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TERM 3 NEWSLETTER 2015 Learning & Teaching Update

Program communication - This term we have introduced ‘Storypark’ which has proved to be a great communication tool for our kindergarten community. The educators have hit the ground

running with reflections and stories about the content of the children’s program and offering regular updates on individual children’s development. It has been so insightful reading the posts and comments that families have shared about their children. What a great way to build partnerships in our kindergarten community! Please feel free to offer any suggestions or ideas about Storypark or the way the program is communicated.

HRK Philosophy – In August the educators attended their last professional development session around reviewing the Home Road Kindergarten philosophy. We have taken into account the staff’s passions, strengths and aspirations. We have also sought feedback from the children and incorporated the amazing work our dedicated committee do for our kindergarten. We would love to hear any feedback and ideas about how our kindergarten community looks and feels to our families.

Transition statements – Next term the educators will be completing a transition statement for every child in 4 year old kinder who will be moving onto school in 2016. The transition statements are a strength based document written by your kindergarten teacher. It gives a summary of your child’s strengths and interests. It is a great tool for outlining any strategies used to support your child’s transition to school. Part 1 of this document requires a family member to offer input about their child. Keep an eye out as this will be emailed to you shortly. We are aiming to have the transition statements passed onto the schools by November. Please speak to your child’s kindergarten teacher if you have any questions or queries regarding this process.

A huge thank-you to all the families who have volunteered their time to support the educators to run a high quality kindergarten for our community of learners. Have a safe and happy term break and we look forward to seeing you back for our last term in 2015.

Liz Dullard, Educational Leader

BLUE GROUPAs the end of Term 3 nears, we look back on what we got up to and how come it went by so fast!

Robots: Blue group became very interested in robots. We’d spent some time making robots out of Mobilo last term and this term took it to the next level by creating our very own room robot. We collected boxes and had a discussion about what colour to paint it, then there was some controversy over whether it was a boy or girl robot! One of the children very diplomatically suggested one side of the box be a boy and the other a girl. We did some research into the different types of robots; ones that make cars, ones that go into space and ones that helped us at home!

African Drumming Incursion: We were very lucky to be able to offer this incursion. We learnt about the different types of African drums and other musical instruments. We all had a turn of playing the drums along to an African song sung by our facilitator as well as learning to sing a

different African song. Fortunately we have a few African drums of our own and so following on from this incursion they were placed outside where there was a lot of singing and drumming for the next following weeks.

Leah, our pre-service teacher: We had the pleasure of having Leah in our room for 5 weeks while she completed her fourth year placement. She took over programming and implemented some wonderful experiences for the group, such as paper making, colour exploration on the light table, traffic school extension in the block area, coaching footy games outside and whole body listening during group times. The children really enjoyed having her here with us and we were very sad when her time with us was over. Thank you Leah for all your hard work!

Traffic School Excursion: We were so excited about our excursion to the Essendon Traffic School. The weather was on our side as well, as although it was a little chilly we didn’t get wet. Leading up to the excursion we talked about what road signs we see out and about and what they mean. We set up a mini HRK traffic school in the yard and the children enjoyed being the traffic lights, being the lollypop person and holding the ‘stop’ sign and practicing crossing at the zebra crossing. We generally had pretty good drivers on the bikes, as they stopped when needed and there were no accidents. On the excursion day, the children had so many questions, though the most popular one was, “is the bus here yet!?” They had a great time riding the bikes around the traffic school and following the road signs and rules.

Book Week: Following on from our Premier’s Reading Challenge, we took part in the Book Week celebrations. We came to kinder dressed as our favourite book character. It was a lot of fun and great to see such a variety of characters!

Responsible Pet Ownership Incursion: Nikola and Rueben came to visit us and talked to us about how to stay safe around dogs. We learnt how to safely approach a dog and ask the owner if we wanted to pat it. “No lead, no owner, no touch” was the slogan of the session and it’s wonderful to hear the children repeating it days after the incursion.

Father’s Day: We invited our Dads to kinder and shared our favourite experiences with them. It was a fun morning and it was lovely to see so many Dads spending time with their children at kinder. Thank you to all who could make it! Miss Nicole and Mrs Grace

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TERM 3 NEWSLETTER 2015 RED GROUP

We started the term with a strong focus on developing

the children’s social and emotional skills, through introducing social stories about feelings and class expectations. The children

responded really well to a puppet (Tucker the turtle), who had difficulty regulating his emotions. They came up

with solutions for Tucker to work collaboratively and deal with frustration in a fair manner. We developed three important class rules at kindergarten; Be kind, Be safe and Be careful with our things.

The kindergarten program had a huge focus on science this term. We

conducted a number of hands on experiments to support the children’s understanding of the water cycle, volcanos, floating / sinking and light. The children learnt about the ‘international year of light’,

which opened up many avenues for investigating inquiry questions about light, colour and shadows. This learning concept was also explored through storytelling, art, literature and numeracy activities. The children identified primary colours in our environment and

enjoyed experimenting with colour mixing experiences to create secondary colours.

Leading up to Book Week the children explored book characters through listening to a series of ‘Elmer the patchwork elephant’ books. This led to

a beautiful art project. We intentionally encouraged

the children to draw their own version of Elmer, rather than using a template. It was so impressive to hear the

collaborative conversations and helpful support that the children offered one another as

they considered Elmer’s shape, size and features (legs, head, large ears, small tail and long trunk). The children enthusiastically used a ruler to create squares and lines for Elmer’s patchwork. Making their own patterns allowed children an opportunity to get creative with coloring,

drawing and pasting.

Father’s Day was a wonderful morning for the children to share time with

their Dads at kindergarten. It was clear to see where the children get their imagination and creativity!! They worked with their Dads and Grandparents to design amazing paper planes, skyscrapers from blocks, Lego, box construction and works of art (paintings and drawings). Some children's Dad's couldn't make it on the day, but it was great to see how

inclusive our kindergarten community is as the children introduced their friends to their Dad and shared stories and games together.

Next term we aim to support and prepare the red group children to transition into school. We will continue to challenge the children by building on their strengths and interests to further develop their independence, resilience and sense of agency.

Have a lovely holiday break and we will see you all next term! Miss Liz, Miss Amelia, Miss Sandra and Miss Rachael

ORANGE GROUPWelcome to our third term newsletter for 2015 and what a fabulous term it has been for Orange group. The children have continued to demonstrate their love of learning this term by taking on new and exciting challenges and experiences within our program.

This term, Orange Group were introduced to our new ‘Once Upon a Time’ Story Telling Bag as a part of our group time show and tell. The children have been given the opportunity to use the two story stones provided to create their very own stories. This has allowed for the children to further their love for literacy and demonstrate their amazing creative and imaginative skills!

We have also been heavily engaged in a ‘Save the Koalas’ fundraising project which developed during our discussions about NAIDOC week! After we discovered that

the Koala was in danger of extinction, the children were quick to jump into action! We organised our very own Koala fundraising stall and invited the community and families to support us! During the stall, we also premiered our ‘Save the Koala’ stop motion animation that we had created. We were blown away by the support we received and the incredible $410 dollars that we raised! Well done!!

During our koala project, we wrote a letter to the Minister of Environment, Lisa Neville expressing the importance of the ‘Koala Protection Act’. Along with our cheque to the Australian Koala Foundation, we posted this letter during our very first walking

excursion! During our excursion, the children were given the opportunity to record their observations and share their ideas with numbers, letters and the overall community playing a huge focus. We made a stop at the post office where we purchased our stamps and enjoyed a snack and a play at the local park!

We have also been in preparations for our beach excursion next term by engaging in a variety of safety talks! We were lucky to have Shay from Metro Trains come out and speak to us about train and platform safety. She

taught us some very important rules when we are using trains!

Shawn, Lila R’s dad also spent some time with us discussing pool and beach safety. We learnt some very important water safety tips such as; never swim alone and what to do if someone we know needs help in the water. Thanks to Shawn for providing us with these important life skills!

Orange group really enjoyed having their dads visit kinder for our Father’s Day celebrations and we are looking forward to our upcoming Sports Day on the last day of Term! We hope you have a wonderful break and we will see you all in Term 4. Can you believe how quickly the year has flown! (We sure can’t!) Miss Alyce & Ms Melanie

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TERM 3 NEWSLETTER 2015 AQUA GROUP

We are nearly at the end of another successful term. The quiet children who started off with us at the beginning of the year are no longer quiet and shy!!! They have certainly gained in confidence and in their social skills. The term has been very busy with special highlights being African Drumming, Responsible Pet Ownership, celebrating Book Week and our Father’s Day events as well as our upcoming Sports day at the end of the term. The children enjoyed our African Drumming incursion. They learned a little of African culture and native animals as well as rhythms and music. The Responsible Pet Ownership incursion was a valuable teaching tool regarding approaching strange dogs and what to do when threatened by a strange dog.

Book Week celebrations were a hit with the children as they dressed up in their favourite story book characters and educators were able to read their books thus

highlighting the joys of reading and early literacy in general.

Thank you to all our dads whom attended our Father’s Day celebrations. The children were so excited to have you stay and were thrilled to give you their hand made presents which were made with a great deal of love. Our program has included

science experiments – sound, colour experimentation, planting/growth, small creatures, lots of role playing – the garage, at the vet/hairdresser and of course family living.

The children have been challenged with various activities including threading, weaving and becoming confident in using a wide variety of tools in their creative projects. Thank you to all our very special parents for your ongoing support Mrs James and Mrs Dianne

YELLOW GROUPWelcome to our third term newsletter for 2015 and what a fabulous term it has been for Yellow group. The children have continued to demonstrate their love of learning this term by taking on new and exciting challenges and experiences within our program.

This term, Yellow Group were introduced to daily science experiments during our group times and they have proven to be incredibly popular! The children have loved taking on the role of the ‘Science Lab Assistant’

and helping Miss Alyce conduct the experiments. Our personal favourite had to be the ‘Tea Bag Rocket’ which amazed even the parents! We have also developed a real interest in literacy this term, in particular name and letter recognition. The children have enjoyed expanding their knowledge in this area by engaging in a variety of challenging but fun experiences such as salt tracing and name pasting. We also really enjoyed our visit from Ben from Wild Action Animals. We loved meeting all of the amazing animals and having the opportunity to touch and feel them. Ms Melanie was super lucky and got to feed a baby joey some milk. The children demonstrated respect and care for the animals and their desire to learn more about Australian animals.

Book Week was another hit in Yellow Group as the children dressed up as their favourite characters and shared their favourite books with their peers! We even read some of the shortlisted picture books for 2015 which were enjoyed by all. We were blown away with how amazing the children looked in their costumes and give credit to the parents for organising this for them. Well done!

Yellow group really enjoyed having their dads at kinder for our Father’s Day celebrations and we are looking forward to our Sports Day next week! We hope you have a wonderful break and we will see you all in Term 4! Can you believe how quickly the year has flown! (We sure can’t!) Miss Alyce, Ms Melanie and Ms Mary

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TERM 3 NEWSLETTER 2015 GREEN GROUP

Wow, it’s hard to believe that term 3 is almost over and in another term your children will be entering their big year of 4 year old kinder. I just wanted to start with a very big thank you to all of the green group families for welcoming me as your child’s kinder teacher for the rest of the year, it really has been a seamless transition and your children are an absolute pleasure to teach.

It has only been a term but I have already seen the children grow and develop independence throughout the kinder session. The children are concentrating for longer at activities, following directions

better and having some lovely interactions with their peers. We have spent most of the term making some small tweaks to our kinder routine so the children are more settled and can make predicted changes through the session. This has included starting our Tuesday’s session indoors and having a play together outdoors after snack and starting outdoors on our Thursday sessions and staying indoors after snack. We have also been using lots of visual cues to remind the children of upcoming changes. We have been learning about Australian animals and have looked at certain aspects of our

Australian heritage through Aboriginal art, music and movement and learning more in-depth about our Australian animals, their habitats and what they like to eat. The children have also had some emerging interests in pirates and colour mixing over the last few weeks of this term so we have created lots of learning opportunities for them to gain knowledge of rainbows and how we can mix up primary colours to make new colours. Some group highlights this term have been Book Week and Father’s day. The children loved sharing their favourite books and telling us about their dress up characters and they loved sharing their kinder environment with their daddies. We have also been working really hard with the group at mat times, to get everyone to participate and have fun at these times. We have introduced some new group games and songs to ensure all of the children are having a turn and contributing which helps them gain skills in sharing, turn taking, listening to others as well as building their independence, resilience and confidence. Miss Leanne and Miss Krissy will both be absent on the first session back (Tuesday 6th October); Miss Krissy will also be away on holidays for 3 weeks into term 3. We hope you all have a great school holidays and we will see you all again in term 4. Ms Leanne and Ms Krissy

PURPLE GROUPIn Purple group we’ve been having lots of fun acting out the story of The Three Little Pigs. We had masks as props for the children and they would take turns of being the different characters and telling

the story. This led into our Book Week celebrations where we came dressed up as our favourite book characters. We’ve since been making our own Three Little Pig masks and making the different houses in the collage area. We really loved the Wild Action incursion, where we learnt about lots of different reptiles and animals. We especially liked getting the opportunity to touch them,

which was a little worrying for some but with a little encouragement we did it!

We also invited our Dads to kinder. We showed them all the things we love at kinder and played with them. We were very excited to give them the little present we made at kinder.

We hope you enjoy the holiday break and look forward to Term 4! Miss Nicole & Mrs Grace

BIRTHDAY REMINDER: We’d like to remind families that there are to be NO food treats provided for children’s birthdays at kinder. We love celebrating birthdays at

kinder, however if you would like to share treats with your child’s group please ensure it is a non-food item such as a

pencil, balloon, bubbles, stickers etc. We thank you for your cooperation.

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TERM 3 NEWSLETTER 2015 CENTRE INFORMATION

Staff News: This term we welcomed Leanne Papadopoulos back from maternity leave to teach Green group and this has been a smooth transition. Leanne settled straight back into our teaching team and we’re thrilled to have her back! Our Educational Leader, Liz Dullard also jumped in and joined the teaching team by taking over as Red group Teacher which was a great outcome. Mrs Grace has had a very busy term: we celebrated Mrs Grace’s 20th anniversary at Home Road Kindergarten in July, an amazing achievement and we are very fortunate to have such a caring, experienced and wonderful educator on our team. Mrs Grace also welcomed her first grandchild into the world, congratulations Nonna!

Committee News: Committee are working on several projects. As reported in our last newsletter, though 15 hours of funding has been confirmed, unfortunately the State Government are still yet to announce their funding contribution for next year, which is delaying the educators Award negotiations and hence our budget/fee preparations. Also, as the educator to child ratios are changing for next year, there will be increased costs to services so parent fees will also increase. As soon as we have more information, we will communicate this to 2016 families.

We are continuing with our long term goal of rejuvenating the outdoor play space and have been in further discussion with a landscape architect and Council to finalise a concept plan. This is a long term investment, which will incorporate some major fundraising. Any community input / skills are warmly invited.

Committee are also preparing for our AGM and Parent Information Night on Wednesday 18 November. Handover and succession planning is important and we are looking forward to receiving many new committee member nominations!

Jo Sutton - President 2015 HRK Committee

3yo 2016: All places have been allocated and enrolment packs will be sent out soon. Group swaps will be made as and when any vacancies arise. We have a small waiting list.

4yo 2016: Council have sent first round offers and we are waiting on receiving our list and allocating group preferences. Enrolment packs will be sent in October.

For any enrolment queries, please contact Carly at the centre or via email at carly@homeroadkindergarten.vic.edu.au

3yo Photos: Proof sheets and order forms were placed in pockets and group photos are on display in our foyer. Order forms/ payment envelopes are now overdue.

Fundraising & Event Update: All timeslots have been booked with Aver & Line for our Family Portrait Event on Sunday 24 October. If further enquires follow, Friday 22 October from 3pm can be made available. Thanks for the great response from all HRK families and don’t forget to put your $15 payment in our red safe in the kinder foyer.

Bunnings BBQ: On Sunday 18 October we will be holding a Bunnings BBQ Fundraiser at the Altona store. We will be organising a roster and asking for parent help on the day, as well as donations of soft drink cans. More details to follow.

Save The Date: Thursday 3 December 2015 HRK 4 Year Old Christmas Party This year will be held at Altona Miniature Railway for 4 year old families for a picnic, train rides and a whole lot of Christmas fun from 5-7pm!

Danielle Reid & Andrea Holland (Events & Fundraising team)

TERM 3 WORKING BEE: The sun was shining and our little kinder was buzzing! Thank you to all our wonderful families

from Yellow and Purple groups for coming along to the term 3 working bee and helping us tidy up the centre and outdoor

area. Green group is up next (and anyone else welcome!) on Sunday 22 November for our final working bee of the year.

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TERM 3 NEWSLETTER 2015

Slip! Slop! Slap! Seek! Slide! Our Sun Protection Policy is now in place. From 1 September, sun protection measures must be used when UV levels reach 3 or higher. Please ensure your child has their kinder hat (or Sunsmart equivalent hat - no caps) in their kinder bag at all times. We also ask parents/guardians to apply sunscreen to your child prior to coming to

kinder and dress them in appropriate clothing (no singlets or strappy dresses). You will see some of these posters

displayed at our centre next term. We ask for your cooperation with this important

policy and message.

DATES TO REMEMBER Sports Day Wednesday 16 Sept – Red, Aqua & Purple groups Thursday 17 Sept – Orange, Blue & Green groups Friday 18 Sept – Yellow group

Term 3 ends Friday 18 September

Term 4 starts Monday 5 October

4yo “I Can Dance” incursion Tuesday 13 October – Aqua group Thursday 15 October – Orange group Friday 16 October – Blue & Red groups

Bunnings BBQ Fundraiser Sunday 18 October – Altona store, Millers Road

Family Portrait Photo Event Saturday 24 October

Children’s Week 24 October – 1 November

4yo Bunnings Excursion Monday 26 October – Orange group Tuesday 27 October – Aqua group Wednesday 4 November – Red group Thursday 5 November – Blue group 3yo Incursion – Drama Toolbox “Under the Sea” Wednesday 28 October – Purple group Thursday 29 October – Green group Friday 30 October – Yellow group Melbourne Cup Public Holiday – NO KINDER SESSIONS Tuesday 3 November HRK AGM and Parent Information Night Wednesday 18 November at 7pm Term 4 Working Bee Sunday 22 November 10am-12pm 4yo Christmas Party Thursday 3 December 5-7pm – Altona Miniature Railway