Glen Education Sacred Heart

Connections with Community 

Glen Sacred Heart Kindergarten Educators 

Quality Area 1: Program and Practice 

As a part of our commitment to connecting with our local community children and educators developed safety rules for walking outings at the beginning of Term 2 2023.  Educators gathered children together throughout the week to give them the opportunity to share their ideas and thoughts on what would help to keep us all safe while out in the community. 

 Educators recorded children’s voices to capture their initial ideas around safety and continued to record their emerging ideas as the conversations continued over the course of two weeks. These were then reviewed again with the group as more contributions were added.  

When the time came for our first outing of the year, educators supported children to remember the boundaries they had created for themselves and gave positive reinforcement to the group during the outing, especially those few who felt anxious to leave the service.  This helped us to build children’s confidence and interest in our community and has formed the basis of our further explorations of local areas of interest, such as visiting the local park.

This process was also communicated to families via our weekly reflection to allow them to share in discussions at home about what children may have seen while walking, their child’s understanding of safety rules and as an open invitation for families to join us where possible on future outings.

By engaging children in making decisions and supporting them to establish their own ideas about safety we encourage them to develop their sense being part of a community, build their confidence to contribute ideas to the group and that they have a right to contribute to decisions that impact their learning.

- Alisha Kums, Early Childhood Teacher 

Quality Area 6: Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities.

At Glen Education Sacred Heart Kindergarten, we strive to build each child’ confidence through fostering their communication and listening skills. We believe that each child’s family is unique and should be celebrated, and for this reason we have commenced regular family celebration mornings. These sessions provide families with an opportunity to stay and play either at the beginning of a session or at the end.  We have observed that in our community, families can have many ways of being. We have been able to welcome parents, grandparents, or friends into our kindergarten to explore and play alongside the children. 

As children have built secure relationships with educators and peers, they have become comfortable sharing information about their families. Below are some of the interactions between children, families and educators that educators have observed:

“What is your name?” 

“She is my mum.” - Jack and Ivy share a conversation about their grownups

“Ripan!  my grandpa drops me today.” - Areeya 

“My mum drops me, and my dad will pick up.” - Riviera 

Some of the ways that families have contributed to our program this year include: 

• Ayaan’s mother, Ruta, reading a story in Hindi language.
• Tomoki’s mother, Kimika, teaching the children how to make Kabuto (Warrior origami hats).
• Oliver's mother, Daniella, teaching the children to make spinach filo pastry triangles.

We are also looking forward to welcoming Giacomo’s mother, Kelly, to read a story in Italian language soon. The partnerships between kindergarten and home supports us to have a rich and diverse learning environment which reflects our community.

- Ripan Kaur, Early Childhood Educator

Quality Area 1: Program and Practice 

During term 2 2023 at Glen Sacred Heart Kindergarten, we have been focusing on strengthening the children’s fine motor skills through a variety of sensory experiences such as finger and hand painting, clay,

 playdough and kinetic sand play. These experiences also provide opportunities for the children to concentrate, discuss and express their creativity, relax, learn, and have fun. 

Children have been encouraged to explore the medium of clay, learning to make sculptures.  Educators have supported children to use natural materials such as sticks as additions to their sculptures, or as tools to make marks on their creations. The children’s creations have been displayed in our kindergarten foyer for the families and children look at their amazing handmade clay artwork.  By displaying children’s work, we support them to reflect on their creations and inspire conversations about their process of creation.

 Some of the ways in which educators scaffold learning are through supporting the children to use the playdough rolling pins while asking them what they are making, what they will be adding to their work next and who they are making it for. In the photos below a child began to make a pretend cake.  Soon others observed this and responded by beginning to make their own cakes too. The children were proud of what they could do with just using rolling pins, straws, and cupcake liners, sharing their creations with others at the table and holding them up for educators to see.

- Noor Moaied, Early Childhood Educator

Quality Area 1: Program and Practice 

Over the course of term 2 children contributed many ideas for further exploration based on their experiences and observations of the world around them.  Many children arrived back from holidays bouncing with conversations of where they were over the break or shared experiences of holidays from times earlier in the year. We explored this further by looking at maps of Australian and the world.  Jack and Tomoki brought photos of their holidays to share with their peers, we looked at where on the map they had travelled to. Areeya had the great idea of writing a letter to her cousin in Sydney.  this idea was extended by inviting other children to consider where and who they would send letters to. 

These conversations have sparked a project where educators are supporting children to write letters to family members in places far away as Indonesia and New York.  Educators are also supporting children to write in their home languages, when that language is shared by our educators.  

Further connections to learning were made by an outing to the post office, where we purchased stamps and posted Areeya's letter. This project displays how educators can seize on small moments to extend children's thinking and make connections between their own life experiences and their learning at kindergarten.

- Grace Keleher, Early Childhood Teacher

Quality Area 3: Physical Environment

At Glen Education Sacred Heart Kindergarten, we incorporate natural materials for children to explore throughout our learning spaces. We believe that it is important to teach children about the natural world around them. In term 1 we reintroduced our nature hub station in the kindergarten foyer.  Children and families were invited to bring in natural materials from home, such as leaves from gardens, gum nuts or feathers found on walks around the neighborhood, etc. Children filled our baskets with natural materials.

When adding these resources to learning experiences in our program we saw children’s creativity and curiosity come alive as they used leaves, sticks, and rocks to create their own unique projects.  These materials are used in various open-ended activities to help the children learn about the environment and the world around them.

Children learn about sustainability and how to reuse materials through discussions with educators and peers about where our resources come from, how they are made and whether they are natural or man-made. 

These experiences support children to consider whether they can reuse items that would otherwise go to landfill, where they can find natural items and the ways in which the seasons affect the natural world around them.

- Gurmeet Kaur, Early Childhood Educator