From the Director of Early Learning

Dear Families,

As we enjoy Week 6 of term, we celebrate another opportunity to bring our community together with our Father’s Day Breakfast. It is really special to be able to host community events that are clearly welcomed by families as an opportunity to be involved in your children’s lives. Arguably one of our favourite events, a breakfast brings us together first thing in the morning, our young friends are fresh and alert, proud to be hosting their family in their space.

It does seem significant that bringing families together in the children’s learning space promotes partnership and a sense of pride with place. It is like building a bridge between the child’s two worlds. We sometimes take for granted the enormous adjustments a child makes from their home to our setting, they are encountering new things, different people and are adjusting their normal life to incorporate us. The separation from family can create anxiety so it is essential we build trust into this union.

So for those of you who were able to attend our special breakfast or who plan to attend future events, we say thank you! We are thanking you for the critical role we play, as the adults in their lives, at understanding the holistic picture of the child’s life and trying really hard to combat any fragmentations with this emphasis on relationships.

In two weeks we will invite our extended families into the Centre for a Grandparents and Special Friends’ Afternoon Tea. We encourage all families to find someone who can come along with their child to this event and participate in what will be one of our largest ELC gatherings for 2017. The date is Wednesday 13 September at 2pm.

Kate Mount
Director of Early Learning
 

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Important dates to remember

Wednesday 30 August 6.30pm: Dr Tom Nehmy seminar
Thursday 31 August 9am: Dr Tom Nehmy workshop
Monday 4 September 5pm: Reception Twilight Tour
Wednesday 13 September 2pm: ELC Grandparents and Special Friends’ Afternoon Tea
Monday 18 September – Wednesday 20 September: ELC Parent-Teacher Conversations
Friday 29 September: Term 3 Concludes
Tuesday 3 October: Vacation Care Commences
Friday 13 October: Vacation Care Concludes
Monday 16 October: Term 4 Commences

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A letter from Ms Qian

尊敬的家长：

转眼本学期已经过半，通过孩子们在elc的表现以及家长们对elc社区活动的参与，我很高兴地看到了大家对新学期的参与和适应度正在提高，这也正是elc对咱们广大中国家庭的期许！
接下来我们为大家准备了两场社区活动－－今天的父亲节早餐和9月13日（星期三）下午两点的祖父母及特别朋友下午茶。
我们都知道家庭成员在孩子的教育中发挥着非常重要的作用，因此我们希望借着社区活动的机会能让家庭成员们也参与到孩子们的日常学习中来，同时也希望能利用这个美好的时间段提升您和孩子的互动并留下美好的回忆瞬间！
我代表elc的老师们感谢今天参加父亲节早餐的爸爸们，我们非常看重您的参与，因为这能够让您的孩子感受到她／他和幼儿园在您心里的分量，从而提高他们的自信以及归属感！

Ms Qian

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Grandparents and Special Friends’ Day

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Reception Twilight Tour

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Wellbeing in Young Children

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‘Old Scholars’ of the ELC

It has been an exciting time for our Mid-Year Reception students as they have experienced life in the “big school” for five weeks! In Week 4, the Book Week parade was held, and the girls enjoyed the opportunity to dress up as a book character. We made a special visit to the Mid-Year Reception room to meet up with ELC “Old Scholars” Jessie, Zara and Aarabi, and captured them all dressed up for Book Week.

In the past couple of weeks, the Old Scholars have been learning various sounds of Jolly Phonics, including Cc.. clicking castanets, Kk.. kites, Ee eggs in the pan, Dd… drum, and practising letter formation. They have been reading some of the children’s stories shortlisted for Book Week, as well as learning how to sequence numbers from 0-20, counting forwards and backwards and identifying missing numbers. Additionally, our Mid-Year Receptions have been learning Chinese and French!

The girls have met Izzy Inquirer and began delving into the Unit of Inquiry, “There are many types of dwellings that people call home” by drawing and labelling their own home and its features. Lastly, the girls have enjoyed visiting their ELC friends on Friday afternoons.

It certainly sounds like life is very busy for our Old Scholars of the ELC! It is great to see them return to the ELC to share their stories with their friends there.

Take a look at this lovely video which highlights the excitement of the girls as they dressed up for the day!

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News from the Stonyfell Room

“Knowledge is not rooted in facts; it is rooted in curiosity. One inspired teacher can alter a student for life by instilling curiosity.” – Deepak Chopra

In the Stonyfell Room, we are continuing our PYP inquiry of Ferguson Park through our nature pedagogy. From daily visits into our ‘backyard’ reserve, the children have demonstrated strong curiosities of the many living things that can be found on the ground such as flowers and living insects. As this is so easily accessible to the children, they are able to explore using all their senses, enriching their understanding of the natural world around them.

Through these explorations we have identified elements of empathy that are evident in the children’s emerging attitudes towards these living things. Each visit, the children pick from the bed of yellow flowers, collecting and offering them to other children and educators as a gift. Discoveries of millipedes and the base of the flower beds have also provided insights to our children’s developing empathy, in the manner of which they care for them. After witnessing a millipede curling up from exposure, Lana Rundle commented that it “must be scared” and that we should “cover it back up”. This empathetic skill has been mirrored within the ELC with our worm farms, considering and caring for these living creatures in a similar way.

Our role as educators is to fuel this fascination with as many opportunities to visit the park and be involved in running the worm farms. Provocations throughout the room also allow a flow of learning from Ferguson Park into the ELC to add another layer to their experiences and express learning through a variety of languages. These experiences the children have engaged in have been captured and displayed around the Stonyfell Room for educators, families and children to reflect on.

Emma Veitch and Annabelle Redmond

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News from the Bell Yett Room

“To foster a love for place, we must engage our bodies and our hearts – as well as our minds.” – Ann Pelo, Author

In the ELC, the children are provided with many materials and mediums through which to give form to their thinking and imagination. We often refer to this as their One Hundred Languages. Our dedicated ateliers (art spaces) provide children with endless possibilities through which to capture their curiosities with the resources provided. We are also regularly joined by Miss Caterina who supports the children in developing the skills and attitudes needed for using the materials.

We have been inviting the children to use mark-making as a language for expressing their thoughts and theories about their interactions with nature. This includes their curiosities about the ants they have encountered in the park, our worm farm and the “Best Friend Tree”. This language gives children the opportunity to stop and pause with their ideas, give them shape and make them relatable to others.

It also supports the research skills we are focussing on developing, including:

• Observation skills – using all the senses to notice relevant details
• Recording data – describing and recording observations by drawing

During our visits to the park and the use of digital technologies such as photographs, videos and projections, we are inviting the children to use all of their senses to carefully observe and then develop their skills through recording these observations.

Our connections to nature through both hands-on explorations and documenting through mark-making, are supporting children in developing their ecological identity. We have begun displaying the children’s mark-making around the room, on the walls and in documentation folders. We invite you to come in and be amazed at their work.

Leanne Williams, Nell Tierney and the Bell Yett Team

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News from the Ferguson Room

 
Every second Tuesday, we meet with our Buddy Class, the Year 3s and their teacher, Mr Routley. This is such a wonderful way to connect with the School community and to build relationships with our fellow learners. The children are always so excited to see each other. Recently, we arranged for our buddies to meet us in Ferguson Park. Thankfully the weather was fine, and with the assistance of two of our parents, Meg (mother of Edwina) and Nancy (mother of CiCi), we welcomed the Year 3s to the world we have been exploring and discovering. As we have been doing a lot of work on mapping the park and the special places we have found within it, we asked the older girls to look for a place they and their ELC buddy felt was interesting or beautiful, and to draw it together.

Our overarching intent this term has been to nurture the children’s ecological identity. Simply put, this means to establish a strong connection with the natural environment in our local area, one that will inspire empathy for all that lives within it, and a growing desire to take action to protect it. We know that environmental issues and concerns will always be something for which human beings must take responsibility, and children must understand this from a young age so that they, too can take their place as proactive, globally-minded citizens of the world. The participation of our families in this area of our learning has also been important. Children look to adults as role models, and witnessing the interest and support of the Ferguson Room parents reinforces that their studies with their teachers and peers are of great value.

Next week we will return to the park with our Year 3 buddies and some of our parents, using the maps we have created together to rediscover the special places we found together. As we work with one another, we nurture our relationships with our buddies as well as with the landscape of this special piece of bushland.

Mel Angel

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News from the Hallett Room

 
As we see relationships deepening, expanding and changing in the Hallett Room, we begin to see the development of rich collaboration. An important aspect of the Reggio Emilia approach is that of co-construction; how children build knowledge with one another. For us as educators, we aim to initiate some thinking and then encourage the children to expand each other’s ideas and thoughts. As the children become more confident to share their ideas with one another, they become aware that they can also respectfully challenge their peers. We start to hear differing points of view as they question, disagree and negotiate their theories – sometimes changing their perspectives along the way. It is exciting as educators to see this happen, knowing the children are enhancing their research, thinking and inquiry skills. Those all-important skills that build the foundations for lifelong learners.

This week in the Hallett Room, we had this type of collaboration occur during the Buddy session with our Mid-Year Reception friends. As they came to visit us in the ELC, we decided to share our investigation into the Worm Farm. The initial response from some of the Reception children was “YUCK!”

The Hallett children soon changed this perspective!

“Worms aren’t yuck they are fun.”
“We have to be gentle with the worms.”
“You don’t have to touch them.”

As the group of children became more curious about the learning, we started to hear some theories emerge.

“They can eat the fruit scraps.” – Reception friend
“I wonder if they could eat the crust of the bread?”
“They can eat some bread.”
“No, they aren’t allowed bread.”
“Why aren’t worms allowed to eat dairy?” – Reception friend
“They can’t eat milk.”
“Will they vomit?” – Reception friend
“Because they’re not people?” – Reception friend
“Maybe because they eat things that are healthy for them.”
“Worms turn the scraps into dirt.” – Reception friend
“Worms need places that are damp.” – Reception friend

The Hallett children may not have thought about some of those ideas coming from their older peers before. Their own ideas are scaffolded to new levels and are ready to be revisited by educators at another time.

Pam Reid

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From the Director of Early Learning

Dear Families,

There is great enthusiasm across the Centre as our Ferguson Park explorations are deepening. The staff are sharing with me their interactions with the children as more regular visits are taking place. We are examining how the building of a strong connection with the space will assist children to understand more about what lives in the park, what they need to survive and the impact the living things have on each other. We are trying not to tell the children too much but rather wait for their discoveries, their observations and theories about living things and what they need. This is building the children’s ecological understandings and you will hear more about this as you read each room’s inquiry.

To go a little deeper we are endeavouring to build understandings about how the children can impact their future by being aware and enacting sustainable practices. I was delighted when having a conversation with one family during the week about their grandparents who are great recyclers. They have fantastic sustainable practices going on in their own backyard, including growing all their produce. We would love to hear about your practices in your families and if you can partner us in any way with the current learning. Our worm farms have been a very successful implementation and we are looking to continue to create real opportunities where the children are driving the practice rather than the adults. After all, children already have very strong natural curiosities about living things.

In contrast to this thinking, we reflect on some of our everyday practices that could be more closely examined and reviewed. For example, our lunch boxes are often filled with plastic wrappers that need to be thrown away, children often draw on paper, decide they don’t like it and throw it out. Our bins are quickly filled. What happens to all this waste? I was in the Hallett Room the other day and a group of children decided to use the recycled paper to make their paper aeroplanes. I questioned them and they were quick to tell me that the paper had many uses. I was very impressed with their analysis and later when speaking to Mrs Reid it was further explained how the children had arrived at this point. What impressed me was the teachers had not told the children that it was a waste of paper and that they should reuse it, but rather they had proposed a question that enabled the children to think more deeply for themselves – we call this type of thinking critical thinking, whereby solutions are generated from a problem and trialled to see if they can prove or disprove their theory.

I am sharing this focus with you, our adult community, this week so that you can become part of this exciting learning with your child and with your child’s room and Centre. It is not just one room that is giving attention to this but all rooms. When you hear about visits to the park, please invite your children to share their discoveries with you. We would love to add some home examples of our shared learning to our room learning. We look forward to hearing from you.

Kate Mount
Director of Early Learning

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Absentee Contact Details

If your child is absent from the ELC please notify the School by 9.30am with the reason via:

Text 0428601957 or
email attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au

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Save the Date

Grandparents and special friends

Afternoon Tea
Wednesday 13 September at 2pm

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Father’s Day Breakfast

Wednesday 30 August 2017

Please join us at 7.45am for a special breakfast with your child.
A light breakfast will be served.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Enjoy a Twilight Tour of our Junior School

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Wellbeing in Young Children

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Welcome to Term 3 Morning Tea

The Friends of the ELC would like to thank all families who attended the recent Welcome to Term 3 Morning Tea.

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A letter from Ms Qian

亲爱的家长：

转眼已经步入新学期的第四周，我代表elc所有的老师们热烈欢迎这学期加入我们的新家庭！在前面的三周里，我们经历了小朋友从一开始的不适应到慢慢融入elc这个大家庭，这一切都在慢慢地过渡并走入平稳，我为所有新的小朋友和爸爸妈妈们感到骄傲！同时也要感谢在前三周中所有新家长的配合和理解，感谢已经在elc的家长和小朋友的支持和协助！无论您是elc多年的老朋友，还是刚加入这个大家庭的新成员，都欢迎您随时和我们沟通，有任何疑问或者建议请联系我（Ms Qian－Stonyfell Room) 或者直接联系您孩子所在班级的负责老师。 最后，季节变化，大家注意身体哦！

Ms Qian

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Look at our Garden Grow!

 
Last Friday our wonderful groundsmen Liam and Dom arrived in our ELC garden with a wheel barrow full of new plants. The children were very excited to find out where they would go and how they would be planted. Liam and Dom were more than happy to have helpers. Some children were reluctant to get their hands dirty but watched, fascinated, as holes were dug and roots were gently untangled.

“Ooh look, it’s a worm! Careful, we don’t want to squash it.”, exclaimed Penny. It is beautiful to hear the children express empathy for a little earthworm nestled in the roots of a new plant. Children learn much from the actions of adults and working beside Dom and Liam was a wonderful way for children to see respect and responsibility for the environment being modelled. The children will also have responsibilities in the coming weeks to ensure the plants adapt to their new homes by watering them and playing respectfully around them. This experience is another little step towards developing an ecological identity.

Mel Angel

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News from the Stonyfell Room

Building our sense of place – Connecting with Ferguson Park

“Children know how to live intimately in place; they allow themselves to be imprinted by place… They learn about place with their bodies and hearts.”
A. Pelo

During this term the Stonyfell Room children have begun accessing and exploring Ferguson Park. This natural bush reserve is in our ‘backyard’ and we are very fortunate to have this resource right at our finger tips. Through our inquiry this term we have a strong focus of developing a deep and meaningful connection to our natural environment. In order for our children to begin forming this authentic relationship with this place, we need to develop their sense of belonging to the park.

To truly connect with the park, we have been building our children’s sense of familiarity to the space. This has involved using this space every day. We have chosen to use the area just over our fence line. The children can still see the ELC building and visually understand that these two places are connected. During this time many things have occurred and the educators are taking the time to closely observe and document how the children are engaging with this space.

We ask ourselves:
• What are they observing?
• What senses are they using to observe and connect to this space?
• What questions are they asking?

As the weeks have progressed, the educators have thought how we can physically represent ourselves in the park. This provocation has led us to begin to collect the large white rocks located on the central path in the park. The children have gone to the park and worked in small groups with their buckets. They have worked together to fill the buckets and bring the rocks back to the ELC. Our next step is to paint these rocks in our ELC colours, which will be a visual representation for us to then place these back in the park.

Laura Reiters

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News from the Bell Yett Room

“Isn’t it lovely living here in Ferguson Park.” – Nina-Lucia
“Aimee, Hannah and me are best friends with the tree.” – Imogen

To support our intention of developing our ecological identities, we have been regularly visiting Ferguson Park. Our purpose for our initial visits was to give the children the opportunity to be introduced to, or reconnect with the park. We gave them the freedom to lead the way, while we observed the places and features that they were drawn to.
Back in the Bell Yett Room, we have been revisiting our explorations through the photographs and videos we have taken. This gives the children the opportunity to remember the experience, look at it more deeply and even reconsider it from another point of view. We often find children share more of their thoughts and ideas after the event and the photographs and videos support this.

It was during one of these revisits that Imogen was looking carefully at a photograph of her standing on a fallen log with some of her friends.

Imogen declared: “Aimee, Hannah and me are best friends with the tree.”

We were excited by Imogen’s feelings about the tree. We wondered if other children were developing similar connections to the park. We asked Imogen if we could share her thoughts at our Morning Meeting. We were mindful of not wanting to have too much influence over the children’s thinking so we considered her idea along with other photos and observations.

Upon our return to the park, Imogen and Hannah immediately returned to ‘the best friend tree’. Inspired by their delight in reconnecting with their ‘friend’, it wasn’t long before the other children began to explore the tree. The teachers observed the gentle touch the children had as they made contact with the tree and the way they used the tree as a trusted support for climbing and balancing.

At the same time, Elijah and Miranda discovered some small branches covered with brown leaves on the ground by ‘the best friend tree’. They were very concerned by this and felt that it was important to reattach the branches back on the tree. However, they then noticed something else. The leaves on the tree were green and the leaves on the ground were brown. They didn’t match and they didn’t belong together.

This has led to many children sharing their theories as to why some leaves are green and some are brown. We hope you have time to look at these photos and theories on display on the walls of the Bell Yett Room, and online on our Bell Yett Canvas page. We would also like to invite you to join us as we continue to explore Ferguson Park. If you have a spare half-hour in your day and you would like to join us for a walk, please let us know.

The Bell Yett Team

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News from the Ferguson Room

 
What are the skills and attributes our children will need to prepare for a changing landscape of employment? Research indicates that a capacity for critical thinking, collaboration and empathy for others will be high on the list.

This term our PYP Unit of Inquiry ‘Sharing the Planet’ perfectly positions us to develop these skills. Our underlying intention is to deepen our personal and collective identity as people whose relationship with the natural environment is one of connection, empathy and responsibility. You will have noticed the resident creatures we have in the Ferguson Room at the moment. The leaf and stick insects have left and been replaced by hermit crabs. Next week we will have a sleepy lizard. We also have a collection of butterfly specimens under glass that prompted a discussion among the children.

“Are they real?” – Mila

“They are real but not dead.” – Darcy

“Are they dead?” – Layla

“They are alive but not moving.” – Eoin

“The ones at the bottom are dead, the one’s at the top are not dead.” – Harry

“They are beautiful.” – Penny

“Insects don’t have friends. Little children need their mum and dad, but insects don’t”. – Hannah

“Don’t make loud noises near the pigeon, it will be scared.” – Ivy W

“My Daddy can help me get leaves for the leaf insects.” – Ivy C

These observations, questions, theories and discussions are evidence of children’s natural propensity for scientific thinking and thirst for knowledge. As educators our role is very different to what it once was. It is not enough for us to be providing children with answers and information. We have a responsibility to support children to engage in critical thinking and to develop an understanding of themselves as active learners, capable of researching, collaborating and discovering things for themselves.

With this in mind, we have been visiting Ferguson Park as often as possible and encouraging the children to explore. We are so fortunate to have this beautiful bush block right next door to our ELC. The children have been noticing and discovering a myriad of treasures including a secret garden, the rainbow lorikeet tree, a piece of wood shaped like a hammer, numerous holes of all shapes and sizes, leaves that have been nibbled by unseen creatures and an abundance of flowers in varying shades of yellow. These are a delight for all of the senses and further provocations for creative thinking and expression. On our return to the classroom, the children have made representations of their favourite things in the park and are also embarking on mapping the area to include all of these special landmarks. Thus our children are scientists, photographers, artists and cartographers as well as human beings experiencing joy and wonder at the beauty of the world around them.

This week we welcome several parents who have volunteered to join us on these excursions. Continuing these conversations at home is an important part of the learning process and we look forward to hearing about the dialogue you are having with your child beyond the school gate about their current experiences in the Ferguson Room.

Mel Angel

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News from the Hallett Room

 
The Hallett Room is buzzing with excitement this week! Our regular walks to Ferguson Park, where we stay close to the ELC building, are giving us the opportunity to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. As different groups of children are intentionally grouped together, we see a range of explorations happening.

Some children are fascinated with the park – what lives there, what sounds they can hear, what they can feel and what they can smell. Some children are more cautious – observing their environment from a distance but still with a gentle curiosity. Other children explore the park physically – stomping through the grass, collecting sticks, making homes, pulling bark off the trees and out from the ground. And this is where the magic happens! The children begin to challenge one another, together creating their own discourse with differing ideas and theories.

“You can’t pull off bark.” – Winnie

“There’s animals on there!” – Macie

“If you pick up bark and you notice millipedes, then you should put the bark back down.” – Sophie H

“You have to stop and think before you pull off the bark.” – Poppy

“We are breaking our thank you.” – Charlie

“We will make the Kaurna people sad.” – Isobel

“If you see a millipede, don’t take them from their homes!” – Faith

“Picking flowers, then the flowers will die.” – Ava Conn

“The flowers will feel sad.” – Layla

“The bees won’t be able to make honey and fruit without flowers.” – Charlotte

“Without trees, we won’t have paper.” – Josh

“We have to re-use the paper, not take another piece.” – Adeline G

“I can talk to millipedes and ask them if they want to move home.” – Prabir

The children’s awareness of the amount of paper we use in the Hallett Room and their connection to the park is an important link for our ecological identities. Not only do we hope for children to understand that their actions have an impact on the environment, but we hope to foster a love for the environment that ensures the children will have an ongoing, self-driven responsibility to care for and protect it.

“To love a person or place is to take responsibility for its wellbeing.”
Kathleen Den Moore

Pam Reid

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From the Director of Early Learning

Dear Families,

We are excited to commence the second semester of our school year with new families joining our Centre and existing families returning. We hope that you enjoy reading our fortnightly newsletters which will share snapshots of happenings in our ELC community.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any assistance or additional information.

Learning at its best

There is always so much to learn; as children and as adults. The part of my job that I love the most is being an active lifelong learner. You never have all of the information or know everything and must be continually reflecting to set new goals, to ask more questions and develop your critical lens.

At our ELC we are very engaged in Professional Learning. One of the best aspects of our ongoing learning is the learning community that we have created around us. Learning in a collaborative way empowers others and enhances the opportunities for us to see things from different viewpoints and to shift our thinking. Trust is critical and it is with this trust that we can try new things and make changes.

During the holidays the teaching team attended a significant conference in Sydney entitled ‘Landscapes of Identity’ with international speakers from Reggio Emilia. Over the days of the conference we were challenged to think beyond our existing position by the points of view of others. Together we had much of our existing practice confirmed but the thinking more deeply about certain elements really helped us to move to that next step. Together we modelled what a learning community should and can be and were very appreciative of this unique opportunity to be together, hearing the same information and then being able to have dialogue about it.

We are going to present our learning to our entire ELC staff and are already using some of the ideas to expand our skill set in ‘Planning for the Possible’, incorporating the Primary Years Programme and Early Years Learning Framework into this.

You may already think that the teaching and learning at the ELC is of high quality however it is our responsibility to ensure we are not stagnant. We do not roll out the same thinking, the same learning and the same ideas year after year. Our work is evolutionary and this is because we put the significance of the child first, who they are, what stories they have to tell us, what skills they already have that can be shared with us; we give value to all of these things and it is the child that after all guides us on our learning pathway.

We hope to be able to share with you how this is possible and how the child can inform our practice on so many levels.

We look forward to an exciting term ahead!

Kate Mount
Director of Early Learning

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Welcome to Term 3 morning tea

Join us for morning tea!

To commence the term, the Friends of the ELC will host a welcome morning tea. It will provide an opportunity for you to socialise with other families within our ELC community.

TOMORROW 3 August from 8.45am
ELC piazza, St Peter’s Girls’ School

We look forward to enjoying your company at this informal catch up.

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Save the Date

Wellbeing in younger children

30 August Dr Tom Nehmy evening seminar for ELC – Year 4 parents
31 August Dr Tom Nehmy morning workshop for ELC – Year 4 parents

Reception for 2018 Receptions

4 September Twilight Tour of the Junior School

Notice to our wonderful grandparents and special friends

Afternoon Tea
Wednesday 13 September at 2pm

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Term 3 Dates to Remember

3 August Welcome back morning tea at 8.45am
14 August Stonyfell Room Information Night (for new families)
30 August Father’s Day Breakfast at 7.45am
30 August Dr Tom Nehmy evening wellbeing seminar for ELC – Year 4 parents
31 August Dr Tom Nehmy morning wellbeing workshop for ELC – Year 4 parents
13 September Grandparents and special friends afternoon tea at 2pm
4 September Twilight Tour of the Junior School for families of 2018 Receptions
18 – 20 September ELC Parent Teacher Conversations

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Worm Farm Initiative

The St Peter’s Girls’ Early Learners’ Centre is excited to announce the launch of our new worm farms which were set up during mid-semester vacation care alongside the children. Situated in each of the four rooms, these worm farms will be run side-by-side by both the educators and the children in hopes to form our own ecological identity and become a more sustainable ELC by reducing our Centre’s carbon footprint.

Did you know that as organic waste decomposes in landfill, it produces the greenhouse gas called methane? This gas is 24 times more damaging to our environment than carbon dioxide (Clean Up Australia, 2009).

Our worms will live off the organic food waste we produce at snack and meal times, along with a fraction of our paper recycling, so that we can cut down the amount of organic waste we send off to landfill each day. In return, our worms will leave us with beautiful fertiliser and a soil supplement for all our plants and gardens here at the ELC!

These worms could not come at a better time here in the Centre as they fit perfectly with the term/semester’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) inquiry focused at forming an ecological identity and developing personal connections to our natural world.

By exposing the children to sustainable thinking throughout our daily practices, we will endeavour to build a stronger ecological identity together and show children how their actions can have a direct impact on their planet.

The children have already shown a great interest in the establishment of these worm farms and we cannot wait to see where this leads.

We are always looking to make deep connections with families and communities beyond what goes on inside the Centre, and so we invite you to come take a look at our friendly worms yourselves and say hello! If you would like to help out or get involved, our worms love to eat old newspapers that you might have lying around the house, so by all means bring them in! Or, if you would like any more information on these farms, please do not hesitate to come and talk to myself or Annabelle Redmond as we would love to help.

Worm Farming Fact Sheet:
https://www.cleanup.org.au/PDF/au/cua_wormfarming_fact_sheet.pdf.

Henrietta Balnaves
ELC Co-Educator

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‘Old Scholars’ of the ELC

 
Late last term amongst many of their Hallett Room friends, Violet, Gabriella and Phoebe attended the ELC Hat Ceremony in the Arts Centre. It is a significant occasion for ELC students graduating to the ‘big school’. The girls were presented with their new school bag and St Peter’s Girls summer straw hat. On Tuesday 25 July, Violet, Gabriella and Phoebe joined 17 classmates in the Mid-Year Reception class. We thought it would be nice to revisit them as new ‘Old Scholars’ of the ELC, and find out what they have been up to since moving across the lawn!

The girls proudly said they had been at school six days, which is something they have been counting as a class. Gabriella mentioned that reading books was her favourite activity. Amazingly, the girls have also been learning not just French, but Chinese too! Some of the class have been attending piano, violin and cello lessons, and they have also explored the library and borrowed books.

There’s been a focus on learning the rules and procedures of school life, developing their individual IB Learner Profiles, learning their Jolly Phonics sounds as well as practising their letter formation. It’s not all hard work though, as last week they had an absolute ball visiting the ELC and saying hello to their friends!

The ‘Old Scholars’ of the ELC have definitely settled in well to life at St Peter’s Girls, and we look forward to checking in regularly to see how they are all going!

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News from the Stonyfell Room

Welcome everyone to Term 3. The Stonyfell team is very excited to be commencing this term together and would like to take this opportunity to welcome all new families into our community. Our fortnightly newsletter is one of the many ways that we are able to keep you informed about what we are exploring and investigating in the Stonyfell Room and across the ELC.

Every term the teachers work together to develop an inquiry focus that will drive our learning for the term. This inquiry is supported by the Primary Years Program (PYP) curriculum that is used as part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) across the whole School. This term our Central Idea is:

People have an impact on the world

The direction we are planning to take through this inquiry is to develop a deeper connection to our natural world. As the term progresses we will be working in collaboration with the children to design an action that we can take which will impact our world.

We have planned to use Ferguson Park, the nature reserve that borders our Centre, on a regular basis. We will be inviting small groups of children to explore the park. During these visits we are interested in observing how the children interact and connect with this space. We will see how they use their observational skills to develop their connections to the natural world.

In conjunction with our visits to Ferguson Park we are also engaging the children in exploring and learning about our worm farms. These were set up during our Vacation Care Program with the assistance of our Property Services team. We are currently learning how to look after the worms and finding out what they need. We hope to eventually be able to use the natural ‘worm tea’ they produce in our garden as a fertiliser.

Through these explorations, we will be focusing on developing the children’s ‘ecological identity’. This term can be defined as:

“Inviting children into a relationship with the world beyond walls, and with the creatures that live there. We invite them into ethical thinking anchored by the compassion that comes from caring and engaging relationships.”

A. Pelo- The Goodness of Rain, p. 44

We believe that the development of our ecological identity can have an impact on our understanding of empathy and that we can learn to not only empathise with others but to empathise with the natural world and all that lives in it.

Laura Reiters

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News from the Bell Yett Room

A big welcome to Term 3 in the Bell Yett Room. We have had a wonderful start to the term with our new children settling in exceptionally well. This smooth transition has been supported by intentional visits to the Bell Yett Room during Term 2 and Vacation Care, continuity of staff across the holiday period, the transparency our physical environment provides and, last but not least, the support our existing children have provided in the caring and thoughtful way they have embraced our new friends and supported them in their new environment.

We are very excited about our overarching inquiry this term. The central idea we are exploring with the children is, ‘People can have an impact on our world’. Our intention through this investigation is for our learning community (children, families and educators) to develop an ecological identity as we form personal connections to our natural world. This will be underpinned by embedding Indigenous perspectives and sustainable thinking in our daily practices.

You can read more about the background to our inquiry and keep up-to-date on our explorations by visiting our Bell Yett Canvas Page.

The children have begun meeting the newest addition to the ELC – the worms in our worm farm. We believe that for the children to develop sustainable understandings, they need to engage not only their minds, but their bodies and hearts with the learning context.

Last week I invited some children to visit the worm farm. This was Nina-Lucia’s first introduction to the worm farm.

“There are worms! They are soooo cute! They are eating all the strawberries. Hello worms. But where is the farm? . . . The worms know.”
Elijah, who had visited the worms over the holidays told me:
“They always come to you when they see you. They love it when you come.”

We would appreciate hearing about some of the ways you and your children engage with your natural environment. We welcome you to send us an email, photographs or have a conversation with us about your children’s experiences.

Leanne Williams, Nell Tierney and the Bell Yett team

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News from the Ferguson Room

We have had a very smooth beginning to the term as we have welcomed and supported both new and ‘old’ friends. We are very proud of the children and the way they have made new connections.

Many of you have had questions about the pattern of our day and the experiences in which the children are engaged. However, if you have further questions about anything at all, please let us know. We can easily make a time to meet with you if you would like.

Several parents have asked me about how we teach literacy. Some parents have been trying to encourage their children to do reading and writing activities at home, and are often disappointed with what seems to be a lack of interest. This can occur even when a child has expressed a desire to read. So, what does it take to be a reader?

Recently I attended a workshop presented by Matt Glover, an internationally respected literacy consultant for the early years. His vast experience reveals that there are many different opinions of what reading is. We agreed that it includes:

• understanding that symbols carry a consistent message
• interpreting pictures and making inferences
• predicting
• engaging with a text
• having a belief in one’s identity as a reader.

In the Ferguson Room, the children have many opportunities to engage with texts to develop the above attributes of being a reader. These include having access to books at all times, listening to stories as a whole group or just quietly with a parent or teacher, visiting the library and borrowing books, and making books and stories of their own. We frequently observe children sitting with a group of friends, a book facing outwards, telling a story to their peers. This is evidence of the children displaying the above reading characteristics.

As Glover says in one of his books, “Reading is an interaction with a text during which the reader uses a variety of resources within a text and within themselves to make meaning.”

What can parents do at home to support their child’s desire to read?
• Make reading together a part of every day.
• Ensure there are plenty of books available at home, including information books as well as story books.
• Help your child develop an image of themselves as a competent reader. Ask them to ‘read’ familiar books to you. At this stage we are not looking for children to be able to decode words but rather tell you what is happening in the pictures and being able to retell the story they have heard before.
• If they are interested in more, try looking for the letters in their name, or finding common words that appear often.

Learning to read is a complex process that takes time. In the early years, building children’s confidence and enjoyment with books and language is a crucial step in the acquisition of reading skills which will ensure children are prepared for the early years of school and beyond.

Mel Angel

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News from the Hallett Room

It is great to see our existing families return to the Hallett Room for Term 3 and we extend a special welcome to our new families.

At the end of last term, the educators came together to share recent inquiry investigations and where the children’s curiosities lay. It was evident that we were in an exciting place with our inquires and it was important that we continued to extend and build upon the children’s questions, wonderings and current investigations – rather than just stop because the term was coming to an end. We were keen to relaunch provocations from the end of last term and throughout Vacation Care, at the beginning of this term that would provide us with the opportunity to observe the children and their interactions with the world around them.

The children have not skipped a beat. As we see their happy, excited faces greeting us in the morning, the ease and success of the transition process is evident to see. The existing children have welcomed with joy the new friends as we begin our investigation into our Unit of Inquiry, ‘People can have an impact on our world’. From the provocations and clues that were carefully placed in the Hallett Room environment as ‘relaunches’ from our previous inquiries, the children have begun engaging with the following and sharing their questions and wonderings with confidence.

The worm farm: initiated during the Vacation Care program, the children are being encouraged to ask questions about the worms as we move towards an understanding about their role in the bigger picture of recycling and waste.

Ferguson Park: to continue with the strong connection children have with the park, we are inviting children to explore the area outside of the ELC.

Paper planes: coming from observations from Term 2 and Vacation Care, children have shared their skills with each other on their paper plane making. We are interested to see how this can springboard the understanding that action can have an impact on others.

We are excited to see where this leads and we invite you to listen carefully to what your children are sharing at home in relation to their experiences at the ELC and share with us your interactions, whether it be through an email or informal conversation. Have you noticed paper planes being made at home? Are your children asking about Ferguson Park or the Kaurna people? Please come and see the educators if you have any questions about the semester ahead. We are looking forward to this journey with your children.

Pam Reid

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