Glen Education St John's 

Partnerships with Families 

Andrea Simons, Early Childhood Teacher

What a contrast this year and last year have been. From families not able to enter the building to educators actively reminding families that it was ok to come in with their child. It is now wonderful to see families entering the building and spending time in their child’s kindergarten environment.  

Partnerships with families is something that begins in the initial enrolment process, where we aim to get a better understanding of each child through children’s enrolment forms, family questionnaires, and orientation sessions. These things gather information on family celebrations, family culture, languages spoken, child strengths, fears, and parent’s goals for their children. This is the basis for educators understanding of each child.

A few of the ways in which we have sought to foster family and community engagement is through inviting families to attend our nature walks and play outings. In term 4 we will endeavour to re visit our friends at Aveo aged care and parents will also be invited to attend and support our program. These experiences support children to learn more about their community and to make connections with people and places.  This supports children to develop their own sense of belonging and understanding of their place in the wider community.

Families have supported our program by actively fundraising for our kindergarten.

We have held special events to celebrate events and holidays and invited families into the kindergarten to share in these celebrations with their child.    

In 2021we introduced a SJK Community Pantry and Library for children and families to access. This was an extension of things we had embedded into our kindergarten program, such as our Kindergarten Library system where children would borrow and return books, or our kindergarten produce sales for gold coin donations. During lockdown we wanted to increase our wider community impact and increase opportunities for our community to make connections with us in a covid-safe way. As a result, we created a library out the front of our kindergarten and introduced a community garden which was funded by our friends at Bunnings Mentone.

We look forward to even more family and community engagement in the future.