Little Bee Newsletter January 2020 |
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Happy New Year to everyone!! |
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A big welcome to all our new families and welcome back to our existing and returning families. We are looking forward to a very happy and eventful 2020, filled with fun, laughter and exciting new challenges for everyone at Little Bee! Leading into 2019, we thank our educators for your enduring commitment and dedication to children’s learning and thank all families for your continued support and partnership in assisting us to positively influence learning and build genuine, lasting relationships.
We also give a massive thanks to each and every child at Little Bee. The excitement we get every day as we see you playing, investigating and learning is truly fabulous. We can't watch to see the expressions of wonder and joy on your faces, as we observe you play and learn in 2020! |
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An introduction to our Gratitude Mascots for our new families!!! Each play room at Airport and Howrah excitedly sends home a ‘Gratitude Mascot’ and a journal to a different family each weekend! The mascot (a cuddly toy) is so ‘grateful’ to spend time with a family from their room each week. It is a very easy process as the attached journal has a cover letter and all the instructions, with a written example. During the last few years, the sending home of our mascots had enormous benefit for each child, as they work with their parents/caregivers to record in the journal one event/outing that they shared with the mascot and attach their photos. There are multiple ways you may like to record your ‘outing’ information: Post the text and picture(s) directly to our Facebook page and we will print it out and paste into the journal. - Hand write the text directly into the journal and print (or email us) your picture(s) for the journal.
- Type up the text from home and print both the text and picture(s) and paste them into the journal.
- Type up and email us the text and the picture(s) and we will print and paste it into the journal.
Our educators always post our section of the journal directly on to our Facebook page, so that families in our Facebook group can easily see the mascot’s journey. We have found that most families also utilise Facebook – where we print your ‘post and photos’ off and paste into the journal! If you are not a member of our Facebook group, we ensure that you have regular access to our mascot’s journey by sharing the journal with you. Family and Friends events for January and February are coming up!! |
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Join us for a great day of Family Fun! Fully sponsored by Little Bee. |
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As part of our ongoing commitment to expand upon our Community involvement and to provide wider networking opportunities for families and children within the Little Bee Community; Little Bee is sponsoring a family twilight event at the races on Friday 31st January! We are providing tickets 'free of charge' for all Little Bee families and these will be available from the Howrah and Airport offices from Monday 14th January! Please see us if you would like a ticket! |
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What’s been happening at Little Bee … Successful Transitions!!! As many of you may be aware, we delivered your child's transition pack to our local Kindergarten teachers. The Kindergarten teachers have given us extremely positive feedback on the enormous benefits that the information in transition packs provides for them! Thanks again to those of you who returned your packs! |
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Little Bee Howrah.... Howrah Little Bee has been jingling with the sounds of Christmas carols fillings its walls. Our Christmas concert was a beautiful day, we had such a lovely celebration of our year together and we were so thrilled by the large turnout. Thank-you for all the support from families and the wider community that pulled together to make the day such a roaring success! We’re very grateful for your continued support. Although we’re all very excited for Christmas we’re still offering a variety of purposeful play environments that stretch the children's development. We’ve exercised our fine motor skills (those responsible for aiding us in learning to write and draw later in life) by cutting bean shells and herbs. We then further made use of the natural resources by using the finely chopped herbs to make a lovely brew of pretend tea, used for dramatic play purposes. It’s amazing how much learning can be stretched for the children by up cycling natural resources. We would like to thank the Hannan's for organising the TasBash cars to come and visit us earlier in the month. The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring the beautifully decorated cars. They were all so excited to sit in the cars with their friends and have a turn of the steering wheel. We appreciate the effort that went into organising this for us Sheena and Bryn, Thankyou. Here at Little Bee Howrah we've been making the most of the beautiful weather to get out and about in our community. Trips to the beach and local parks have provided great opportunities to stretch our muscles and challenge ourselves. We were lucky enough to spot a bandicoot on our walk to the beach, before spending time splashing in the shallows. This is also the time of the year when we welcome new friends to the Little Bee family. With so many children leaving and starting at the same time, it’s easy to become unsettled. With this in mind, our focus for the next few months will be settling the room, helping the children who are beginning at Little Bee to create a sense of attachment and belonging to the educators and environment and supporting new relationships and friendships among the new and returning children. We are already so grateful that our current children instinctively step up and befriend new and often younger peers, ensuring their transition to education and care is a smooth and positive experience. We would like to say farewell to the children and families leaving us to head to Kinder this year. We will miss you all immensely and are sad to see you go. We hope we have helped prepare you through your years with us, and with the transition meetings with your teachers for 2020. Hopefully you are ready to embrace school with open arms! We believe in you all and wish you the very best in everything your futures have to offer. We’re excited for the year ahead and can’t wait to share all the excitement and joy it brings with all our Little Bee children! Thanks for all your support and encouragement throughout the year. |
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Staffing arrangements at Little Bee Howrah in 2020 Alice – Full time Pauline – Full time Mel – (Long service leave until Mid February) Monday, Wednesday, Friday Megan - Qualified educator from Airport will be covering most of Mel's long service leave and staff annual leave until she commences maternity leave in February Nikki – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Libby - Tuesday, Thursday, Friday (and casual shifts also) |
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Loose Parts Play at Little Bee Airport! Some of you may remember that we have been building a ‘loose parts’ play area since mid 2018 and we excitedly head into January 2019 on our continued journey to build even further upon our loose parts resources. This has extended from our ‘loose parts’ trolley, to become a whole area with a new shed for storage. The 'loose parts' area is the fenced in play space in the back middle part of our playground. We are beginning to stock up our shed with as many ‘loose parts’ materials that we can find! |
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So why are we choosing ‘loose parts’ in our play? Do you remember building cubbies with branches and anything else you could get your hands on as a child? Loose parts in a play space will enhance our fixed play items already available and are one of the most valuable resources we can have. ‘Loose parts’ are items and materials that children can move, adapt, control, change and manipulate within their play. They provide a high level of creativity and choice, as there are endless possibilities for how they can be used. The theory of Loose Parts was developed in 1971 by Simon Nicholson who said that in any environment, the degree of creativity and inventiveness was directly proportional to the number of variables! Do you have any ‘Loose Parts’ we could use in our play space? Loose parts can be anything from branches, sticks, small rocks, pine cones, shells, tyres, ropes, pvc pipe, logs, wooden off cuts, craters, seed pods, stumps, nuts and bolts – the possibilities are endless. Most loose parts don’t cost anything to obtain, it could be things you already have lying around your home. If you can help us out, we would be extremely grateful, especially any large pipes or tubing is always a big hit with the children! We are also after any old electronic equipment, such as; old computers, printers, phones, stereo or radios, etc. that the children can pull apart and try and put back together using real work tools! A risk benefit assessment is available at the Centre for all of those more ‘risky play type experiences’ for families to access if you so wish. |
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At Little Bee Airport .... What an amazing turnout at our Christmas party, a huge thank you to the children and educators for your performance on the day and all the rehearsals leading up. Thank you to everyone else for their involvement and attendance and, of course, thank you to the big man in red for making an appearance and his helper for making it happen!!! Please have a look in our Community links book for more photos of the festivities. Baby Bees Baby Bees Curriculum news: Over the month of December, the Baby Bees have been making the most of the sunshine and enjoying the outdoors. We have enjoyed discovering with the natural resources in the sandpit and making many master pieces in the sand with our fellow peers! Indoors the Baby Bees have enjoyed creating many art pieces and building up their fine motor development.Emily joining our team. Honey Bees Over the past month the children have been getting creative as they participate in a variety of Christmas crafts. We have been using a mixture of collage materials, glues, glitters and paint to create many of the different displays you can see throughout the room. Outside the children have been continuing to build on the gross motor skills as they work independently to climb over the balancing beams, we have also been very enthusiastic when it comes to practising our jumping. The children have taken in turns to jump with everybody cheering each other on. We have been having lots of fun getting to know the children visiting from the Baby Bees and look forward to watching new and old friendships develop and grow throughout the next year. |
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Bumble Bees In the Bumble Bee room we have been excitedly working on lots of Christmas arts and crafts this has included collage using patty pans, gluing with glitter and much more! We have also been focusing on using our creativity using wooden Christmas trees and a variety of natural materials to decorate them with. The children have been enjoying all of our new dress ups in the home corner area and putting on performances for their peers as they use their imagination and drama skills. We have been welcoming many of the children from Honey Bees into the room this month and we have been excited to make lots of new friends and develop positive relationships with one another. For our Bumble Bees that are moving up we are so happy we will still get to explore with you in the outdoor playground. Busy Bees During the month of December, we have had a wonderful time making the most of the warmer weather. Water play and adding water to the sandpit has not only been very popular but has also led the children to engage in a variety of different experiences within using their senses to sustainably explore a natural and built environment. On the lead up to Christmas we continued to use our senses through the arts manipulating a range of resources tools to assemble, create, invent and construct. Some of these included loose parts, clay and playdough with a multitude of tools, paint and brushes, sponges, glue, glitter, natural materials and a range of other exciting and fun filled experiences. Queen Bees In the month of December, Queen Bees have been focused on Christmas. We have made gifts for our families, and decorations for our tree. We have stayed on the natural path for all this. Using recycled cardboard for the decorations, which the children painted then chose the head piece they wanted wear for their photo, the photo was then placed inside the frame. We also made baubles for our tree using Styrofoam balls and natural materials. The children enjoyed gathering materials (leaves, little seedpods and pieces of branches) which they then placed in a bucket. After painting their bauble with glue they put that in the bucket put on lid and shook. The children learned that even though they were all doing the same thing that the outcome was different for everyone giving them a sense of belonging and ownership of what they had made. Throughout our activities we spoke about recycling and our favourite loose parts. We also said goodbye to some of our children who are off to Prep and Kindergarten. We wish them all the best. We continue on with spontaneous art by using every day and recycled objects we encourage the children’s creative development and problem-solving skills. |
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Room Teams from January 2020 at Little Bee Airport ~ Queen Bees – Bron, Mel (returning from maternity leave), Maree and James. ~ Busy Bees – Bec, Jess (returning from maternity leave in February, Eva working in Busy’s until then), Sophie (transitioned from Bumble Bee room in August), Tania, Malou and Will ~ Bumble Bees – Sally, Sofie, Kate, Rebecca and Selene ~ Honey Bees – Georgie, Anna, Nadine, Taiya and Adriana ~ Baby Bees – Chantelle, Emily, Nat, Allie and Adriana (Friday only) Megan will be working across both Howrah and Airport centres before commencing maternity leave in February. Linda, Ellen, Kathy, Kirsten, Pip, Mareeka and Georgia will continuing working casually across both centres in 2020. |
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Airport Centre LUNCH BOX FORTNIGHT for children attending Kinder in 2020, from the 27th of January until the 10th of February. Each year we give opportunity for our children heading off to Kinder to participate in a preparation for school time by bringing along their lunch box. We understand that Cambridge Primary Kindergarten’s have a cooked lunch, we would be interested to know if any other Kinder's are also doing the same. During this period, we kindly ask families to pack their child’s morning tea and/or lunch on any or all of the days they attend. However, all children will still be offered Little Bee morning tea and lunch as usual, so please do not feel obliged to pack a lunch for your child if you do not wish to or are unable to. Approximately 50% of children heading to kinder usually bring one along; but we will still be preparing the same amount for meal times, so there will be plenty of food for everyone. Afternoon tea will also continue to be provided by Little Bee for everyone during this fortnight. Our aim is for the children to experience lunch times, practice making appropriate choices of which foods to eat first, while having the opportunity to practice opening and closing their lunch box and all of the food packages inside! Please keep an eye out in your family information tray for more information. |
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Availability at Little Bee in 2020 We would like to let all of our Little Bee families know that we have limited vacancies at our Airport Centres in 2020. If anyone has any family or friends who might be interested, please let us know! |
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Australia Day public holiday is on Monday the 27th January, (in Leui of Sunday 26th). The Centre will be closed on this day. |
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Keeping our children safe We would like to remind everyone the importance of wearing ‘Sun Smart’ clothes during the summer months. To ensure we are all working under the guidelines of our Sun Protection and Weather policy, we ask that all children please wear clothes covering their shoulders (no strappy tops please). Please make sure you provide a wide brimmed or legionnaire style hat to protect the whole face from the sun. Hats (with Little Bee logo) can also be purchased for $15.00 (cash only). Please make sure that your child brings along shoes with an enclosed toe (to wear while riding the bikes). Thank-you. |
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Information for Review We are currently reviewing the following policies and/or procedures: 1.1 - Planning, Implementation and Evaluation 1.2 - Excursions 1.3 - Educational Leaders 1.4 - Animals and Birds 1.5 - Festivals 1.6 - Things from home 1.7 - Cooking and food play If you would like to have input reviewing these documents it would be greatly appreciated, just let us know and we will forward copies to you. Please compose any suggestions you would like to make and place them, either in the suggestions box (at reception) or via email to: littlebee@littlebee.net.au. Information for families We hope to continue on with 2019 in a calm and relaxed manner! Our chosen readings for the month are: - All about the benefits of tai chi, visualisation, yoga and stretching with young children
- Partnerships: The key to successful transition to school
If you would like a copy forwarded please email us and we will send an electronic copy to you. Other readings can be found on the internet from recognised sites, such as: kidsafe.com.au, rch.org.au, acecqa.gov.au, deewr.gov.au and kidswithasthma.com.au, healthinsite.gov.au Opportunities for Family Involvement Committee meetings are held on a bi-monthly basis. They are to reflect on our current practices, work on our Centre’s Quality Improvement Plan and continue to maintain the highest standard of, education and care possible. Our next committee meeting / staff training will be held on January 22nd 2019 All families are invited to join our Committee, your ideas and opinions are greatly valued and appreciated. Families are also welcome to participate daily in Workplace health and safety checks and/or compliance reviews. Please see one of the staff if you are interested. |
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