NAIDOC (National Aboriginal Islander Day Observance Committee) is from 4th July - 11th July

The NAIDOC 2021 theme – Heal Country! – calls for all of us to continue to seek greater protections for Aboriginal lands, waters, sacred sites and cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction.

 As always, Little Bee continues to work on embedding the cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities in to our daily practises and project work, with a concentration on cultural heritage in particular during NAIDOC week.

Justin Febey (whose children attended Howrah Little Bee) is the compliance officer at 'Parks and Wildlife'.  He provided us with some very valuable information on Aboriginal cultural sustainability when he came along to our latest meeting as our special Guest Speaker.  Justin spoke about the mutton bird, also known as ‘short-tailed shearwater’, 'moon bird' (in Japan) or ‘yulla.’

The yulla is an Aboriginal cultural resource. 

Justin is leading a ‘Working on Country’ ranger program.  The following information from Justin will support educators to further our own knowledge and begin discussing ways we can focus on the yulla in our learning programs. 

Yulla are a game species and can be taken by hand on the Bass Strait Islands, the hand is placed down the burrow and the neck swiftly broken. On the Bass Strait Islands there are mutton bird sheds used by Cape Barren Island families.

Aboriginal people were nomadic and continue to hunt seasonally to ensure resources are sustainable.  Fort Direction at South Arm is Federal land and previously 100 birds could be taken, but this number has now been reduced because the yulla population is becoming lower. Justin believes this might be due to environmental factors including ocean pollution.

The yulla are birds that mate for life.  They re-habitat the same burrow every October/November to rekindle their pairing/bond. 

In January they lay their eggs, and the parents take turns to feed the baby.  While one hunts for squid /krill the other is with the baby feeding it, they take turns every second week but the baby could be left alone for a few days in between the swap over.

The full moon is in April and this is when they start to head North.  The yulla navigates by the moon, flying by night.

It is a huge flight path, they leave Tasmania, heading to Japan, flying the North Sea, to Alaska, Russia, then the Canadian seaboard, up to California, the pacific ocean and then finally back to Tas.

In Japan the yulla is called the moon bird and we could share the 'moon bird’ song with the children. We can work with the children to show the flight patterns and time frames of the bird on a large World map.  

We are also very excited to be in the process of planning for our special festival to celebrate the finalisation of our Reconciliation Action Plan. 

The date for the festival has been locked in for Sunday 17th October.

Our committee has been meeting to plan our interactive stalls and special Aboriginal Community members who will attend.  If you would like to have any input into the planning process or have any ideas, please contact us.

Child Care Subsidy rates from 12 July

Child Care Subsidy (CCS) rates are adjusted at the start of each financial year based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The following rates will take effect from 12 July 2021:

Combined annual income

The amount of CCS a family can get depends on their combined annual income. 

The current family income thresholds are available on our website.

Annual Cap

Families earning more than $190,015 and under $354,305 will have a subsidy cap of $10,655 per year, per child. Families earning under $190,015 will not have their CCS capped. The current annual cap is available on our website.

If your child has reached 42 absences for the financial year, the new financial year does not take effect until the 12th of July, therefore, medical certificates will continue to be needed from next week. Thank you.

We are in our third year of defusing DoTERRA pure essential oils!

There are two DoTerra pure essential oils that we mix together and defuse in each play space during the day. These are the protective and respiratory blend, otherwise known as 'onguard' and 'easy air'. Our aim is to support the children, families and educators at Little Bee by minimising air born pathogens and reducing the spread of germs in our environment. 

At rest times we defuse ‘DoTERRA pure essential 'lavendar' oil to create a calm and tranquil atmosphere during sleep and rest times and to support the children to experience emotional peace and a heightened sense of well being.  

Have you returned your COVID-19 Protocol for Essential visitors to the service?

Thank you to all families who have returned theirs, if you are yet to do so, please return ASAP, any questions please chat to us. 

School Holidays are nearly here!

Second term school holidays will begin Monday the 5th of July.  Tasmania remains COVID free, but sadly there are still many hot spots popping up across Australia.  The Mercury has advertised a new Web App called: 'Crisper Current Alert Locations PK3'. The link is: experience.arcgis.com  

This shows all the current hot spots currently across Australia, when you click on the red dot it shows the place, date and time.

Is anyone still lucky enough to be heading away for the school holidays? If so can you please let us know, this assists us with rostering (and also meals at Little Bee Airport).   Thank you

Little bee is proud to be a Move Well, Eat Well accredited Early Childhood Service, we are always looking for new and exciting ways to embed the Move Well, Eat Well program within our service. One of the key messages from the program is the importance of ‘Move, Play and Go’ throughout the whole year. We are very passionate about engaging children in ‘huff and puff’ play every day. During the winter months, it can be very difficult to keep active. The Move Well, Eat Well website: http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/mwew/families has an array of information for families. However, we are encouraging families to get out and about and explore what’s on within the local community. Some ways we suggest keeping children moving in winter include:

• Going to your local indoor pool
• Turning up the music and engaging your children in dance
• Rugging up and accessing local parks, bike or walking tracks, bonus being they tend to be quieter this time of the year and the children tend to love scootering and bike riding!!
• Organising a get together at an activity centre, e.g. Meal Machines Cafe & Play Centre, Eastside Activity Centre, Bounce, Woody's Skate & Play
• ‘Google’ fun exercise games to play with children and the ideas and suggestions are plentiful.

Most children enjoy any form of active play if it is with a family member, as long as children are huffing and puffing at the end of the activity, it has been beneficial to their health and well being.

Congratulations to Petryce and Jake

We are so excited to let everyone know, Petryce (Honey Bees) and her husband Jake are expecting their first child in February!!! Congratulations guys, we wish you all the best for your journey and the arrival of your precious little person.

What's been happening at Little Bee?

Howrah

Alice has commenced her maternity leave - we would like to wish her all the best with her new journey and the safe arrival of her baby.

Sally has taken on the role of Acting Director, for the next 12 months while Alice is on maternity leave. 

Welcome Nikki, Nikki has returned to Tassie after working interstate. Nikki is diploma qualified and joins us as a full time educator.

We have been very busy expressing ourselves through a variety of art experiences, including sand collages, pen, pencil and texta drawings.

The children thoroughly enjoyed learning about recycling, especially recycling paper. This lead onto paper making. Initially we were ripping the recycled paper, then turning it into new paper using a ‘deckle’.

We have also been practicing our problem solving skills as the puzzles have been a big hit throughout the month.

Airport

Staffing changes ...

Congratulations to Sofie who has moved into a full time room leader role in the Honey Bee room. Sofie has taken over from Amanda and Tania who have moved onto different careers. Nadine has returned from maternity leave and will be working 3 - 4 days in the Queen Bee room. Matilda has returned to the Queen Bee room after her time in the Baby Bees. Theresa has joined the Baby Bee team, working a minimum of 3 days per week, with additional days to cover staff leave.  

Congratulations Petryce for becoming our WHS officer (previously undertaken by Sally).  Petryce will be working in the office Thursday mornings and additional times, as required. She will continue to be primarily based in the Honey Bee room.

Baby Bees

Throughout the month of June Baby Bees have been focusing on sensory play, exploring the; sensory discovery box, sensory bags, water play and orbeez. Using the senses is an important part of early childhood development, because it is crucial for brain development, among many other benefits.  We provide opportunities for children to actively use their senses as they explore their world.  Learning through sensory exploration comes naturally to babies and young children, which makes sense when you consider that the skills they’ll come to rely on to build an understanding of objects, spaces, people and interactions are yet to be fully developed.

The children have been practising gross motor skills using the climbing frames and enjoying the sandpit, digging using their understanding of 'cause and effect' when pushing down sandcastles. Group time inside has been lots of fun as the children enjoy different nursery rhymes, encouraging everyone to join in with the actions.

Honey Bees

Throughout the month of June the Honey Bee's have been focusing on having children’s input into renovating the cubby house. The children have had the choice to pick and choose certain materials for the renovation. The children have also been busily painting the inside of the cubby house, where we look forward to James helping us to incorporate some Aboriginal artwork on some canvases. We cannot wait to see our cubby renovation completed and look forward to seeing all the children’s choices shine.

The children continue to be interested in exploring their senses, we have most recently been exploring the sense of “smell”. We have been looking at how our senses enable us to perceive aromas. We have discovered, it depends on the stimulation of sense organs in the nose by small particles carried in inhaled air, also called olfaction. The organs of smell are small patches of special cells (olfactory cells) in the nasal mucosa. We look forward to moving onto ‘taste’ as our next investigation into our senses.

Bumble Bees

Throughout the month of June in the Bumble Bee room we have been engaging in art and craft experiences, focusing on natural resources, such as: the investigation of Autumn leaves.  Other activities have included: moulding clay with small animals and painting.  We have been so lucky with some beautiful sunny days, venturing outdoors to visit the chickens and check on our garden. The children love the outdoors, and it is so important for nature to be part of their learning as it encourages them to nurture the environment and have a sense of belonging to the land.  The children have been practising gross motor skills using the climbing frames and enjoying the sandpit, digging, and making lots of exciting things. We have been extending our group times using the ‘song box’, where children choose a song from the box they would like to sing with the whole group.  Everyone is encouraged to join in with the singing and actions at whatever capacity they can. We look forward to exploring music, dance and winter 'dress ups' during July.

Busy Bees

In the Busy Bees the children have had an incredible month of creativity, exploration, inquiry and imagination. The children explored new activities that mentally challenged them whilst forging a new love for the experience. Participating in experiences around the game “I Spy” supported the children to test their memories as they fostered a sense of belonging with their artwork, home, and Little Bee. In another activity the children thoroughly enjoyed making chocolate cakes and creating box construction. Cooking the cake, again fostered a sense of belonging between home and Little Bee. Whilst the Box Construction gave the children the opportunity to create from items that were brought not only from their home, but from the wider community.

We also had a few new activities emerge in the room. These included new Orbeez, Doll Area, Birdhouse construction area and a refreshed tabletop construction area.

The children’s development has taken leaps and bounds throughout the beginning of winter. As they continue to grow, they thrive by learning in small group and large group environments. This allows the children to become the teacher and scaffold each other’s learning.

Queen Bees

During June in the Queen Bee room we focused on team building and it’s relationship to wellbeing, encouraging children to participate together and express their feelings about what it means to work as a team. We shared together the book: “I belong in my team - a book about belonging”, discussing the concept of ‘a team’ and the meaning of ‘teamwork’.  We asked the children to brainstorm activities that they can do as a team when at Little Bee, as well as Community teams they belong in and what they believe it means to be a good teammate.

We provided opportunities for the children to participate in team activities and mini team challenges, such as: ‘tug-of-war’ and ‘tunnel ball’ which encouraged team work, cooperation, working with others, positive communication, listening, turn-taking, peer support and problem solving. These activities also allow children to use and extend fundamental movement skills and ball skills learned previously.
We also continued to explore our emotions and optimise our learning by further investigating if children can identify their own feelings and what has triggered these feelings.

 We participated in grounding experiences, where each child was blindfolded, they sat quietly and focused on their breathing; looking for things that they could see, feel, hear, smell and taste in our surrounding area.

The Lycra sensory tunnel was very popular, as we thought about how it makes us feel while we are inside it and make our way through to the end.

Art experiences continue to be a favourite activity for the Queen Bees, creating many wonderful eye dropper paintings and collage using recycled paper.

Children's Library

Welcome to Little Bee's Children's library.

Please feel free to borrow one book per child, then return when you're finished to borrow the next one! 

Give Me 5 for Kids Fundraiser

A very big thank you to all our families and staff who wore your PJ's for a week and gave generously to the 'Give Me 5 for Kids Fundraiser'. It was lovely to see all the children and staff enjoying the cosy feel of their pyjamas. Some educators even went all out and wore matching PJ sets!

We raised a fantastic $340 between both centres!

National Immunisation Program (NIP) Childhood Schedule 

 We would like to remind all families of the ‘No Jab, No Play’ policy. Families will not receive child care subsidy if their child is not fully immunised. Please see information around the Centre regarding immunisation schedules or chat to us if you have any questions and we will source additional information for you. Please ensure you provide the centre with copies of your child’s immunisation records as they are updated.       

Thank-you.

For more information please visit: immunise.health.gov.au  

Information for Review

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

5.2 – Positive interactions with children

5.3 - Behaviour Guidance

6.1 – Safety and access for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

6.2 – Delivery and collection of a child and refusal of authorization for a child to leave the service

6.3 – Bookings, cancellations, fees and operating hours

6.4 – Partnerships with families

 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

These are the links we are promoting this month: 

• Healthy Kids Check: www.dss.gov.au
• Immunisation: immunise.health.gov.au
• The Move Well, Eat Well website: http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/mwew/families

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

Educator professional learning sessions 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 will be held in August, topic to be confirmed, if you are interested in attending, please let us know.

All families are invited to join our Family and Friends 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 our staff members if you are interested.

We acknowledge and pay respect to the Elders past, present and future, the Traditional Custodians of Lutruwita (Tasmania) and pay homage to the traditional owners of the land our centres stand on, the Moomairemener people.