Annie Dennis

A reminder to all families that final payments for 2009 are due by Thursday 17 December. If your children are attending the Centre in 2010, your final invoice will include payment for the first two weeks of childcare in the new year.The Centre will be closing on Tuesday 22 December (last day for the children) and reopening on Tuesday 12 January 2010.Have a safe and relaxing holiday, and see you in the new year!

A reminder to all families that final payments for 2008 are due by Wednesday 17 December 2008. If your children are attending the Centre in 2009, your final invoice will include payment for the first two weeks of childcare in the new year.

The Centre will be closing on Friday 19 December and reopening on Wednesday 5 January 2009.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday!

All families who are continuing at the Centre in 2009 have now been offered their places. It’s very important that you confirm your 2009 childcare days no later than Monday 20 October 2008. This means staff can offer places to other families if they are not required by yours.

This term the children have been exploring clay and creating sculptures. A big project has been raising seedlings and planting in the vegetable patch. The children also helped to plant apple, mandarin and nectarine trees in Annie’s Yard.

Inside, the children have been busy creating cards, stories and scrapbooks, as well as keeping busy with lots of fine-motor construction sets.

We are looking forward to some cooking experiences over the kinder holiday, hopefully using as much produce from our garden as possible.

In preparation for school next year, we are dropping the sleep/rest time in the afternoon, which most of the children are very happy about!

Lots happening in the Grasshoppers!

A large group of children have been showing an interest in writing and illustrating their own books. We have been reading a Roald Dahl book just before rest time, which was quite a shock to most at first – with there being no pictures!

We have also been making our eco pots, which will eventually be planted in the yard.

The Tuesday and Thursday group  were involved in our Timor-Leste donation. Staff and children spoke of East Timor schools and children, before the children had the chance to decorate a calico bag to be sent over to our sister school.

The home corner is abuzz with children coming up with the idea of making a house with a washing line, iron and wardrobe area.

Kids in the kitchen! A new large kitchen activity area has been created for the children, and it’s been busy busy busy. The children have been creating all sorts of things, but in particular they have been having parties, with drinks, cakes, sausages etc. Picnics have also been popular – the children take all the kitchen things into the cubby house and pretend they are on a camp, placing everything onto the floor around them for their picnic.

Art and craft continues to be popular, so a large table with all things artistic has been organised for the children – they often like to gather in a large group to chat and create collages, drawings (which are very detailed now) of people and animals, cutting with scissors to help with their fine motor control, painting on small sheets at the table, as well as on the easel.

September already! At the end of last month, we said goodbye to Elijah and Oscar, who will be spending the remainder of the year overseas, and welcomed Maeve and Claire to the Possums Room.

Active/gross motor play is the big focus in the room at the moment, with all children participating to their level of skill. Coordination and balancing skills are being put to the test with the balancing experience indoors; climbing abilities are increasing as children tackle the climbing platform and slide outdoors.

As well as this, most days the children are involved in various music and movement experiences with staff. Favourites at the moment are:

- Dingle Dangle Scarecrow

- Everybody Jumping/Waving/Running etc

- The Hokey Pokey

- Three Cheeky Monkeys

This is lots of fun for both children and staff!

Warmer weather means we will be spending more time outdoors, and so children need to be wearing hats, sunscreen and appropriate clothing. For more information on this, see staff.

The children have developed a very strong interest in constructive play, especially using the wooden blocks.

We have seen them building houses with garages for the metal cars, chimneys with slides, see-saws, and a stage for them to perform their own plays and rock concerts on.

These are just a few of the things that have emerged from play with the wooden blocks. Another strong interest is puzzles, including quite complicated ones.

The children also enjoy reading stories to each other.

The children are thoroughly enjoying the new outdoor space improvements that were completed during the working bee, as well as discovering and exploring the autumn and winter changes happening outdoors.

They have been catching, throwing, scrunching, stomping and rolling in the leaves dropped from the tree and enjoying the effects of the wind moving the bells and fabric pieces around.

Most of the children are up and walking now, which makes the room a very busy place.

They are showing more interest in puzzles, books and animals, as well as singing songs with their carers.

We have started music and movement sessions with Theresa and Blaga every second Monday, and will try to repeat this ourselves throughout the rest of the week with the other children.

Science has been a theme in the Rainbow Room this year, and the children have explored the topic with lots of experiments, such as how to get water to travel through tubing, and how many people are needed to pop a balloon by sitting on a it!
The children have been busy creating and playing ‘old-fashioned’ games such as Mary Mac and elastics. Outside, the garden has been replanted with winter veggies, and the children have been collecting the cabbage moth caterpillars so they don’t eat too much of the winter crops.
We have been looking at the world and distances between places, with the help of maps and discussions of places we have been to.
Time and clocks are also a common interest with a frequent question of ‘when is it time to…?’