River Room

Term 4 Newsletter

What a wild ride this year has been but also one of growth and becoming grounded again. We have had a beautiful year in the river room and one we will never forget!

We are so proud of our little people, who are they are now and who they are becoming. We know they will absolutely flourish moving up to our wonderful Sun Room and to our children and families staying with us a little while longer-aren’t you lucky! 😉

So, what have we learnt and discovered this year?

We have been super busy with discovering many ways to grow and learn and some of our favourite have been...

Water play and Sensory Experiences

Water play has been an absolute hit towards the warmer months and one we have learnt will become an ongoing part of our program. The children gain so much through sensory play, as it explores pretty much all of their senses and they discover likes, dislikes, trial and error and also supports their language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills and social interactions! Timmy the turtle, the water tub, play dough and slime have all been big features within their learning environment. We have just loved they way the children interact and communicate with each other throughout these times, it is beautiful to see them develop patience, sharing and self regulation :)

Our wonderful buggies!

Wow, how amazing do our prams look.. we have been patiently waiting for our beautiful prams to arrive and once they we instantly made them embedded within our river room program. Community is such a big part of the many wonderful areas that make up Early Childhood Education! Since we have been exploring the outside world we have noticed the children express themselves in wonderful ways, they use their voices to communicate they would like to go, we get to bring the outdoor environments such as flowers, leaves, bark and grass that we use within our play. We also take photos, and are able to reflect and look back on where we have been and what have experienced together creating wonderful moments to cherish. We can’t wait to see where this adventure takes us in the new year! Our buggies seat 6 children each and we have 2 meaning that we can only take 12 children at a time. This, plus our ratios of 1 Educator to 4 children is a fantastic way of being able to safely venture out and about :)

Loose parts and block play:

Loose parts has also been wonderful journey within our room allowing the children to create and use their imaginations, to play, manipulate, transport and discover alternative ways of doing things! We have seen many creations such as blocks being used for cooking in the home corner, magnets being used for Peek a boo and exploring colours whilst looking through them. How wonderful that recycled materials and loose parts pave the way for Imagination and new learnings!

Children’s and NAIDOC week

We had such an inspiring children’s week within the service with the theme this year being “diversity.” As a team we collaborated and created a beautiful window filled with handprints of all ages and stages! It was so, incredibly wonderful seeing children place their hands to create an piece of visual art that had so much meaning and importance behind it. We hope you saw and appreciated it as much as we did! :)

NAIDOC week is a week where we support and acknowledge the land that “Always way, Always will be”, recognising the First Nation people’s have occupied and cared for Australia for over 65,000 years. We recognised this by singing our much loved song called “Inanay Capuana” with our clapping sticks. This was learnt and sung as a whole service which was very special and has created a big part of who we are and stand for as community of togetherness!

Christmas and end of year

We had a great time celebrating Christmas though creating special creations, memories, gifts for home. We hope you have a have wonderful Christmas and new year. Stay safe and Stay Kind and we look forward to a wonderful new year with you all!

Photos will be posted to Storypark following the newsletter.