Hi Everyone
Next Wednesday, 17th September, is our Stall to raise money for Heartland Children’s Academy in Nepal to buy books for their library. Please look in your toy boxes, bookshelves and homes for things you no longer need that we can sell to the community. Please come and support the preschool children and Fran’s as they will be running the stall, by buying goods and donating money to this excellent cause. You can also bake delicious things to sell at the stall - cakes, biscuits, little savoury items, etc. Please remember no nuts, kiwifruit and chocolate. Thanks to everyone who has already brought in items to sell. Fran’s class will baking and selling warm scones at the end of the day so you will be able to buy some when you pick your children up from school!!
The end of the term and the concert are approaching quickly. We are having daily concert practices. The concert will be held on Tuesday 23rd September 2008 at 6.00pm sharp at St Andrew’s Church Hall, cnr Kenneth and Christina Streets in Longueville. We start the concert exactly on time, so preschool performers need to be at the hall by 5.45pm, dressed in whatever they would like to wear. We are asking the children what they would like to wear this week, so please come into preschool and look at the list of children’s names and their chosen costume. The aim of the concert is for children to have fun and enjoy performing. We do not force anyone to get up on the stage on the night, so if your child wants to watch that is fine. They do all need to be part of the practices so that they are prepared and part of what we are doing.
We will be going to practice for the concert on the morning of the 23rd September, so we will need a few drivers to take children down to the Hall. A note will go up about this next week. Please write down the number of spare car seats with seat belts you have available, excluding your child’s seat.
The end of term preschool clean-up happens in the last week as well, and a list of jobs will go up on the glass doors next week. Please put your name next to the job you would like to do, and then come in during the last week and do it. You can also play, drink coffee and have lots of fun with all of us. Little siblings are welcome!
A couple of weeks ago I attended the COAG Forum “A national quality framework for early childhood education and care” which is looking at overhauling Australia’s early childhood education. I was part of a table that looked at working conditions in early childhood settings and the possibility of rating early childhood settings. I will be putting in a written submission from Currambena today as well. A discussion paper has been published and is available on www.deewr.gov.au/COAG/discussionpaper. All stakeholders in early childhood education are invited to write their ideas and suggestions to ECECQualityReformSubmissions@deewr.gov.au. This is an important and vital forum to have your say on the early childhood education you visualise for your children.
This week we have been following up on children’s questions - Cameron asked “Why can’t we see air, and CAN we see air?”. So we have done some experiments, looked at books and tried to see air. We have also been looking at frogs, spiders and snakes based on what children said they wanted to learn about this term. Tomorrow we are going to see our buddies’ tadpoles in Buddy Time and hear about what they have learnt about the frog life cycle. We have also been discussing death, God, heaven, euthanasia and the possibility of an afterlife following the death of our black mouse last week. The children’s thoughts and opinions are very interesting and varied. As Ethan said “We all have our own things about God”.
Yesterday Paisleys’s dad, Paul, a musician, brought his guitar and came and played with Tony in music time. The children sang, danced, listened and read the words of the hippopotamus song. It was lots of fun and it is wonderful having accomplished musicians who love playing music. Thanks, Paul!
We have a Monday and a Friday space from next week which we would like to offer to our present preschool families. If you would like to add or swap a day, please let me know.
Thanks for working on sanding and varnishing our boards, Ian, Kim and Cameron.
Thank you to all our washers and paper cutters who keep us supplied with clean things and easel paper.
Love from
Sue, Chris and Soojin.