Dear Families
We welcome you all back to ELC as we jump straight into Term 4 of 2022!
We would like to take a moment to acknowledge our wonderful Vacation Care team. The children in Learning Community 1 enjoyed slowing down and building stronger connections to their spaces, getting involved in planting our new herb garden area as well as enjoying the outdoor makeover from our team.
Learning Community 2 reflected on the space and time we are gifted with in Vacation Care, taking part in team-wide research into the benefits of long uninterrupted periods of play for children. Across the two weeks, the children were completely engaged in our large-scale play scenarios set up in the Ferguson Room, where they were able to continuously build on their play and develop their executive functioning skills and emotional self-regulation – two crucial 21st century skills that are largely developed from long periods of social play. The children also enjoyed replanting our ELC Community Garden for spring and testing their engineering and technology skills by making robots from recycled materials.
Caterina and I are looking forward to spending this joyous and exciting term with you all, and we would like to point out a few events that are coming up in the Save the Date section below. Tomorrow, we welcome our new Friends of the ELC Meeting Group which we invite each of you to join us for, located in the School Chapel next to the ELC from 8 – 9am.
Our Term 4 central idea is: Welcoming traditions, rituals and histories can build on knowledge. This will act as a vehicle to celebrate together, whilst supporting children’s understanding of the history of the ELC, the stories of places, our rituals and our celebrations. We invite families to get in touch with their child’s teacher if you have any special rituals or celebrations to share with us, as we would love to learn more about them.
Ngaitalya (Kaurna for ‘Respect’)
Henrietta Balnaves (ELC Manager) and Caterina Pennestri (ELC Educational Leader)
Important Dates
Friday 28 October: Friends of the ELC Meeting, 8 – 9am
Monday 14 November: Reception Transition Visits Commence
Friday 25 November: ELC End of Year Celebration
Monday 5 December: ELC Hat Ceremony
Celebrate Our Learning!
Term 4 at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC is all about celebration. Next week, we are inviting families at the ELC to celebrate your child’s learning journey with us, as we offer in-house access to each child’s portfolio during pick-up and drop-off times.
We create individual learning portfolios for each of our children, where we collect, record and make visible their learning experiences, engagement in the inquiry and growing knowledge since their first day of ELC. We value these portfolios not only as tool of assessment, but also as a treasured piece of childhood, full of memories and evidence of rich engagement in your child’s life at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC.
Across each term, our teaching team produces dynamic pedagogical documentation, unpacking for families how our teachers’ learning intentions meet the children’s goals and skills. In these portfolios, you will find documentation in many different forms including photographs, works of art, children’s quotes, theories and reporting documents. Each piece has been carefully selected in order to make visible the evolution of your child’s thinking, creative languages and different skills.
We believe it is important for children to share their portfolios to revisit and solidify their learning, and give value to their participation.
We look forward to celebrating our learning with you!
Caterina Pennestri
ELC Educational Leader
Reminder: Friends of the ELC Meeting Tomorrow
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 will hold a casual meeting tomorrow from 8 – 9am in the School Chapel next to the ELC. These 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.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Henrietta Balnaves
ELC Manager
Save the Date: ELC End of Year Celebration
Save the date for our ELC End of Year Celebration on Friday 25 November at 5.30pm. We’ll share more details with families in the next edition of ELC News.
Sun Safety in the ELC
As the weather starts to warm up, please ensure your child brings a broad-brimmed hat each day they attend ELC. If you do not have an ELC uniform hat, we ask that you pack another broad-brimmed hat for your child to wear. As we move into the warmer months, it is extremely important that we adhere to our policies and procedures. If your child does not have a hat, they will be asked to play under the shaded areas or indoors.
We encourage you to apply sunscreen on your child prior to arriving at the ELC so they are ready for the day. Sunscreen application is undertaken regularly at the ELC; if your child requires an alternative sunscreen, please provide this to your child’s teacher.
We also ask that your child wears their correct ELC uniform, and refrains from wearing dresses or singlets where their shoulders are exposed. Appropriate footwear is also required and we ask that children wear sneakers or sandals that have a backing to them. For visits into Ferguson Park, long pants and closed-toed shoes are required.
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
COVID-19 Information
As you may be aware, a number of COVID-19 requirements have been lifted including mandatory isolation for those who test positive. Notwithstanding this, SA Health encourages anyone with symptoms to get tested and stay home until symptoms have cleared (usually five to seven days).
As there is no longer a set COVID isolation period, you must notify the School each day your child will be absent, or provide the expected period of absence.
Please notify us via email or text:
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Text: 0428 601 957 (save to phone contacts as SPGS)
Phone: 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
The School is no longer required to record details of COVID-19 cases for SA Health; however, there is still a requirement for South Australians who test positive using a RAT to report their result to SA Health online.
Close contacts should continue to monitor for symptoms, get tested and stay home until symptoms have cleared.
For more information, click here.
As always, we will keep you informed of any updated advice.
Please note that if your child is unwell, they should remain home until they have recovered, irrespective of the illness.
来自黄老师的信息
亲爱的家人，
我们欢迎大家回到 ELC，因为我们直接进入 2022 年第 4 学期！
我们想花点时间感谢我们出色的假期护理团队，他们在 ELC 领导了另一个令人惊叹的两周时间。学习社区 1 的孩子们喜欢放慢脚步，与他们的空间建立更牢固的联系，参与种植我们的新药草园区域，并享受我们团队的户外改造。
学习社区 2 反映了我们在假期护理方面所拥有的空间和时间，并参与了一项团队范围内的研究，以了解长时间不间断游戏对儿童的好处。在两周的时间里，孩子们完全投入到我们在弗格森房间设置的大型游戏场景中，在那里他们能够不断地在游戏的基础上发展并发展他们的执行功能技能和情绪自我调节——这两个至关重要的 ’20 -第一世纪的技能，主要是从长期的社交游戏中发展而来的。孩子们还喜欢在春季重新种植我们的 ELC 社区花园，并通过使用回收材料制造机器人来测试他们的工程和技术技能。
Caterina 和我期待与大家一起度过这个欢乐而激动人心的学期，我们想在下面的“保存日期”部分中指出一些特殊事件。本周五，我们也欢迎我们的新朋友 ELC 会议小组，我们邀请你们每个人加入我们，该小组位于 ELC 旁边的学校教堂，时间为上午 8 点至 9 点。
我们第 4 学期的中心思想是：“欢迎传统、仪式和历史可以建立在知识之上”。这个中心思想将作为共同庆祝的工具，同时支持孩子们了解 ELC 的历史、地方的故事、我们的仪式和庆祝活动。如果您有任何特殊的仪式或庆祝活动要与我们分享，我们邀请家庭与他们孩子的老师取得联系，因为我们很想了解更多关于他们的信息。
谢谢，
Henrietta Balnaves (ELC Manager) and Caterina Pennestri (ELC Educational Leader)
Emma Huang works in Learning Community 1 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9am – 5pm.
News from Learning Community 1
As we embark upon a new term, our educators take time to reflect on children’s knowledge and understandings and consider what it is that we want them to learn. This term, as we lead into the festive season, we are investigating the central idea, ‘Welcoming traditions, rituals and histories can build our knowledge’.
As we delve into this inquiry, we want the children to:
- Develop their understanding that everyone has different traditions, rituals and histories that reflect their lives and culture every day
- Research the symbolism of traditions and rituals within celebrations
- Explore the histories, traditions and stories of the ELC, of each other and of our families.
In the first few weeks of a new inquiry, we offer provocations for children to explore and engage with. This allows us to observe and document their current understandings and knowledge, their interests and their questions. We reflect on this gathered data and further refine the scope and direction of our inquiry.
We have launched this current inquiry by sharing rituals within the Learning Community, investigating the history and stories of spaces within the ELC, and engaging in shared celebrations and traditions. We invite families to share any of their family stories, celebrations and rituals on the display boards outside the classroom or by emailing your child’s teacher.
Jessica Guimaraes and Jess Catt
Learning Community 1
News from Learning Community 2
Welcome to Term 4 in Learning Community 2. This term, we have a large number of children across our Learning Community preparing for their transition to school. To continue to best support them and to build on all of our children’s confidence and knowledge, we have a strong focus on offering them a wide range of play-based literacy experiences.
Our enriching learning spaces offer playful invitations for the children to explore letters, letter names, letter formation and foundational phonological awareness. It is important for the children to have the opportunity to revisit intentional learning experiences in their own time and to be able to play and explore with their peers. Learning should be enjoyable and fun, and it is important that all children build their knowledge, test their ideas, and ‘have a go’ in a safe and supportive environment. We have engaged with a wide range of children’s books to further support this focus and the playful language that comes from stories.
Many of the children have been observed engaging in the following:
- Conversations with their peers about the letters they know and that are in their names
- Exploring their locker tags and comparing letters with each other
- Testing their own emerging writing skills by labelling their work with their names, and names of their family members and friends
- Letter writing and posting letters in the ELC mailbox
These early years of a child’s life lay the foundation for their future capacity for learning, and we want this time to be exciting for our children and for them to develop their love of learning in a safe and supportive environment.
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
If your child will not be attending ELC due to illness or otherwise, please notify the School via one of the following methods and include the name of the ELC Room.
If emailing, feel free to ‘CC’ the teacher/s of the room as well.
Please also provide a reason for the absence as the School requires this for government reporting purposes.
Text: 0428 601 957
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Phone: 8334 2200
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