Dates for your diary
MARCH
Friday 18th - 4yo Welcome Picnic 5.30-7.30pm
Sunday 20th - Working Bee 10-11.30am
Thursday 24th - Last day of Term 1
APRIL
Monday 11th - First day of Term 2
MAY
Wednesday 4th - Mother's Day morning tea (Willow)
Friday 6th - Mother's Day morning tea (Jacaranda)
JUNE
Monday 6th - Joe's Rhythm Fun (Willow)
Tuesday 7th - Joe's Rhythm Fun (Jacaranda)
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Director's report
The Pre-School has been very busy over the last few weeks and the children have been remarkable how they have managed new routines, expectations and environments. Watching the children develop their skills to support themselves and each other reminds me of how very capable our young friends can be.
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Our Pre-School hosted a beautiful warm evening for the welcome picnic on Friday the 4th for the 3 year old and Gumnut group families. The yard was filled with children playing and families chatting together. It was lovely to walk around and chat with you all and it is always enjoyable watching the children play and interact. The evening also provided us with a beautiful rainbow which has inspired part of our program this week.
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Last week saw the arrival of our Earn & Learn products. For those not familiar with this, for the last couple of years Woolworths have run an Earn & Learn program where your shopping and collection of points helps us to obtain some fantastic educational resources from Educational Experience. We earned enough points to order a variety of science resources which we are very excited about using with the children.. I want to thank all those families who contributed to the collection of points for us, it is wonderful to be able to add these resources to our Pre-School.
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Emergency Evacuations: The children have been practising our emergency evacuation drill. Over the last couple of weeks the staff have been discussing with the children what we would do if we have to leave the kinder in an emergency. We talk about the importance of the “Stop, Look, and Listen” rule when they hear the emergency whistle and of keeping with the teachers to stay safe. Co-ordinating the children can be challenging, but so far these first drills have gone well. Unexpected events or emergencies can happen, it is important for the children to know what to do at times like this. A good thing to do is chat with your child about keeping safe, find out what they know and work on a safety plan for your home as well.
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Coming up: Our family picnic night for our 4 year old groups on the 18th March. This is a wonderful evening where the children and their families can come to kinder and meet other lovely members of our community.
The first working bee of the year is coming up on the 20th of March, we hope to have many hands to help us with the task of emptying out our sheds in readiness for the new sheds being put up over the holidays. Your help will be very much appreciated. Please place your name on the list to help. More details further in the newsletter. Working bees are a terrific way to support your Kinder as well as getting to know other families at the Pre-School.
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Pre-school is a busy active time for children and families. There is never a dull moment and always a lot to be a part of. We are all here to work together for our children and our Pre-School Community. If you have any questions please feel free to ask the staff, if we do not have an immediate answer we can certainly find out for you.
Please remember, I am available most mornings before session and then after sessions to help with any queries, questions or concerns that you may have, so please feel free to phone or pop in to the 3's room or office to see me.
The end of term is just around the corner and the rooms are very busy, I look forward to sharing our adventures with you.
Kim
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“Over time and with opportunity and support, the ways in which children connect and participate with others increase. Participating in their communities strengthens children's sense of identity and wellbeing” VEYLDF (pg20)
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The Term 1 working bee is this Sunday, 10am-11.30am. We need many hands to help empty the kinder sheds. Storage King Mitcham has generously donated use of a secure storage space to hold the sheds' contents until our new sheds are in place. If you can help on Sunday please write your name on the sign-up sheet in the foyer at kinder.
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President's report
Hello everyone.
You wouldn't know it was autumn. But, soon enough there will be liquid ambers dropping leaves and no doubt some of those will find their way through Rangeview's doors and into our children's creative play.
In this role I am increasingly learning about the depth of skills, talent and capacity that exists across our community and it is heartening. Our big focus this year is on the backyard redevelopment and those skills have been coming to the fore as we prepare to replace the sheds in the backyard during the Easter holiday break. As a result, the most important working bee of the year is going to take place on Sunday 20 March. We need all hands on deck because we need to empty the sheds and put the materials in storage before we can remove the old sheds and replace them with the new ones.
So, I encourage you to come along, working bees are a terrific way to meet new people and connect with those who your children play with each day. We expect to also provide some food once we are done as encouragement.
It is great to see the welcome picnics going ahead and the staff team are brimming with enthusiasm and ideas as they get to know our children better and their own interests begin to shape programming.
Remember, if you ever have any ideas or are keen to just have a chat about the kinder myself, or any of the executive are around to have a chat on the phone or after a session one day. Just come up and say hello.
Enjoy the upcoming break and let us hope for some cooler weather soon.
Daniel
president@rangeviewpreschool.vic.gov.au
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 Willow & Jacaranda Group News  |
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Can you believe that we are heading towards the end of term already? Time has certainly flown and we have been very busy as we have become familiar with each other and some of our routines. Sitting together on the mat at the beginning of the session, enables us to be able to greet all the children and provide extra support for those children still finding separating difficult. This is also the time that we share changes to the room and explain some of the experiences available and what we are doing for the day. It is an important part of our day and we appreciate all those families who arrive on time for their children to participate.
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The children are beginning to learn the routines throughout the sessions and are beginning to understand the expectations of belonging to their kinder group. We still have some children who find separating difficult but each day is an improvement as trust and confidence build. We appreciate parents understanding that it is best to leave the kinder room to chat with each other outside. This allows us to calm the room and we find the children settle more quickly. So thank you for your support and understanding.
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Back by popular demand, the Pandas and have been given a larger play space. With the addition of bamboo construction materials, the children have been balancing and stacking blocks to create homes, paths and play grounds for the Pandas to enjoy.
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The children have been busy creating artworks for their placemats. Using marbles dipped in coloured paint, the children have moved the marbles across the paper to make tracks and patterns on the page. The placemats help the children to develop a sense of belonging to our group and also helps them begin to recognise their names as they find the right placemat to sit at for snack time. Many of the children enjoy helping their friends find their place.
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With Easter just around the corner, the children have been invited to decorate a special basket using finger print stamps with a range of paint colours. Each child had the opportunity to print patterns across their paper. Printing helps strengthen the children’s fingers and develops the concepts of up and down.
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The children have continued to show their interest in dinosaurs, often huddled in small groups around the outside dinosaur environment. Adding dinosaurs inside we created a small dinosaur space in our room which encouraged colour matching and small group interactions. This has been extended to encourage more interactions and conversations as the children’s knowledge of dinosaurs is quite vast.
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Water Safety Incursion: Tracey, Emily and Kira from Healthways Community Initiatives came to speak to the children about water safety and how the children can be safe around water and what to do if they need help near the water. The children learned how to be safe in the pool, at the beach and in boats. The children participated in the discussions, practised safe swimming between the flags and investigated life jackets. We have extended this with a small beach environment to strengthen the water safety message.
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We have added some smaller environments and play spaces to our room. These spaces encourage children to interact in smaller groups, building their confidence and encouraging them to interact with one or two friends.
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The environments have been inspired by conversations we have had with the children and some of the natural items that have been collected and brought in.
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The outside environment encourages more energetic play. We are seeing children running, climbing, dancing on the stage, creating construction sites, exploring the water course and pump and playing in the sandpit. The children are making connections with each other as they play and these interactions are the beginnings of friendships, and it is lovely to see.
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 We have enjoyed getting to know some of our parents as they have come to help us during session. This is a valuable time for you to spend with your child and they enjoy having you there to help and play. So thank you to those who have already shared some time with us. I am aware how busy the beginning of the session is and it can be difficult to share information at that time. I am at kinder quite early, so please feel free to phone or pop in before the session starts to discuss any concerns or issues that you may have, or we can arrange to catch up at another time that may suit.
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 Music, singing, rhymes and finger plays are a big part of our mat times together. The rhythms and rhymes of songs help develop language and speech skills, not to mention lots of counting and concepts such as forward, backward, front, back, over under. Rhymes such as Open, Shut Them or I'm just a Teddy Bear teach us a lot about numbers and counting and following the actions helps us develop our fine motor skills. One of our favourite songs is Mr. Clickety Cane, this has lots of repetitive actions and words that the children love and the character is just very silly and makes us all laugh.
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Family Photo: We would like the children to bring in a photo of their family to share with us and to become a part of our community tree. The photo only needs to be a standard size photo (10cm x 15cm). The photo provides an opportunity for children to share with us a little about their family and makes a connection with them between home and kinder. Having a photo of their family can be reassuring and helps to build upon the children's sense of belonging to our kinder community.
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 Mother's Day: The children will begin making their special gift for their Mums for Mother's Day. We cannot tell you too much about this at the moment, an invitation will be sent home shortly. Please put a note in your diary for a special Morning Tea that we will be having at kinder next term.
Willow Group – Wednesday 4th May & Jacaranda Group 6th May.
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Lockers: Your child shares their locker with a child in the other three-year-old group. The green name labels are Willow Group and the white labels are Jacaranda. Please help your child get to know which locker is theirs by encouraging them to put their bag and hat into their locker. Hats may be left in the locker, however please ensure that it is clearly named so that no confusion is made. The foyer is quite a large space with room enough for everyone, when waiting to come into our room, please be mindful of children and parents trying to get into lockers and leave room for easy access. The foyer is also a space where we ask everyone to use their inside voices and their walking feet. The children have begun to learn this rule very well, and if you ask them I am sure they will be able to explain to you why we have these rules.
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Names on Belongings:
Please label children's snack / lunch boxes. This will help us when placing them out for the children and solve concerns when more than one child has the same container.
Children's clothing, including spare clothing in bags and hats need to be named. We have now begun a huge c ollection of items that cannot be returned as we do not know who they belong to. Please check the lost property box if you are missing anything.
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Recycling at Kinder
 As part of our recycling at kinder, children are encouraged to take their general rubbish home ie: wrappers, yoghurt tubes etc. We do have a bucket that the children have been putting their food scraps in so that we can feed the worms in the worm farm. The children help me to collect the liquid from the bottom of the worm farm. This is bottled and sold to our community so that they can fertilise their gardens at home.
We also have a container to collect the plastic fruit / yoghurt tubs. We wash these and then reuse them within the program.
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 Can you Help?
We would like small boxes for using at the craft table. Please feel free to recycle your boxes with us. (Please do not include boxes that have contained nut products or egg cartons.)
Small soft drink bottles (600ml) to use for our Worm Juice. Washed and labels removed. Thank you.
There is always so much to share with you all about what we do at kinder. Our Journal is now in the foyer, please take the time to read the journal to follow our learning journey. Already the weeks have gone so quickly and your children have learnt so much. We are looking forward to sharing many more experiences with the children next term.
Kim, Betty & Amelia
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 Four Year Old Report  Waratah & Banksia
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The children are having a wonderful time at kinder these past few weeks enjoying various experiences, getting to know each other and becoming more comfortable and settled with our routine. We continue to support and encourage interactions, facilitating play and developing a relationship with the children that promotes trust, acceptance and security. Building these relationships with the children, fosters confidence and reassurance, where the children are feeling safe and supported to come to kinder and have a lot of fun learning through our play based curriculum.
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Our Program
Our program continues to evolve as the children’s interests do and we plan various experiences from the ideas of the children. The children have enjoyed cooking and baking in our “home corner”, outdoors in our sand pit and mud kitchen and even cooking up with our playdoh. We have observed the children making muffins, cakes, party food, pizza…and so we extended this with a cooking experience at kinder. We baked yummy banana muffins that the children thoroughly enjoyed and shared at kinder.
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There has been some interest in dinosaurs, dinosaur baths, washing dinosaurs, feeding dinosaurs….so we provided a “dinosaur world” for the children to investigate. With rocks, leaves, logs, stones, the children have used their imaginations to create various dinosaur encounters. We’ve had discussions about the types of dinosaurs and what dinosaurs like to eat. Dinosaurs have also been popular outside too.
We have followed our interest in various mini beasts and insects with a mini beast interest area to explore. Our Bush Kinder sessions have led us to discussions about dragonflies, bees, millipedes, ants, spiders, moths….the children have been fascinated to learn about such creatures and how they live in our world. We’ve enjoyed using magnifying glasses, reading stories about life cycles and exploring outdoors under logs and looking closely at tree trunks.
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We have introduced coloured water painting that the children have enjoyed. Our painting area and making table has been a busy place! The children enjoyed drawing their own self-portraits with black marker textas and then washing over them with the coloured water paints. Adding bugs and insects to the art table also invited the children to paint their own interpretations of these mini beasts. Painting with a partner has also been a popular experience for some too!
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Responsible Pet Ownership Program- Thursday 25th February
We learnt all about being safe around dogs when we had a visit from Pam and her dog Gemma at Bush kinder. The children learnt that Dogs do have feelings and there are times we should not touch a dog.
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Dogs are different to us- they have four legs, fur; a tail and also they can’t talk like we can. The children learnt what to do if an angry dog comes up to them- to stop, hands down, be quiet as a mouse and walk back slowly. If you see a dog and want to pat the dog, we learnt how to ask- “May I pat your dog?” then walk up quietly and let the dog smell the back of your hand then pat the dog’s back. The children all had a pat of Gemma.
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Healthways Incursion- Wednesday 2nd March & Thursday 3rd March
Emily and Kira visited the children at kinder from the Healthways Program. We learnt about being safe near water- in rivers, lakes, pools and at the beach. The children learnt how to be safe around pools and to never swim where a grown up is not looking after you.
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At the beach, you need to swim between the red and yellow flags and life guards at the beach keep us swim. If you are ever in any trouble at the beach, you need to remember to put up your arm in a fist and yell, “help, help”. If you go out on a boat, you need to always wear a life vest. We talked about keeping our beaches clean by putting all our rubbish in the bin and if we find any dangerous rubbish at the beach, we must tell a grown up and never touch it.
We learnt three important words - NEVER SWIM ALONE
We all had a turn at wearing a life jacket and pretended to swim in the beach and between the flags. It was fun!
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Super Friends Program
We have introduced the children to a Program called Super Friends. We have shared a social story with the children about what a Super Friend is and what does a Super Friend do.
Super Friends:
- Use gentle hands
- Use gentle feet
- Use nice talking
- Take turns
- Use their eyes to look and their eyes to listen to their friends
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It was an interesting discussion to share with the children and we were able to also think of other ways you can be a Super Friend at kinder. It has been a wonderful start and when we see a Super Friend, the children hear a shaker and then we gather together and discuss who and what our Super Friend is and how they’ve been a Super Friend. We have Super Friend capes that the children wear to show others how to be a Super Friend too.
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What an amazing experience Bush Kinder has been so far! The children are settling into our Bush Kinder routines and enjoying our exploratory walks and observing nature and the environment actively and enthusiastically. Please be sure to look at our Bush Kinder posters that we do together with the children at home kinder.
We’ve shared great discussions and have followed up some interest in our home kinder planning.
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Please remember, appropriate clothing, appropriate footwear, sunscreen and hats a MUST.
We are asking that parents please ensure that your child has a water bottle and we ask that parents please take their child to the toilet before joining us in the Visitor Centre.
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PLEASE NOTE: CHANGE TO BUSH KINDER SESSION-TERM 2
THERE WILL BE A BUSH KINDER SESSION ON THURSDAY 14TH APRIL (First session for TERM 2)
We have had to swap our weeks around to allow for an incursion at kinder on Thursday 21st April. Our other bush kinder sessions for TERM 2 remain unchanged.
BUSH KINDER DATES FOR TERM 1:
*THURSDAY 24th MARCH (Last kinder session)
Please remember - if your child takes their kinder hat home to take to Bush Kinder, to return it at their next kinder session. It would be great if you have two hats for your child so that one hat could be left at kinder and the other used for Bush Kinder.
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We Belong
Please remember to bring in your handprint wit your child’s favourite things to do. The children have enjoyed sharing these with the group and we will be displaying them in the foyer very soon.
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Our Family Frame
Please bring in your family photos so we can add to our beautiful family frame! Children enjoy having their family photo at kinder and telling others about who belongs in their family.
Coming Up
Thursday 24th March is the last session of Term 1.
We will be at Bush Kinder and we will be having an Easter Egg Hunt!
TERM 2- we begin our Lending Library Program & our Rex home visiting Program. More details to follow!
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Reminders
This year we have decided to email most notices to families. Therefore, please be sure to check your emails regularly.
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Change of Clothes
Please remember to send along a spare change of clothing in your child’s bag. Kinder is such a busy, engaging environment and sometimes accidents happen! Please label each item of clothing.
The children are loving digging in the sandpit and using the water pump, they have so much fun, but they can get wet! A change of clothes is so important!
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- Please remember to apply sunscreen on your child before kinder.
- Please remember to sign in and out your child for each session.
- The Parent Roster is next to the 4 year old sign in book, please write your name down for duty.
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Please ensure your child has a snack (preferably fruit and another item) and lunch. The children get very hungry on the long days so please ensure that they have enough food. Healthy foods with less sugar content will help maintain the children’s energy levels throughout the day.
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Please come and speak to us if you have any concerns, feedback or suggestions!
The 4 Year Old Team
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Gumnuts
We have been busy getting to know many new friends in our Gumnuts program, as our numbers grow. We have had lots of fun playing together and learning about each other.
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We have really enjoyed our train set and working out how to navigate the track without crashing into other trains. We have also enjoyed drawing, Playdough, painting and pasting. We have had lots of discussions about colour, what our favourite is and what mixing two colours can make. We will be exploring this a little more in the coming weeks.
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We have had some great times playing outside at the mud kitchen and up on the deck and sand pit. We are looking forward to extending this play a little more next term.
Meg &Tracy
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If you have a child turning 3 or know someone who does and would like to know more about our Gumnuts program, please contact us at gumnuts@rangeviewpreschool.vic.edu.au
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At last month's meeting, the Rangeview Committee of Management made a presentation to Annamaria to thank her for all the work she did to get the Bush Kinder program up and running this year. It was Annamaria who seized the opportunity to be part of the Whitehorse Council pilot project and her efforts have been supported by the rest of the kinder staff team. If it wasn't for Annamaria's enthusiasm and passion for the project our 4-year-olds wouldn't be having the amazing learning experience each fortnight at Yarran Dheran.
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If you have anything you would like included in the newsletter or posted on our Facebook page, please feel free to email me at news.rangeview@gmail.com
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