Easter Egg Hunt at Little Bee on

Tuesday 6th April - Friday 9th!

During the week of Tuesday April 6th - Friday 9th, the children will participate in a Special Easter tradition from South Africa at Little Bee.  

 Tracy, Havana and Hunter's mum, is from South Africa and we are very excited that we can celebrate a special event in their family culture here at Little Bee!

Each morning of this week, the children will plant a natural object in our garden outside, and in the afternoon, the object will have turned into an Easter Egg for your child to enjoy!

Thanks again Tracy for bringing in some special Easter treats for the older children to share today at Little Bee Airport - we are so grateful and excited. 

Advice from Public Health regarding a recent increase in

respiratory infections in Tasmania  

There has been a significant increase in respiratory infections over the past month in Tasmania. A common cause of this has been a virus called Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

Education and care and childcare services need to remain vigilant with their exclusion policies.  Children should be kept home from school, education and care or childcare if they are unwell with respiratory, cold or flu-like symptoms including:

fever

runny nose

cough, sore/itchy throat or

shortness of breath

Children should only be returning to education and care once their cold/flu like symptoms have passed.

Early childhood services maintain a high standard of cleanliness and hygiene as part of everyday practice. However, if cases are occurring services may consider implementing additional cleaning practices using an effective disinfectant (which will also help reduce the risk of outbreaks of gastroenteritis, which have been common this year).

Please see the attached Public Health Update for further information.  If you have a specific query about RSV, you can call the Communicable Diseases Prevention Unit via the Public Health Hotline on 1800 671 738.

Little Bee Professional learning 

 Tuesday 11th May

We are so lucky to have Jackie coming along to facilitate our child protection training on 11th May at 6 p.m. at our Airport Centre.  Jackie is the Child Safety and Wellbeing Liaison Officer from Strong Families, Safe Kids Advice and Referral Line Children, Youth and Families, Communities Tasmania.

Her delivery will include:
 Overview of Strong Families Safe Kids – Advice and Referral Line and why the reforms were needed.
What to expect when contacting the ARL to discuss wellbeing or safety concerns. What questions will be asked and how the information is recorded.
Mandatory reporting and confidentiality
Referral pathways (Family Support and Child Safety Services)
Overview of the liaison roles and key partners

If you are interested in attending the professional learning session please let us know.
Jackie will review our policy and suggest changes based on some of the reforms that have occurred since the last one was updated – there have been lots of changes! We welcome families to request a copy once the policy has been amended to reflect the changes.

Little Bee Quality Improvement Plan goals for 2021

Little Bee's continuing improvement plan runs from April to April each year and we look forward to giving you an overview of the goals from our current QIP Cycle, and outlining our continuing ideas for the extension of these goals, beginning April 2021!

In terms of goal setting at Little Bee, families may wonder how our educator teams evaluate what is a working at the Centres and what we need to do to improve our systems.

Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP)

We have been working towards reconciliation for the past 24 months and we are very excited to be finalising our RAP in the coming.  We hope  to publicly celebrate the "launch of our RAP" with a cultural festival in October of this year.  Last year our plans were placed on hold with much of our initiatives at a stand in the height of the COVID-19 crisis.  We are excited to pick up again. 

As always, the ideas and initiatives of our families are greatly welcomed and appreciated enormously.  Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about the reconciliation process and would like to be involved in our journey.

A reminder of our Centre opening hours:

Little Bee Howrah - 7:30am - 5:30pm

Little Bee Airport - 7am - 6pm

To ensure we meet National Quality Standards and insurance requirement thank families for their support with ensuring children arrive and depart within the times.

We understand due to unforeseen circumstances you may be delayed in collecting your child. We ask you call the Centre to notify us - thank you

What's Been Happening at Little Bee Airport... 

Queen Bees

March saw the introduction of our exciting enquiry projects in the Queen Bee room.  We are looking at how physical activity assists in gaining an understanding of wellbeing and how our senses influence our emotions.  We also participated in many events like bike week, Harmony week and epilepsy awareness week. 

We have been investigating and identifying different body parts and what kinds of physical activities we can do with these parts!

Hugo said: “We use our arms and hands to bounce a ball”, while Ruby said: “I use my muscles, my legs” to jump in the jumping ladder.

Upon introducing our new role play area – an indoor gym, we observed the children playing four square together, bouncing balls, doing stretches on the yoga mats, balancing on balance boards, lifting weights and hopping / jumping on the floor ladder. We observe the physical activities each child likes to participate in and why they choose these, focusing on how it makes them feel. 

We have also focused on our emotions through sharing our ‘emotions cards’ and drawing and painting how we are feeling, answering questions like; what makes us happy and sad. 

“Look I’m happy because I like smiling” shares Bella.
This month we particularly enjoyed participating in ‘Bike week’ which saw many bikes and scooters at Little Bee. We observed many positive health benefits along with a boost in children’s confidence, which strengthens their emotional wellness.

Busy Bees:

This month we have been focusing on photography and the workings of a camera. Through this investigation, the children have had the opportunity to explore a variety of cameras, both role playing, as well as taking real photos on the cameras.

Each child will have the opportunity to take home the camera and capture some photographs of their daily lives.  We can then enjoy sharing the pictures with peers.  This will give us all an insight to what families get up to outside of Little Bee.

Alongside photography, we have been looking into cooking with the celebration of Harmony Week was a big hit within our room.  We cooked Chicken Curry, Spaghetti Bolognese, Spring Rolls and Burgers with Potato Bake. All of the children thoroughly enjoyed cooking and we look forward to cooking more within the year. To get ready for future cooking, the children have been having lots of conversations about what they like to cook when they are home with their family.  Through this, we have been able to get the children’s suggestions on what we should cook together in the near future. It has been a wonderful, and very busy month in the Busy Bee room.

Bumble Bees 

We have begun our programming for the year. One group are focusing on creativity and the other on investigations of the seasons, currently having a major focus on Autumn. Thank you to our families who have kindly brought in some photographs of experiences their child likes to do out and about with family and friends in the community.

This has enabled us to create a ‘My Favourite's Wall’ display. Please take the time to check it out, it is looking great and it really supports our educators to get to know each child better.

We enjoyed celebrating Harmony Week by cooking pancakes, as well as a home-made Italian pasta dish, celebrating Anna’s home culture. The children thoroughly enjoyed pouring and mixing all the ingredients. Lots and fun and turn taking was present too!

We have been doing an array of art and craft experiences with different mediums including; marble painting, Autumn paintings, water colour paintings and table top drawings and stamping. On many of occasions the children have enjoyed helping make play dough.

We have been continuing to regularly visit the garden and our chooks, we have been digging and searching for worms and strawberries, which has been a huge hit amongst many of the children.

Honey Bees

In March we began our 2021 projects and we are so excited to start these with the children. We have two research questions that we will be investigating, the first is:

How is sensory play important in the development of our wellbeing?

We were inspired by our recent professional learning session with Heidi (Occupational Therapist) and have been able to implement our learnings.   We understand that by looking deeper into sensory processing, we can find out the seeking and avoiding behaviours of the children, and in turn provide appropriate resources and experiences for each individual child to have optimal learning in their environment.

Our exploration with hand cream supported the children to feel the texture and we could observe the children initiate touching and feeling the cream. Looking deeper into the exercise and investigation of massage we wanted to see how it supports children to focus on their body, promote relaxation, calm and rest; and reduce stress and anxiety.

Furthermore, we are interested in how massage helps develop children's kinesthetic learning; stimulates their sensory awareness; stimulates the release of endorphins and happy hormones.

Our second question is:

How can imaginative play enhance how we express our identity through feelings?

We begin our inquiry by observing what types of play do the children gravitate towards. 

We will be providing stimulating play spaces, such as: a mud kitchen, and a wide range of art experiences so the children can explore, discover, and further develop social skills.  These spaces will assist children to choose their own experiences and allow them the opportunity to identify what they do and don’t like. 

Children can also share and transfer knowledge what they have learnt from previous experiences and begin to understand more about themselves, including their fears, joys, frustrations and how they and other children express themselves.

Children will have the opportunity to share aspects of their home cultures through play and we will expand on children’s awareness and appreciation of their own beliefs and traditions. 

Baby Bees

What a musical month we have been having in the Baby Bee room. We have started our programming and what fun we have been having as we introduce lots of music, singing and action songs. We have also began to look at puppets, instruments and how music can makes us feel.

We all really enjoy nursery rhymes as singing and engaging together with peers and educators during group times. We have been participating  in multiple painting activities where we love to show off our creative sides and feel the paint between our hands and toes. We celebrated Harmony week, where we recognised the different diversities within our play space. We cooked different dishes from around the world to show off our family cultures, including Brazil, South Africa, China and India.

What's Been Happening at Little Bee Howrah... 

Our projects are well and truly underway, with a focus this month on revamping our playground and car park gardens. Some children and educators worked together to clear the gardens ready for new soil and seeds, while others used their creativity to decide what our new garden should look like, and what we might like to plant.

The consensus on new plants has been mainly for tomatoes and carrots, however Elliot expressed an interest in planting pizza! (If only!)

Engaging in these experiences has seen opportunities for teamwork, fine and gross motor skills, increasing respect for the natural environment, creativity, and critical thinking, just to name a few.

ANZAC DAY 2021

Sunday 25th April

Our National day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand is to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACS) who fought at Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. On ANZAC day, we commemorate all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations" and "the contribution and suffering of all those who have served”. ANZAC Day remains one of the most important national occasions of both Australia and New Zealand. 

This ANZAC day, we sadly can't go to a local dawn service, but we can tune in via ABC radio, social media or television and pick up the phone and call our veteran friends to let them know we are thinking of them.  We can head out to the end of our driveways for an ANZAC day dawn service at 6 a.m. and have the nation line its streets everywhere and share a minutes silence, tuned in to the ABC, offering the National ceremony.  we can reflect on the service and sacrifice of our veterans and those who are still serving today. Regardless of the form this year's ANZAC Day commemorations take, we will always remember the dedication, commitment and sacrifice of our Defense forces, past and present.  

Airport Centre

A reminder to families. Where at all possible we request you keep the disabled car park at the front of the Centre free for persons accessing the Centre who have a Disability Parking Permit. Thank you for your understanding.

Bike Week 2021!

What a fun week we had for bike week.  The children really enjoyed riding on a course around our carpark, weaving in and out of witches hats, and learning some new skills!

Thank-you to all the children who brought in your bike or scooter!

Harmony Week was celebrated with gusto in March!

All of our rooms created and tasted the most delicious dishes from our home cultures during Harmony Week.  We have introduced different foods, dishes, and enjoyed investigating the beautiful tastes and aromas from a variety of foods from across cultures. 

Our wearing purple for Epilepsy fundraiser was a huge success! 

Some of us wore our purple outfits, made purple cupcakes and did some purple paintings and creating with purple playdough!

We raised $125.

We'd like to offer a massive thank-you to all families who donated to us during this week, it is much appreciated!

Easter Public Holidays:

Little Bee will be closed during the Easter holidays on the following days (public holidays):

Good Friday 2nd April 

Easter Monday 5th April

We hope everyone has a very safe and happy holiday with your families!

Thank-you.

Nature Play Week is 14th - 20th April!

 Why Nature Play?

Do you remember your favourite childhood place in nature? Where was it? How did you find it? How did you feel when you were there?

Over the past 30 years, we have moved indoors and screen spaces have replaced green places. Use of television, computers, the internet and smartphones, increased parental fear, poor urban planning and more highly structured play and supervision keep children from playing outside.

This change in the experience of and exposure to nature has led to a gradual distancing between our children and the natural world and has profound implications for the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health of future generations – and for the health of nature itself.

A growing body of evidence suggests that, from backyards to streets, parks and gardens, from the beach to the bush, children do better outside!

'Nature play' is a term used to describe the creation of simple play opportunities in the natural environment. Nature play encourages children and parents to see the natural environment as a place to enjoy, play, imagine, relax and explore.

At Little Bee we are so passionate about 'nature play' and the positive impact it has on all aspects of children and adults health and well being. We are always thinking of new and exciting ways to include nature in all aspects of our play and learning. During Nature week, we will continue to embrace nature play in our programs and will be encourging the children to reflect on and embrace nature (even more than usual) and all it has to offer!! 

Please Label Your Child's Clothes

Please label your child’s clothes as we are getting quite a build up in our lost property. With winter on the way, we need to pack for all seasons and your child will inevitably have an increase of spare clothes.  We want to avoid these items getting lost.  Thankyou.

Information for Review

We are currently reviewing the following policies and/or procedures:

Pest Control

Bomb threat

Child protection

Emergency telephone numbers

Nappy Changing and toileting procedures

Supervision

Clothing 

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  

Our chosen readings for the month are:

• www.natureplayweek.org.au

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

Professional learning 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 professional learning session is on Tuesday 11th May, at 6 pm Airport Centre.  Please see the information above regarding this session.

All families are invited to join in with our professional learning topics, 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.