In this edition
Dear Families 
I can’t believe we are wrapping up another term already!
Term 3 at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC has been full of wonder and excitement. We started by hosting two community events: one to welcome our new families into the Centre, and another to celebrate the fathers and treasured friends in our children’s lives. These two events created such a buzz within the ELC, and the children adored sharing their learning spaces with their families and close friends.
Our children have continued their engagement in the concept of transformation, with the children in Learning Community 1 exploring emotions and how they can feel across their day, whilst the children in Learning Community 2 have been fully immersed in their research and classifications of the fungi they have found in Ferguson Park.
We have thoroughly enjoyed sharing our transformation of learning with our wider community across the term, whether it be through newsletter articles, myLink updates, in-room documentation, or through children’s individual portfolios which were shared during our recent Parent-Teacher Conversations. We also hope you enjoyed our deeper insights into the way we value and embed literacy, numeracy, gross motor skills and mathematics into our everyday experiences here at the ELC, which were showcased as highlight videos in these fortnightly newsletters. If you want to revisit any of our previous ELC newsletters, you can view them via: www.stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au/elcnews/
This term offered us a time to reflect, as we reimagined the way we conduct our Friends of the ELC group to be a more inviting and accessible opportunity for families to get together. Our new meeting structure will follow a once-per-term morning get-together in the School Chapel on Friday of Week 2 of each term. We invite you to pop this date in your calendar and join us for our first meeting at 9am on Friday 28 October.
We look forward to our upcoming Vacation Care period (October 4 – 14) and are eager to continue the wonderful and rich learning. We appreciate those who booked their sessions as bookings have now closed.
Thank you everyone for such a great term. Have a fabulous break and we will see you all in Term 4!
Ngaitalya (Kaurna for ‘Respect’)
Henrietta Balnaves (ELC Manager) and Caterina Pennestri (ELC Educational Leader)
Important Dates
Monday October 3: Public Holiday (ELC Closed)
October 4 – 14: Vacation Care
Monday 17 October: Term 4 Begins
Friday 28 October: Friends of the ELC Meeting, 8–9.30am
Monday 14 November: Reception Transition Visits Commence
Vacation Care – Bookings Closed
Bookings are now closed for ELC Vacation Care. Please note Monday 3 October is a public holiday and the ELC will be closed.
Due to staffing requirements, cancellations will incur the full day’s fee.
Introducing Our Reimagined Friends of the ELC Group
Are you a parent/family member looking to be a part of our Friends of the ELC, connecting with other families and helping organise our ELC community events?
Our Friends of the ELC group previously held fortnightly meetings at a local coffee shop. As we juggle the reality of our busy lives, we have reimagined what this community group will look like, and how it can best support our ELC events and our wonderful community. We know there is nothing more important than building community around our children and offering a chance for families to engage, and so we have reflected upon the nature of these meetings.
Moving forward, the Friends of the ELC will hold casual get-togethers on Friday of Week 2 each term, from 8 – 9.30am, in the School Chapel. The meetings will enable families to connect while we will discuss the volunteering opportunities for the term ahead, organise helpers for our upcoming ELC events, and ensure we continue to give value and voice to our parents, families and other community members.
If you’re interested in joining our reimagined Friends of the ELC, there will be no ‘lock-in contracts’ – just an opportunity to further engage with one another and the ELC. Morning tea and coffee will be provided. We welcome all help and participation from our community however it fits into your busy schedules.
If you’re interested in coming along to our first meeting on Friday 28 October (Week 2, Term 4), please email me via hbalnaves@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Henrietta Balnaves
ELC Manager
Our Sustainability Journey
As we enjoy the season of spring, we have been keenly observing the colour changes and transformation of our natural surroundings and embracing any chance to get outdoors. This week, we held our ELC Playgroup sessions out in our neighbouring Ferguson Park, where I had the wonderful opportunity to introduce some of our youngest learners to a space they will soon frequently connect with when they begin their ELC journey.
At St Peter’s Girls’ ELC, we strive to foster in children an ecological identity by deeply connecting with our natural surroundings in the hope that a love and connection to Earth is born in a particular place, making possible this love for other places. As Ann Pelo describes, ‘An ecological identity allows us to experience Earth as our home ground, and leaves us determined to live in honourable relationship with our planet.’
Spring in Ferguson Park is a magical experience as it brings beautiful flowers into bloom, which are technically weeds in this native area. This means the children are able to pick these flowers – simultaneously caring for our surroundings and discovering beauty and joy in their environment.
Henrietta Balnaves
ELC Manager
2023 ELC Enrolment Requirements
We are working through our intake offers for next year and need to ensure our current families have their allocated days in place.
Please notify me ASAP via selliott@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au if you require an amendment to your days moving forward in 2023, or if you are leaving the Centre at the end of this year.
Sarah Elliott
ELC Enrolments and Finance Officer
Staff Spotlight
Alexandra, another of our fantastically friendly faces in Learning Community 2, has recently graduated from the University of South Australia with a Master in Early Childhood Education. She is passionate about the Reggio Emilia approach to early learning and brings this dedication into her daily lessons with the children.
What is your favourite part of working in the St Peter’s Girls’ ELC?
Ferguson Park is a highlight of our beautiful ELC; having the opportunity to engage with the children in exploring local flora and fauna is a real privilege. The park is a wonderful place for the children to develop a range of learning dispositions, such as curiosity and cooperation skills, whilst also being a calming place for them to connect with nature and learn about Kaurna culture.
The talented, diverse and dedicated staff make St Peter’s Girls a special place to both work and grow for professionals and children alike. I continue to learn daily from my accomplished and knowledgeable colleagues, as I watch them support the growth of all our students.
Important Reminders
Please carefully read the following important reminders:
- Please close all doors and safety gates behind you when entering and exiting the ELC. Whilst we appreciate the kind gesture, please refrain from holding open entry/exit doors or gates for other children unless they are accompanied by an adult.
- We ask families to bring your entry key fobs to ELC each day. If you need to order a new fob and/or report a lost one, email selliott@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au.
- Please ensure children wear appropriate shoes and clothing for our indoor and outdoor activities; this includes no dress ups or long necklaces.
- The School has received reports of concerning driver behaviour on Hallett Road. This includes holding up traffic while waiting for cars to leave in order to park near the ELC, performing risky u-turns and parking in bus zones. As our staff have no jurisdiction over public roads, the School will be asking the police to conduct regular patrols at peak times. We implore all of our community members to support road safety and show courtesy to others.
The welfare of all children in our community is our utmost priority and we appreciate your cooperation.
Henrietta Balnaves
ELC Manager
COVID-19 Information
If your child tests positive to COVID-19, notify us immediately. Please also advise the type of test (RAT/PCR), the date your child’s test was taken and the date symptoms started (if no symptoms, note ‘asymptomatic’).
Please notify us via email or text:
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Text: 0428 601 957 (save to phone contacts as SPGS)
If you need to notify us over the phone, please call the Front Office on 8334 2200.
If children are displaying symptoms, it is mandatory that we send them home. SA Health guidelines advise that symptoms include:
- Fever (a temperature of 37.5˚C or higher) or chills
- Cough
- Loss of taste or smell
- Sore throat
- Tiredness (fatigue)
- Runny or blocked nose
- Shortness of breath (difficulty breathing)
- Nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea
- Headache
- Muscle or joint pain
- Loss of appetite
Should your child develop any symptoms, even mild ones, they must not attend ELC and should be tested for COVID-19. Those with symptoms who test negative using a RAT must undertake a PCR test to confirm that result. Students who have previously tested positive and have completed isolation in the past 28 days do not need to undertake testing.
Under SA Health protocols, asymptomatic children who are close contacts can attend ELC, provided they undertake 5 Rapid Antigen Tests over 7 days and receive negative results.
Please also note that face masks are strongly recommended indoors for adults, including visitors, except if it impedes the ability to teach or interact with children.
来自黄老师的信息
亲爱的家长朋友们，
真不敢相信又迎来了这个学期的尾声!
在圣彼得女校ELC的第三学期充满了惊奇和令人激动的时刻。本学期开始，我们举办了两场社区活动;一个是欢迎我们新家庭的到来，另一个是庆祝父亲节以及与他们生活息息相关的“珍贵的朋友们“。这两件事在ELC中引起了很大的反响，孩子们很喜欢与家人和亲密朋友分享他们的学习空间。
我们的孩子们继续参与到“转变”这一概念的学习中去。学习社区1的孩子们探索情感和他们每天的感受，而学习社区2的孩子们则完全沉浸在他们在弗格森公园发现的菌类的研究和分类中。
我们非常高兴在整个学期间与更广泛的社区分享我们的学习转变。无论是通过每两周简讯的文章、myLink的更新以及教室里的学习记录，还是通过在最近的“家长-教师一对一对话”中与您分享的孩子们的个人学习文档。我们也希望大家感受到我们在ELC对孩子们学习更深入的理解，包括我们如何重视并将读写能力、算术能力、大运动技能和数学嵌入到我们的日常学习体验中去。同样地，在这些两周简讯中也有相关精彩视频的展示。如果您想重温以前的ELC简讯，您可以通过登陆www.stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au/elcnews/ 来查看内容。
这个学期为我们提供了一个反思的机会，我们重新设想了我们组织“ELC之友”小组的方式，使之成为一个更有吸引力、更容易让家庭成员聚在一起的机会。我们新的会议结构将遵循每学期第2周的周五在学校礼拜堂举行的一次晨会。我们邀请您将这一天加入我们的第一次会议，时间是10月28日(星期五)上午9点。
我们期待即将到来的假期日托班(10月4日- 10月14日)，期待着继续精彩丰富的学习。我们感谢那些预订了日托班的家长们，现在预定已经结束。
谢谢大家对这个学期的积极参与。预祝大家渡过一个愉快的两周假期，我们将在第四学期再见!
Emma Huang works in Learning Community 1 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9am – 5pm.
News from Learning Community 1
In Learning Community 1, we are celebrating all feelings and emotions, and the development of children’s emotional intelligence, resilience and empathy.
As we explored a variety of picture books during this term, we started labelling a range of feelings displayed by the characters in the stories, also paying close attention to the facial expressions that would support us identifying these feelings. We talked with the children about the importance of all different emotions, acknowledging all feelings we may experience throughout our days – anger, sadness, joy, frustration and more.
An important aspect of children’s emotional intelligence – empathy – has been evident in many conversations between peers and educators. As we progressed in our unit of inquiry, children started to transfer their knowledge and use some strategies to support themselves and each other. We witnessed spontaneous moments when children would share how they were feeling, demonstrate concern for others and give support to them during transitions and rituals:
- A girl told an educator, ‘I think she is missing her Daddy’, when she saw a friend crying quietly. She then offered her peer a drink of water as a supporting strategy to calming down – ‘Here, do you need your water?’
- A boy saw a friend trying to open the bin lid: ‘Push the grey’ – pushing the lid and holding it open for his peer.
- During group time, one child responded to the educator, ‘I am kuku’ai today’, showing thumbs down. Another peer turned and said, ‘It is ok, Mummy and Daddy will come soon.’
Jessica Guimaraes and Jess Catt
Learning Community 1
News from Learning Community 2
As we quickly approach the end of another exciting term in Learning Community 2, we reflect as a group upon the wonderful ways in which our knowledge of the world around us has been transformed. The children in the Learning Community 2 have acquired, through our inquiry, a vast amount of new knowledge about Ferguson Park, our community garden and changes in the weather.
We began the term with the children first exploring the changes they noticed in Ferguson Park using all their senses to discover any transformation. Soon, we began to look not just ahead and up into the trees, but also down to discover the unique changes that were occurring under our feet as well. Through listening to the children and then delving deeper into what we noticed was changing to the floor of our local conservation park, we discovered a whole new world that was growing and ever-changing. It was fungi!
In this way, the children moved from being botanists and researching native plants to becoming mycologists and discovering the important links between fungi and the wider world of nature. There was a heightened amount of daily energy as we all discovered more and more fungi, how it grows, how it germinates, naming the parts of the fungi and how we can identify different types of fungi.
Through this inquiry, educators and children worked alongside each other discovering the new information together. This approach is true to the Reggio Emilia style of learning as it is a collaborative learning process where each child is an active agent in their gaining of knowledge. This process of teaching and learning alongside the child engages all learners in a more in-depth higher-order way of thinking where authentic questions and true scientific research can occur. The teachers were just as excited as the children in their discovery of new facts about fungi and in the daily transfer of this knowledge to others such as families or friends!
We hope you are able to take a stroll through Ferguson Park someday too, and make your own discoveries along the way!
Nell Tierney, Kathy McCabe and Laura Reiters
Learning Community 2
Find Out What Happens Throughout the Day at ELC
The ELC Learning Community Home Page is a dynamic online sharing space that invites you to participate in the communities’ learning as it happens. We use this tool to communicate important information with families and provide a window into the children’s life at the ELC, as educators share documentation of teaching, specialist lessons and spontaneous moments.
Accessing myLink for the first time:
Each parent has an individual username to access our myLink Parent Portal. Please note that the username is your ID number followed by @stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au Your ID number has been provided to you in an email from the School If you have not accessed myLink before or have forgotten your password, please follow these steps:
- Visit https://mylink.stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
- Sign in with your parent username
- Click on ‘Forgot my password’
- Make sure the ‘email’ address is your parent username, type in the code, then click the blue ‘Next’ button
- Enter your mobile number registered with the School, with the area code (Australia is +61), dropping the 0 at the beginning (e.g. +61 400000000). Then select ‘Text’
- Enter the security code sent to your mobile number
- Enter the password you would like to use and click ‘Finish’
- Return to the login screen at https://mylink.stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au to access myLink
Accessing the Learning Community Home Page through myLink:
- Access myLink as per the above instructions
- Click on the ‘MYLINK HOME’ tab
- Click on your child’s name tab
- Under ‘Class Contacts’, click on the ELC room name (you may need to enter your user name and password again)
If you have any issues accessing or navigating myLink, please contact our IT Hub via helpdesk@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au or 8334 2227.
ELC’s Online Etiquette Policy: please note that the ELC Learning Community Home Page and ELC News contain images and videos of other children. We therefore ask that you do not copy or share images or videos, especially on social media, if they contain other children.
Absences in the ELC
Student Absences Please notify the School via one of the following methods for late arrivals/early departures and absences, ensuring a reason for the absence is included. The School requires a reason for the absence for government reporting purposes.
Text: 0428 601 957 (save to phone contacts as SPGS)
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au (If emailing, please ‘CC’ the teacher of the Room as well)
ELC Room Contacts:
- Stonyfell – 8155 5778
- Bell Yett – 8155 5777
- Ferguson – 8155 5776
- Hallett – 8155 5775
ELC Immunisation Policy
Under the Government’s No Jab No Play policy, families must meet immunisation requirements to attend the ELC and receive the Child Care Subsidy. Families are required to provide all approved immunisation records to the ELC. Further information is available by clicking here.
Children who are suffering from illnesses such as those listed below must be excluded from ELC in line with our Exclusion Policy:
- Influenza
- Chicken Pox
- Conjunctivitis
- Diarrhoea
- Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease
- High Temperature
- Infectious Hepatitis
- Measles
- Meningitis
- Mumps
- Rubella (German Measles)
- Scabies
- Scarlet Fever
- School Sores (Impetigo)
- Upper Respiratory Tract Infection
- Vomiting
- Whooping Cough