River Room Term 3 Newletter
Our Learning Journey through term 3
This term has been a different one! We have missed majority of our little people and Educators that effectively make up our purpose and program and reasoning behind why we do we what do. As a lead educator I have never experienced so many questionable moments while working within early childhood but this has also been a time where I have grown as professional and individual and one important thing I’ve learnt is that there is certainly no I in team and I am extremely excited to welcome Jess and Cate back for term 4! It has been such a journey working with a core group of Educator trough stage 4 a privilege to be there for your little ones.
Onto the good Stuff
We have been exploring and navigating how we want the river room program to continue to flourish over term 4 so I have made some changes to our learning areas which include:
- A creation station. The creation station is an area that invite and allows children the opportunity to freely choose different mediums they wish to explore and create! Mediums include; paper, pencils, crayon, paint, playdough, pasting and collage.
The children and educators collaborated to make a big sign to hang above the area which was so much fun! The children got hands on with the paint to make their “Creation Station.” The process was lovely to observe. “Creation Station.” The process was lovely to observe.
Loose parts play
- Loose parts play is an area that allows children imaginations to run wild, manipulate and explore. The area includes different recycled materials, tubes, large corks, various other loose parts for tinkering. We are always looking for recycled materials so please if you come across anything recyclable that would be great if you could bring some in 😊 Loose parts may sound a bit scary especially with our younger ones. We do make sure the loose parts play is appropriately sized and supervision is maintained as we play and learn with them too.
- Block and construction. We have added a block and construction area to the room too! This allows for gross motor skills, fosters emotional and social development through turn taking and working together, imagination.
Family Tree!
We would love to revamp our family tree and see it bloom. Forming secure and trusting relationships with the children is going to be a big goal for term 4 as we see the return of existing and new children joining us again. We understand that time away from the river room and for children orientating may be a bit challenging and ensuring the children settle in and feel a sense of belonging is going to be something we really want to nurture over the term. Family photos are a great way we can connect with the children, form little conversations and allows for a sense of togetherness. It is also something the children can look, hold, and turn too when feeling sad or even when they are feeling happy.
New learning areas
These are a few of our new learning areas we are exciting to share, learn and grow as we move into a new and final term together.
Over the last term since the service has been very quiet, we have been engaging in multi-age play and have seen rooms combined. This as been wonderful has we have been able to merge and come together. We have been involved in zoom dance parties with children from home and engaged in afternoon play with forest room. This has been wonderful see and allowed for sibling to spend time together and for our older years children to roll model and interact with the younger year has been beautiful.
We wanted to share a little bit about cate and Jess have been up working away from the service over the last 8 weeks.
Cates snippet
“Hi Families,
What a crazy roller coaster we have ALL been riding over these last few months. It was quite a shock to find out a majority of us would not be required at work during stage 4 lockdown. It certainly put this whole corona virus into perspective for me. Although I only ended up working from home for three weeks, they were certainly a busy three weeks. I participated in numerous Personal developments with some of them being so inspiring and others being mediocre.
One online course I did really made me happy. It was called Playing with Gratitude and made me stop and think about what I am grateful for and how this affects my day to day life. An interesting point the presenter made was to STOP/ SLOW DOWN/ Pause and think about why things matter to you? I found this particularly thought provoking during the hard times we were living. I am certainly grateful for my family throughout these COVID times. I hope you can all have a think of what you are grateful for. You might be surprised how it lifts your mood.
I also completed my child protection training which I can tell you is a really heavy depressing course. Some of the scenarios that are set are so very depressing but unfortunately a fact of life for some children.
I was thrilled to be able to make contact with all the River Room families during my time off and really enjoyed all your responses and wonderful pictures of the children you sent. To see all their little faces made me feel so grateful to be involved with such wonderful families.
Looking forward I hope that we get back to what will be our “new normal” whatever that may be, but most of all I can’t wait to see you all.”
Cate
Jess's Snippet
“Hello beautiful River room families,
I have spent these week’s working from home, it has had its hard moments and good. I said to myself from the start I’m going to remain in a positive mindset and I listened to an amazing webinar on playing with gratitude, implementing gratitude is important, it will change your mindset, allow you to grow, to thrive and to flourish.
I have loved implementing gratitude to my routine each morning.
It has been great to learn and grow my knowledge through doing webinars, podcasts and PD’s and I took away a lot that I learnt and it will be exciting to implement this in our room and for you all to be involved in.
I enjoyed putting together moon boards on our indoor and outdoor environments and to make these spaces amazing for the children to grow and learn, as each child is viewed as capable, creative and intelligent and it is our jobs of teachers to provide/support to give them opportunities to be challenged in their learning.
The other moon board was for Christmas, I put together ideas of activities and artwork we will do, I find during Christmas time the children are happy and filled with joy. Even though things may be a little different this year, I’m not letting that get my Christmas spirit down, as in my family is it a happy time and filled with lots of wonderful traditions.
I’ve learnt to be in the moment, I have an amazing boyfriend(Jackson) who has been supportive through this which has made me realise how lucky I am to have him, family and friends, a great place to work and to never take anything for granted.
I’m excited to implement what I learnt in the room for you all to see and be a part of.
I have missed you all and can’t wait to see you.”
Jess.
We look forward to a better term 4 and end of year with you all
Karla, Cate & Jess.
