In this edition
Dear Families
The past couple of weeks have been a wonderful opportunity to build connections with you. We have held the ELC – 12 parent Drinks on the Lawns, our ELC Meet the Teacher Information Night, commenced our Playgroup and are looking forward to our Friends of the ELC catch up.
At St Peter’s Girls’ ELC, we don’t just welcome a child, we welcome a family. The partnerships that we create with you allow us to really understand your child, support their sense of belonging and nurture them as a learner. ‘The Language of Welcome’ is a statement that is a central part of our philosophy and clearly articulates the value we place on building an inclusive, connected and flourishing community: ‘Our community deeply values mutually respectful relationships between the children, educators and families, and this shared mission underpins all aspects of our daily life.’
In each Learning Community, there has been an emphasis on building relationships with children and a strong sense of belonging. Rituals and routines have been planned with intention and careful consideration of the children in the setting. The intention behind rituals is to allow children to participate, interact with others and appreciate their connectedness. Rituals allow for predictability and familiarity and foster learning development and wellbeing. I have been very fortunate to spend time with different groups during their morning Banbanbalya. It has been lovely to watch the children come together as a community, participate in the Acknowledgment of Country, engage with Kaurna language and explore what the day ahead will look like. The children are active participants during this time as both their independence and capacity to collaborate are nurtured.
It has been fantastic to observe our Pathway to School children as they begin to explore what starting school will look like and what they are looking forward to. Kirsty Porplycia and the educators in the Pathway Room are working with the children to provide a seamless transition into Reception, supporting them to feel comfortable and confident as they move towards this next stage of their learning journey. Please enjoy watching the video below as it outlines key aspects of our Pathway to School.
As we move further into 2023, we look forward to strengthening our partnerships with you to support your child on their learning journey through our daily interactions and planned events. On Friday 17 March, we will hold our ELC Twilight Family Picnic. Later in the term, we have our Parent-Teacher Conversations which will be an opportunity for you to meet with your child’s teacher and discuss their growth and development as we work with you to nurture your child to reach their full potential.
Liz Schembri
Director of Early Learning
Important Dates
Friday 3 March: Friends of the ELC Meeting, 9am at Ballaboosta, Burnside
Monday 13 March: Public Holiday (ELC closed)
Friday 17 March: ELC Twilight Family Picnic, 5pm
28, 29 March & 3 April: Parent-Teacher Conversations
7 – 10 April: Easter (ELC closed)
11 – 24 April: Vacation Care
Tuesday 25 April: Public Holiday (ELC closed)
Parent-Teacher Conversations
ELC Parent-Teacher Conversations will take place on 28 and 29 March and 3 April, and bookings will open on Wednesday 8 March.
This is an opportunity for parents to meet your child’s teacher and discuss their learning. From these discussions, future goals for your child may be created to ensure they reflect the perspectives of parents and educators.
Bookings can be made via myLink:
- Log in to the myLink Parent Portal with your username and password. The username is your ID number followed by @stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
- If you don’t know your password, use the link provided on the login page to reset it
- Once you have logged in and arrive on the Welcome page, click the ‘Community Portal’ tab in the top menu, then click the ‘Interviews’ tab and select the required cycle; you can log in and change your booking any time up until 5pm 23 March.
If you require myLink assistance, please contact the IT Hub via 08 8334 2227 or helpdesk@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au.
ELC Twilight Family Picnic
The Twilight Family Picnic is an ELC community event and a wonderful opportunity to meet other families and chat with the ELC Educators.
Friday 17 March
5 – 7pm
Chiverton Lawns
Bring a picnic basket and rug for this family-friendly event. A sausage sizzle will be available on the night. BYO drinks – no glassware please.
Families are encouraged to pre-order their sausages for the picnic as there will be limited availability for purchasing on the night. To book, click here
Friends of the ELC Meeting
Are you a parent/family member looking to be a part of our Friends of the ELC (FOELC), connecting with other families and helping to organise our ELC community events? Building strong relationships together supports the development of a flourishing community for children and families.
Join us for our next meeting at 9am on Friday 3 March at Ballaboosta, 540 Glynburn Road, Burnside
If you would like more information about our Friends of the ELC group, please contact our FOELC Community Representative Angelica Mesisca via 0434 832 127.
New Hats in the ELC
This year, we have launched our new custom-designed ELC uniform, giving our ELC children a smart, cohesive look and simplifying the routine of getting dressed in the morning.
We are excited to introduce a change to our ELC hats. To align with our sustainability focus and support the transition into school, we will be using the School bucket hat. You can purchase these hats from the School Shop. We look forward to implementing this change and transitioning to the new hats throughout 2023. The hat is smart and provides protection for high UV periods.
来自我们的园长，
亲爱的家长朋友们，
在过去的几周里很高兴能有机会和大家建立了联系。我们在草坪上举办了从ELC 到12年级家长酒会、我们的ELC与老师见面信息交流之夜、开始了我们的每周的“幼儿互动小组”。我们十分期待和我们的ELC之友的相聚。
在圣彼得女校ELC，我们不仅仅欢迎的是每一个孩子，我们更欢迎每一个家庭。我们与您建立的伙伴关系使我们能够真正了解您的孩子，支持他们的归属感，并将他们培养他们为学习者。“欢迎的语言”是我们核心理念，清楚地表达了我们建立包容、联系和繁荣社区的价值:“我们的社区非常重视儿童、教育工作者和家庭之间相互尊重的关系，这一共同的使命支撑着我们日常生活的方方面面。”
在每个学习社区，都强调与孩子们建立关系和强烈的归属感。仪式和每日日程都是经过精心安排的，并仔细考虑了孩子们的情况。仪式背后的意图是让孩子们参与进来，与他人互动，并重视他们之间的联系。在仪式下，孩子们可以对日程有可预测性和熟悉性，促进学习发展和身心健康。我很幸运能在每日孩子们的早会上和不同的小组在一起。看着每个学习社区的孩子们聚集在一起，参与“承认原住民国家仪式”，学习原住民语言，探索每一天会是什么样子，真是太友爱了。在这段时间里，孩子们都是积极的参与者，因为他们的独立性和协作能力都得到了培养。
观察我们的“通往学校学前班”的孩子们，他们开始探索开始上学的样子，他们期待着什么，这是非常美好的。Kirsty Porplycia和这个班的教师们在与孩子们一起工作，为他们提供无缝过渡到小学预备班的机会，让他们感到更加自信更加安心的走向下一阶段的学习旅程。请观看下面的视频，因为它概述了我们的“入学之路学前班”的主要方面。
随着我们更加深入2023年，我们期待着加强与您的合作伙伴关系，通过我们的日常互动和各类活动来支持您的孩子的学习之旅。3月17日星期五，我们将举行“ELC暮光野餐会”。本学期晚些时候，我们将举行家长会，这将是您与孩子的老师见面并讨论他们成长和发展的机会，我们将与您一起培养孩子以充分发挥他们的潜力。
Liz Schembri
园长
Emma Huang works in Learning Community 1 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9am – 5pm.
News from Learning Community 1
In Learning Community 1, the children have been eagerly and enthusiastically engaging in our ELC rituals.
Rituals and routines share some similarities. For example, they are predictable, familiar experiences that can make up our day, and are necessary for children as they support their sense of trust and belonging, allowing them to feel confident. These range from applying sunscreen, to finding our hats, nappy changes and toileting, sharing morning and afternoon tea, and of course, our group times.
The difference between a ritual and a routine is the act of being mindful. Here at St Peter’s Girls’ ELC, we value all moments throughout our day as rituals, ensuring that no matter what the activity or task is, that we offer children a sense of invitation, creativity, care, awareness and thoughtfulness, giving our full attention and making the everyday extraordinary.
‘Rituals bring awareness to the seemingly mundane aspects of routines, guiding us to be present, mindful and responsible for all our actions.’ (Rituals, 2017, Toni Christie & Memory Loader)
Our morning Banbanbalya is a beautiful ritual we share together each day here at ELC. The word Banbanbalya comes from Kaurna language and translates to a ‘meeting’ of people. Each morning, the children use our clapping sticks (a Kaurna cultural tradition) to encourage everyone to come together and sit in our Palti Circle.
We begin each Banbanbalya with sharing our Acknowledgement of Country together, discussing and singing how we are on Kaurna land, promising to look after it. Children then say good morning to one another and document who is sitting around our circle using symbols, loose parts, graphic language and counting. This is followed by songs to find out the day of the week and the weather, before engaging in our morning inquiry such as a story.
With our Central Idea this term being ‘Rituals and stories can support a shared understanding of our community’, we have been amazed by our community of learners who are engaging in our Banbanbalya and fully immersing themselves as active participants in our rituals.
Nell Tierney, Henrietta Balnaves and Jess Catt
Learning Community 1
News from Learning Community 2
At this early point in the term, our children have experienced almost a month of change and new challenges. As capable and confident learners, the children have embraced this, however challenging or unpredictable it may have been, and have grown from these new experiences. Across Learning Community 2, we have noticed children become increasingly settled in their learning environments as they develop new and strengthen existing connections with their peers and educators.
Within St Peter’s Girls’ ELC, a great importance is placed on creating rituals and embedding them into our daily routines. Through rituals, children can experience agency and a sense of connection to their Learning Community by participating in daily gatherings and learning provocations together. The process of having rituals at certain parts of the day also creates consistency and allows children to develop an understanding of time and sequence.
To support our new children’s transition to Learning Community 2 and reinforce returning children’s understandings, we are revisiting existing and establishing new ‘Rituals of Our Community’. We considered the rituals already practised in Learning Community 1 which many children are familiar with, and daily rituals that new children shared with us from their own lives. This led us to carefully and intentionally begin to co-construct our daily rituals for Term 1 together.
A focus has been placed on developing the following rituals during our Banbanbalya (group times):
- Exploring the clapping sticks story and why we use the clapping sticks to gather the children
- Establishing the lighting of candles during Banbanbalya
- Using Kaurna language and symbols
- Learning our Acknowledgement of Country
- Using Kaurna language to express feelings
- Counting children around a Palti Circle
- Observing ink colours dissolving in a transparent vase with water and oil to represent how feelings can sometimes mix together
Participation in these rituals provides children with a calm and quiet moment of reflection each morning and enables them to feel like a valued member within their Learning Community. We look forward to developing and sharing more of our rituals with families as the term progresses.
Chloe Skoss and Laura Reiters
Learning Community 2
News from Our Pathway Room
When we are born, our family gives us a special gift: our name. Our name is an important part of our identity and can carry strong personal, cultural and historical connections. It gives us a solid sense of who we are, the communities in which we belong and our place in the world.
When a child starts preschool, their name becomes very important to them and their identity. They begin to see their name in many different places including on their locker, lunch box, drink bottle and the sign on sheets.
At our ELC, we engage the children in games and play experiences using their names which has many cognitive benefits. These include helping children feel important, building community through recognising the names of others, building the concept of print and beginning the process of reading.
The Pathway to School friends are exploring identifying and recording their names with growing confidence, focusing on correct letter formation, and using capital and lower case letters.
We have had fun finding the beginning letter of our names on the THRASS (Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills) chart, and playing with the sounds we can hear.
Kirsty Porplycia and Kathy McCabe
Pathway Room
myLink Parent Portal
myLink is our School’s parent portal, where families have access to a range of resources including the ELC Home Page. Our ELC Home Page is a dynamic online sharing space that invites you to participate in our learning. We use this tool to house important information for families and provide a window into your child’s life at the ELC, with educators sharing documentation of teaching, specialist lessons and spontaneous moments.
This page can also be accessed through your smartphone, via the Canvas App.
Vacation Care Bookings
Vacation Care will run from Tuesday 11 to Monday 24 April, with bookings opening on Monday 6 March.
The booking link will be distributed to families next week via email.
Important Allergy Information
Please remember allergy awareness when packing food for your child.
We kindly ask you to refrain from packing nuts or nut products in your child’s lunch box.
We have members of our community across the Centre with severe food allergies to the following:
- Nuts
- Dairy
- Sesame
- Fish and shellfish
- Egg
- Banana
Due to the severity of these allergies, we are asking that you be mindful of this when packing food for your child. Please ensure food is safely packaged and/or contained.
If you have any questions, please see your child’s Room Teacher. We appreciate your cooperation in keeping our community safe.
Sun Safety in the ELC
We have a Sun Safe Policy to ensure that each child minimises any health risks due to sun exposure. We ask that you support this policy by:
- Providing your child with a named wide brimmed hat.
- Applying sunscreen before your child comes to the Centre
- Dressing your child in the ELC uniform to ensure that their skin is appropriately covered when outdoors.
Children not wearing a hat will be required to play in an area protected from the sun. If your child has any sensitivities to the SP50+ broad spectrum and water-resistant sunscreen provided by the Centre, we ask that you supply an alternative for us to use throughout the day.
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.
COVID-19 Information
Please find the latest guidance from SA Health:
- It is strongly recommended that students stay home if they have cold or flu-like symptoms, and test for COVID-19.
- Whether they receive a positive or negative result, they should stay home until symptoms subside (usually five to seven days).
- It is strongly recommended that parents/guardians inform the School if a student is a close contact. For further advice regarding close contacts, click here
If your child tests positive to COVID-19, please notify the School. Please also notify the School each day of absence, or provide the expected period of absence.
You can notify us via one of the following methods. Please include the name of the ELC Room. If emailing, feel free to ‘CC’ the teacher/s of the room as well.
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
For more SA Health information, click here
Please note that if your child is unwell, they should remain home until they have recovered, irrespective of the illness.
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.
Email: attendance@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Text: 0428 601 957 (save to phone contacts as SPGS)
Phone: 8334 2200
ELC Room Contacts
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- Stonyfell – 8155 5778
- Bell Yett – 8155 5780
- Ferguson – 8155 5776
- Hallett – 8155 5775
- Pathway – 8334 2250
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
As part of our approach to prioritising health and safety, we implement effective hygiene practices and work to prevent and effectively deal with any infectious disease in line with the Education and Care Services National Regulations and the advice of health experts. If your child has one of the following, chickenpox, measles, rubella, meningococcal or tuberculosis or any other vaccine preventable diseases we ask that you inform the Centre as soon as possible.