River Room

Wow wee! Hasn't it been a busy term for us educators in the river room! 

Term 1 in the River room is all about welcoming new families and children into their new journey at Haven. In this age group (currently 8 months - 18 months), it's a huge decision for families to decide whether their child to should attend Haven. In this big step, we are here for our families to support them through this difficult moment to allow educators take care of their precious gift (their child). And well done to our families for following through this moment! Give yourself a pat on the back! It's not easy, but you've done it! :)  

Our first goal with the children is to develop trusting and caring relationships with each of the children. We demonstrate to each child that we are here during; meal times/bottle times, transition between drop offs and pick up times, sleep times, sad moments, happy moments  and all the in between moments. We support each child during their play and exploring moments as they continue to learn more about this world. We believe building a solid relationships with the children first will help support them to learn and grow. Especially in an environment with lots of other children who do not share the same household as them. It can be confronting at first. That's when the educators are there, to give lots of cuddles to reassure the children. 

Once the children know and understand that the educators are there for them. They begin to feel comfortable and confident being in this new environment as now its becoming a familiar environment for them to be open and curious about while learning through play. The children learn the basic skills about life such as how to move objects, hold onto odd shapes, manipulate objects, transfer objects and guide objects into the direction they desire the object to go. All of this is scaffolding. Scaffolding is developing the child's individual skills that they already know and we support them to continue to extend on that skill. For example, holding onto a rattle, learning how to manipulate the rattle by shaking,  rolling and sometimes tossing the rattle. This will get extended to learning how to hold a block, to holding onto their bottles , to hold onto food, to hold onto the spoon and etc. 

Now the children feel safe, secure and confident while attending their days in the river room.  They also have formed that trusting relationships with the educators and vise versa. This is where the educators confidently take the leap of faith. Introducing the pram program to the children and families. The pram program is an learning opportunity for the children, at this age, to go out on an excursion. On our excursion we visit the park, which is just behind our centre ( Arcadia reserve) and have a wonderful time being out in the sun, walking/crawling on the soft grass, seeing buses and trucks drive pass, exploring the basketball court adventures and listening to the wind blowing pass on the trees and the birds chirping. It's lovely to have a change of scenery from time to time, rather than being at Haven all the time. We sometimes just go for a walk down Taylors lane to see what's happening in our community. Most of the time, there isn't much but it's nice to see the flowers, wave hello to the community people and seeing different colour fences/houses. 

Later on in the year, we will continue to extend on our pram program adventures by visiting the local shopping centres (stud park shopping centre and wellington village shopping centre). 

The educators have done an fantastic job at building the relationships with children and families during this term. Now the children feel like they belong being part of our community, we will strive to focus on their developmental milestones (sitting up on their own, crawling, standing, walking, feeding themselves and etc), introducing the world to them and other areas they may need support in as individual human beings.  

Next term we will be dive into the world of bugs. This has been an interest from some of the children, where the educators have gather information off the children in their curiosity of this world. Watch out, river room will become a bug world! :)  

From River Room Team 

Grace, Cate, Jess, Hayley, Chloe & Sok