Little Bee Newsletter December 2019 |
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We can’t believe it’s almost December already and we are nearing the end of another year. We would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of all the educators, to thank you for such a fantastic year! We are truly lucky to have such supportive families that embrace all the fun and learning that happens at Little Bee. So… if you will be leaving us soon – we will miss you! If you are here again next year – we can’t wait for the learning journey we will all continue on!!! If you are planning holidays over the Christmas period—we much appreciate you letting us know, as this can help us to manage our staffing and allow extras to have holidays. We wish everyone safe travels and a relaxing sunny time with their friends and families!! |
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Little Bee Children’s Christmas Party! It is hard to believe that Christmas is almost here and we absolutely love celebrating Christmas at Little Bee! The children are preparing our special annual concert; we hope to see you there: Airport: Thursday 12th December at 3.30 pm Howrah: Friday 13th December at 2pm Some of the older children have been working very hard to prepare our special concert. All families have been given their invitations (in trays). We have received many RSVP’s already & expect a great afternoon. Please remember any food brought families kindly bring into the centre must not contain nuts or whole eggs, thank you for your ongoing support. |
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Social Media Reminder: If you are taking photographs at any of our Little Bee social events, we request that you please do not post photos of children (other than your own) on social media. We have a list of families who have joined our Facebook group. If you email any photographs to Little Bee, we can then check the permission status of those children in the photograph, before posting to our Little Bee Facebook page. Thank you for your understanding. |
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Parent/Educator Evenings! We would like to give a massive, massive thank-you to our families who have already or who are booked in to attended our parent/educator evenings! This gives us the wonderful opportunity to share their child's hard work and further insight into our 'inquiry based projects'. We have had such beautiful feedback from many families about the interviews so far, and we look forward to continuing our presentation next week. We are so grateful so many families were able to share their child's journey and see the wonder of their learning first hand. For those of you who were unable to attend, your child's learning journey will be in their profile book late December. You are very welcome to have a look at any time, please just ask an educator, alternatively we can email it to you for you to share with your family! |
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What’s been happening at Little Bee … Little Bee Howrah Over the past few weeks, the children at Little Bee Howrah have been busy utilising natural materials in their play activities and experiences. From collecting objects such as driftwood lengths and sorting them into their corresponding sizes and tying together with string, through to chopping herbs from our kitchen garden. All these materials and objects support the children’s learning in so many ways; exploring and understanding mathematical concepts of length, strengthening fine motor and eye hand coordination skills as we practise tying knots with the string. Immersing ourselves in a total sensory experience, as the fragrance from the herbs wafts up as it’s released from the plants. More and more, the children are driving their own learning as they source materials to support their own ideas. They are growing in confidence in their own abilities to successfully organise themselves and each other to achieve goals they set themselves. Skills such as leadership, cooperation, emotional intelligence and resilience are just a few of the valuable life skills the children are developing and encouraging in each other as they play. Please ensure to be diligent while entering and exiting through the gate ... We would like to remind families to remain very diligent while entering and exiting through our main gate as it opens onto our car park. Please wait and open the gate when your whole family is ready to leave, please ensure it latches safely behind the last person through the gate, please do not allow children (including siblings) to independently open and close the gate. Please DO NOT let any children other than your own out the gate. We ask that everyone is proactive when entering an exiting through the gate to ensure the safety of all children. Thank you |
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And at Little Bee Airport .... Baby Bees As the weather has warmed up, we have taken full advantage and have been exploring the outdoors play spaces where a lot of imaginative play has been happening, including the mud pit/ garden area. The children enjoyed splashing in the mud and water engaging in play. The children have also enjoyed visiting the chickens. We have been busy indoors with our craft work painting with the medical swabs! (thanks to Lucy's family kindly donated). We have been pasting with natural materials and enjoying some body painting! Honey Bees Over the past month the children in the Honey Bee room have been working on cooperation and team work as they work together at a variety of experiences. The children have been really engaged in building with all the different sized blocks within the room and outside, working together and encouraging each other to build the blocks up as high as they can be before falling down (or knocked down 😊) We have been engaging in lots of sensory play with the play-dough being a big hit among all the children. The children have explored the play-dough with a variety of natural materials i.e shells, leaves, sticks and stones. Using the different materials, the children rolled, squished, pressed and printed different patterns on the dough. With the children we have also been working on our persistence in climbing over the different climbing frames. The children have demonstrated their problem solving skills as they work out different ways to explore and climb the frames to successfully complete them. Bumble Bees The children have been learning and expanding their knowledge of gardening and caring for the environment. The Bumble Bees have been continuing to care for our growing plants in our garden patch and feeding the chickens every Wednesday! The Bumble Bee children are still practising our sign language skills through group times and songs and we can’t wait to share with you at the Christmas concert!! As we have been wrapping up our programming we still continue to use our skills that we have learnt through out this time such as sensory play, using play dough and clay and physical activity using all of our gym equipment daily. As Christmas is not far away we have been exploring different craft experiences using lots of natural materials, paints, glitter and collage materials. |
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Busy Bees: November in the Busy Bee Room has been a month full of creativity, as we make the move into Christmas. We have made a start on our Christmas decorations and we are brainstorming some Christmas gift ideas. In the room we have been using clay and play-dough every day to keep us creative, along with painting, gluing and cutting all month long. Our garden adventures are continuing, and our veggie patch is abundant with different plants, we have just started to find peas and strawberries. We have had another change in our play spaces, turning our home corner into a corner store with cash registers and many new and different foods. As the year is drawing to a close, we are reflecting on the year that has been and we are all so grateful for the Busy Bees and look forward to this final month together celebrating this past year. Queen Bees: This past month has been very busy in the Queen Bee room, wow Christmas has creeped up on us! the children have been very excited as we have began to practise our songs for our Christmas concert. One of the songs we will be singing is the Aboriginal lullaby “Inanay” which is sang in the language of the Yorta Yorta people from Victoria. We learnt this song during NAIDOC week. We have started to decorate our tree and the children are very busy during experience time making some decorations to place onto it. We will be using lots of natural resources to make our decorations. The children made the suggestion that we change our dress up corner to a Christmas baking corner over the next week if you have anything at home that could be of use we would be grateful, watch this space. During group time, we have also been focusing on name recognition by placing names onto their place mats, the children have now masted the skill of recognising their name. |
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DITTO’S KEEP SAFE ADVENTURE PERSONAL SAFETY EDUCATION FOR EARLY LEARNING TO YEAR 3 is coming to: Little Bee Airport - Queen Bee Room - 11.45am Tuesday 3rd of December 2019 Ditto’s Keep Safe Adventure Show is aimed at children aged 3 to 8 and is delivered in early learning centres and lower primary schools to children of all abilities. This fun and interactive personal safety program has reached hundreds of thousands of Australian children since its inception in 2006. Delivered by experienced facilitators, the show duration is 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the age group (shorter show for younger children). Independent evaluation of the Ditto Show suggests the principles of personal safety embedded in the program can help to increase resilience, and reduce the risk of child sexual assault, as well as other forms of abuse including family violence and bullying. What will children learn? Following is an overview of the Ditto show content. (Please note that some of the content described below is omitted from the Early Years (i.e. childcare) version of the show to ensure age-appropriateness and brevity for a young audience.) Both the Early Years and lower primary school versions of the Ditto show are underpinned by the following six principles of personal safety: - Differentiating ‘yes’ and ‘no’ feelings
- Recognising the bodies ‘warning signs’
- Body ownership
- Helping children identify language and feelings associated with secrets
- Reinforcing that there is no secret that children cannot tell someone
- What to do if you feel unsafe or unsure
We aim to teach children these essential principals through songs such as ‘Run and Tell (someone you can trust)’ and ‘Private Parts (they belong to me)’. Children also learn ‘Ditto’s 3 Rules’, which are: - We all have the right to feel safe with people.
- It’s ok to say NO if you feel unsafe or unsure.
- Nothing is so yucky that you can’t tell someone about it.
As part of the program, children are each given a Ditto’s Keep Safe Adventure Activity Booklet to take home (primary school program only). We encourage parents and/or teachers to look at the booklet with the children, using the activities to help cement the personal safety messages from the show. If your child does not attend Little Bee on a Tuesday we encourage you to come along and stay with your child to listen to the show. If your child does attend on Tuesday and you have some free time, we encourage you come along and participate. |
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Transitions to Kindergarten—for children who will be attending Kindergarten in 2020... Thank you to all families who have already returned their child's transition to school documents. We look forward to sharing these with schools late next week. If you are yet to return the document, please return as soon as possible. If you need a new copy please let us know - thank you! |
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Family and Friends Events... We have held some wonderful events during 2019 and would like to thank our families for your ongoing support in attending our events and to all those families who attended their first event this year; we hope to see you at many more!! If any of our families would like to join our Committee in 2020 and help us to plan our events—please let us know. We only meet twice a year to plan the events for the following year. A huge thank you to our educators and families involved this year. |
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Our Christmas Fundraiser! |
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This Christmas at Little Bee we continue to offer support for under-privileged children living in our Community. You will have noticed we are donating to the Hobart City Mission Christmas Appeal. Thanks to the generosity of many families, we have already built up a fabulous stack of gifts beneath our Christmas trees at both Centres! For many children It has been a wonderful teaching opportunity for us to reinforce the concept of giving, with some children even using their own pocket money to buy presents. We continue to encourage our families to donate a special gift (book, craft items, toy, etc.), unwrapped please if you can! It is sure to be so well received by those children less fortunate than us. All gifts must be under the tree by the morning of Wednesday 11th December, ready for us to deliver. We thank families for their amazing support. |
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Little Bee will be closed on the following dates in the coming month .... Wednesday 25th December Thursday 26th December Wednesday 1st January We will be open normal operating hours all other week days, thank you! |
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Information for Review We are currently reviewing the following policies and/or procedures: * Little Bee Human Resources Manual If you would like to have input reviewing this document 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 from recognised authorities we are promoting this month: 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 in late January 2019 (date to be confirmed). 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 our staff members if you are interested. |
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