Glen Education Bentleigh

Bentleigh Community Connections 2022

Amelie Llorca, Early Childhood Teacher 

“As children move into early childhood settings, they broaden their experiences as participants in different relationships and communities.” (Early Years Learning Framework, 2009, p. 28).  

At Glen Education we value children as active citizens that make decisions in their learning journey and are active participants within their educational and wider community.

St Paul’s Primary school:

There is no denying that community connections foster children's sense of belonging and help them develop social and other skills. 

Our first community connection was the visit of grade 6 St Paul’s students that came to read to the children, spend some time playing with them and scaffold their learning. A third of Bentleigh children will attend St Paul’s Primary school next year, and these visits allow them to become familiar with people from the school, the uniforms, and support their future transition. All the children benefit from these visits as they move out of their comfort zone to engage and create new relationships and experienced a boost of confidence as a result. 

Neighbourhood connections:

Exploring our neighbourhood supports children’s sense of identity and wellbeing. While on excursion children work their gross muscles, explore their surroundings, and breath fresh air. They also develop confidence in the community and become increasingly familiar with their close neighbourhood. With the support of books, maps, and pictures of children’s houses we explored our local area. We learnt about the meaning of different colours on a map (green for Parks, yellow for main road, grey for streets) and looked at the position of children’s place of residence in relation to kinder. 

Community workers connections: 

It all started with a book: “The Thank You Letter” by Jane Cabrera, It prompted us to reflect and discuss the people who do things for us in our community. It lead children to collaborate to thank community workers. They created thank you letters and drawings for the hospital workers, police officers, firefighters and the kindergarten cleaner. 

They built on their social experiences and demonstrated their ability to act with kindness towards others that are not necessarily related to them. Some found it hard to send their beautiful drawings, but they soon realised their gesture will make someone else happy, so they let go of the envelops. Soon children got a heart-warming and amazing reply

by email from Monash Hospital and in the visit of police officers from Caulfield police station.

Two constables came in person to acknowledge reception of the letter and drawings and answer our invitation to talk about their work. In the children’s own words: It was the best excursion ever! They loved sitting at the front and back of the car and learning about the police officer uniform. 

The constable also brought handmade teddy bears for each child. Children already planned to write another thank you letter.