIES ROOM
The under twos room are continuing our journey of research in collaboration with the toddler room. Our research is a part of the South Australian Collaborative childhood project and is based the image of the child and childhood. As we reflect on the principles of Reggio Emilia we listen to the children and see them through our professional lens of ‘children are competent and capable citizens within their community’. As a focus point in the under 2’s room we are looking and listening to the relationships the children are developing together. Through developing friendships, we have noticed that the babies have been showing us just how caring and compassionate they can be towards each other, offering comfort to the younger babies when they get a little sad. One example of this was Elliana, she walked over to one of her new friends in the room and started a game of peek-a-boo, and she placed the blanket over her own head. She pulled it off really fast and giggled as she looked at her new friend with delight, inviting her to play the game.

With spring here we are looking forward to spending more time outdoors, to replanting in our vertical garden and participating in the garden project with the children across the centre. We also look forward to the ideas that the babies will share with us as they discover the feel of the grass and leaves and natural space of our garden. In order for us to maximise the children’s opportunities to participate, it is really important to remember to provide a hat for your child as the UV rating increases daily.
We celebrated the Full Moon Festival on the 25th September, the children in the baby room love listening to music, they shared their delight with us as they turned to listen to the different music from across the world and then began to move and dance to the different rhythms of culture and tradition. What a fabulous way for us to be connected with and contribute to the world around us.
This relates to the Early Years Framework, Outcome 2. Children are connected with and contribute to their world by exploring the diversity of culture, heritage, background and tradition and that diversity presents opportunities for choices and new understandings.

Lauren, Amanda, Andrea & Bronte
2 – 3 YEAR OLD ROOM
We are continuing our journey as a part of ‘The South Australian Collaborative Childhood Project’ through collaborating with other services about the journey of South Australia and making children rights visible. This involves advocating for children’s rights as citizens from birth, first and foremost possessing the right to be respected and valued in his or her own identity, uniqueness, difference and in his or her own rhythms of growth and development. Our focus point in the toddler room is to have an active attitude of listening; this gives each child the space and time to share with us their ideas, their knowledge and to learn together, here are some examples of our competent citizens: the children have been exploring the garden, noticing that the trees have new leaves. Loan bought us in some bases/bulbs from some bok choy that she had used. She researched with the children about the bulbs and together they replanted them and talked about what other vegetables could we try and regrow? This led to the children continuing to love and care for our natural environment as they helped to plant the bok choy and are watering it, we hope to watch it grow in the upcoming weeks.
We would love to grow our community wall in the toddler room. We invite you to bring in photos of your Family, pets, your home, places you like to visit in the community and any new ideas you would like to contribute. This supports community conversations as the children see their families, their homes and then use many ways to tell us their stories.
This relates to Learning outcome 2. Children are connected with and contribute to their world.
Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active communication.

Jasmine, Zahra & Marie
PRESCHOOL
This year for Father’s Day the children made salt dough handprints and placed a photo of themselves in the middle. Then they mixed 2 cups of flour, one cup of salt and ¾ of a cup of water. Once the children had created their handprints they were placed on a tray in the oven to bake. The children were delighted to participate in the process of making their own handprint as a gift.
Spring has sprung and we have noticed our fruit trees in the preschool room have begun to blossom and are beginning to grow new leaves, which brings me to sustainability. As part of the preschool program we have been researching with children how they can contribute to caring for our earth by waste sorting to reduce what goes in landfill, recycling food scraps to create healthy soil, turning off taps to conserve water. Over the last two months, the children have planted snow peas and a range of seasonal vegetables in the garden. We are supporting the children to share a love for caring for our environment and looking after the snow peas is a big part of that. We water them each day and look closely to see if they have grown. After several weeks we realized that they had grown so much and we needed to help them to get tall. Through more research with the children we decided to support the plants with sticks to aid growth. “The stick should be next to the plant then I need some string to place around so it will stay straight” said Spencer and Ivy. “That’s a good idea” I replied. “Vlora can you show me how to do it, is very tricky to make a knot” Zayne said, “I am putting the stick in the ground very carefully because I don’t want to damage the root” said Emily, “Let’s get some water from rain water tank to water the plant” said Ivy and Spencer “I used my left water from the cup to water the plants” said Zayne
Oliver and Brenden using bamboo sticks to support snow peas
Sharing the experience of growing food with peers and educators encourages a sense of belonging and responsibility. Planting a seed is a careful cognitive process, especially when understanding how deep to plant a snow pea seed. Dexterity skills are developed when carefully picking up the tiny snow pea seed and sowing it in the soil. The work children have put in the community preschool garden has given them opportunities to problem solve, make estimation and comparisons, count, sort, communicate and work together collaboratively. Over the next few weeks we will continue with Garden project and our small group time where preschool children will participate in literacy and numeracy concepts experiences. This is an important time for us to come together as group learn and investigate together. It also assists the children to develop their concentration and attention spans. We will also continue our visits to the school library throughout the term.
Vlora, Kylie & Loan & Brittany
FOOD AND NUTRITION

If we don’t eat food, then our bodies don’t work.
If we don’t eat the right food, our bodies don’t work as well as they can.
Healthy food gives our bodies the tools they need to: build bones and muscles, repair and replace worn out cells, keep all systems working and keep us healthy.
So it is really important that we give our bodies the right kinds of food to do the job. Bread, cereal, rice, pasta and noodles group – This is one of the two biggest parts of the pie chart because you need to choose a lot of your daily food from here. You get: Carbohydrates, B vitamins, some Calcium, Iron, and Fiber. You need 4-5 servings of these every day. Vegetables and legumes, if you Look at the pie chart to find out what they are. The pie chart shows that these are a very important part of our diet too. Lots of vegetables and legumes are very good for you, and there are lots of different ones around. You get: Vitamins and minerals, Carbohydrates, Fiber. You need 4 or 5 servings of these every day. Fruit there are many different fruits, including canned and dried, so it is pretty easy to eat plenty. You get: Vitamins, Carbohydrates, Fiber, and Minerals. You need 2 or 3 servings every day. Milk, yoghurt and cheese group
This group is pretty important for growing kids. You get: Calcium, Protein, Vitamins. You need 2 to 4 servings every day. Meat, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, nuts and legumes, this group is just as important to keep you healthy, but you can see from the size of the serving on the plate that your body needs less of them than vegetables and carbohydrates. You get: Protein, Iron, Vitamins, and Minerals. You need 1 to 2 servings from this group each day.

Muffin pizzas
Making small pizzas on muffins is really easy and they taste great, just add your favourite toppings.
Ingredients
6 English muffins (split in half)
1 cup passata/ tomato paste
3 cups mozzarella (grated)
Toppings
Ham
Capsicum
Mushroom
Pineapple
Whatever toppings you like
Method
1. Preheat the oven 180C.
2. Sprinkle the mozzarella on at the end.
3. Cook for approx 10 mins to melt the cheese. Lynn & Nicole