FAREWELL KATIE I am sadly announcing my resignation as the Director/ Nominated Supervisor at Mimosa Kids.

I have made the difficult decision to leave my second home, Mimosa Kids, to move to Newcastle with my family. I will still be in contact with Mimosa Kids, as I will be working closely with the owners of the centre on exciting new opportunities. I thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family’s lives, putting your trust in me to care and look after your most precious treasures, your children. I have truly enjoyed every moment of the ten years I have been at the centre. I have had the honor and joy of connecting with children when they were two, continuing ties with those children as they have gone through primary school through our BSC/ASC services and seen these tiny two year olds grow into young adults. I have had the pleasure of seeing whole families; sometimes four or five siblings go through the centre. I have loved being a support system for so many of you, especially those of you who were leaving your child for the first time. I will hold dear so many of you who have also been a support system for me, especially when I became a mother myself. I will cherish the opportunity I have had to connect with you all. The wonderful staff at Mimosa Kids will be especially hard to part with. Most of them I have worked with for 8 years or over and had the pleasure in employing so many of these fantastic educators and supporting them through their training. They truly are my second family and I am very proud of the strong team that they have become. As my family moves this Month, for the rest of the year I will be commuting from Newcastle, therefore, from time to time I will need to reduce the amount of days I work at the service. At those times I will be working from home and will still be contactable five days a week. My last day will be Friday 22 December.

I feel I am leaving the service in the hands of the best person possible. Ashleigh Magee, will be taking on the Role as Director/ Nominated Supervisor from January 2018. She has taken on an acting Director role in the past when I was on maternity leave and has carried out the Educational Leader role this year with great

success. We have attached our 2018 team information for you in this month’s newsletter.

CONGRATULATIONS VICKY We’d like to congratulate Vicky on the fantastic journey she will be embarking on in 2018. Vicky will become our Mimosa Kids Out of School Hours Care 2iC. Vicky will still be working with the children at our service two days a week and the rest of the time she will be working in the office in an administrative roll and at our Before/ After School Care and Vacation Care services. We know Vicky is well equipped for this role and will be a great asset to our management team. Make sure you see our 2018 Team list attached to this newsletter.

November News 2018 Mimosa Kids Team

AT MIMOSA KIDS Wednesday 22nd November - Orientation Night, starting at 6pm all 2018 Families welcome

AROUND THE COUNTRY Melbourne Cup Day ------------------------------- 7th Remembrance Day -------------------------------- 11th Australia Food Safety Week ---------------- 11-18th National Recycling Week -------------------- 13-19th World Kindness Day ----------------------------- 13th Orangutan Caring Week --------------------- 12-18th Universal Children’s Day ------------------------- 20th Social Inclusion Week ------------------- 25th-3rd Dec

DECEMBER DATES TO REMEMBER

Friday 8th December - Farewell Disco for school leavers and Kookaburras Friday 15th December - Christmas Concert & End of year party with a visit from Kindi Farm Friday 22nd December – Mimosa Kids last day for 2017 – Reopening Monday 8th Jan 2018

Mimosa Kids P&ELC

ONE BOWL BANANA MUFFINS

Samuel told us he went to the beach over the weekend, and he searched for penguins!!! What other birds have you seen in your backyard?? Mimosa Kids thoroughly enjoyed having the children dress up during our fancy dress week, with witches, super-heroes, princesses, puppy dogs and under the sea creatures coming out to play. Some of the Joey children were telling their educators and peers how they were going to go Trick or Treating for Halloween. This excited Sammi (educator) as she grew up in America where the Halloween holiday is celebrated greatly. She had some wonderful experiences to share with the children that included all things creepy, crawly, ooky and cooky such as slime sensory walks, pumpkin carving, spider jump painting and even googly eyes ghosts. Please remember to label all items of clothing and provide a hat every day for your child!! Have a great Month, Vicky, Kesaia, Sammi, Alisi and Danni

Avokiddo Emotions AVOKIDDO | 4 & under | $4.49

Give your children a serious case of the giggles when you introduce them to a zany zebra, shy sheep, jolly giraffe and modest moose!

Dress up, feed, play and care for these cute animals and discover dozens of emotions in this endless play funhouse. Pretend play with over 110 objects, foods, toys and musical instruments and find out how to please your lovable pets. Explore feelings in an open-ended free style playroom! These huggable pets have personality to spare and are animated with realistic multi-faceted reactions to a whole host of scenarios.

JOEY NEWS Another jam-packed month has flown by, with the Joey children taking great preparations for their transition to the Bilby room. By engaging in challenging pre-literacy and numeracy experiences, the children are gaining confidence and skills by being able to identify numerals (monster card counting games, number bingo) and form letters in their names (salt finger writing trays, dot-to-dot name writing boards). During the month of October, the Joey’s continued to explore their interest of spring. This became even more fascinating when Archibald shared his news of getting a bee hive at his home. We focused on our Joey playground garden and other things that grow, bug and insect safety, and the wonderful works of Archibald’s busy buzzy bees. We looked at the inside of a bee hive and created our own honeycomb paintings by squishing and rubbing our hands over bubble wrap covered with yellow paint. Our educators pressed paper onto our sensory building paintings to reveal the honeycomb pattern. The Joey children also helped their educators in making honeycomb for us to eat. It was like a science experiment watching runny sticky liquid turn into fluffy puffy honeycomb with the different ingredients reacting and developing a hard but light and thick honeycomb treat. We had a wonderful visit from The Nutrition Magician who reminded us of all of our Dental Hygiene practices, which linked well with our topic of Nutrition and Personal Hygiene discussions. The Joey’s enjoyed using fruits and veggies to paint with and make guessing games of which foods were fruits and which were vegetables. We also spoke about the food we have for our morning tea and lunches, discussing the importance of each meal and food for what it does for our bodies, such as milk which contains calcium and calcium is great for our bones, also apples which are great for keeping germs out of our teeth. We were really proud of the Joey children as some of them went on to try foods and lunches they may not have wanted to try or haven’t eaten before….surprisingly, they enjoyed it. Our Aussie Backyard Bird Count had us looking madly up in the trees for all different types of birds. Not only did this challenge our counting skills but also our visual and hearing sensory abilities in order to look for different birds. We saw some kookaburras, minor birds, bush turkeys and rainbow lorikeets. We could hear the screeching of cockatoos and the melodic call of the magpie but we didn’t see any. We enjoyed incorporating different bird stories into our creative play and group discussions, including Aboriginal Dreamtime stories of ‘How the Birds got their Colours’ and ‘How the Emu lost its Wings’.

REMEMBRANCE DAY – 11TH In 2017, 11 November marks the 99th anniversary of the

Armistice, which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each

year on this day Australians observe one minute’s silence at

11 am, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars

and armed conflicts. The Service of Remembrance in many

Commonwealth countries generally includes the sounding of the

"Last Post", followed by the period of silence, followed by the

sounding of "Reveille" or sometimes just "The Rouse".

www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/remembrance-day

UNIVERSAL CHILDREN’S DAY – 20TH Established by the United Nations in 1954, Children's Day is marked

on November 20 each year to promote international togetherness,

awareness among children worldwide, and improving children's

welfare. Universal Children's Day offers each of us an inspirational

entry-point to advocate, promote and celebrate children's rights,

translating into dialogues and actions that will build a better world

for children. www.un.org/en/events/childrenday/

BILBY NEWS We have had another fun-filled month in the Bilby room exploring so many new themes and topics. We farewelled Bec and then welcomed her back and also welcomed Jennifer to our team. Jennifer is Early Childhood trained Teacher with over 15 years experience. She will be in the Bilby room this year and moving up with the Bilbies into the Kookaburra Room next year. We are so excited to have her join our team so please make sure you say hello. The children have been so interested in literacy and numeracy over the past month as they become more familiar with letters and numbers. Educators have tried to incorporate both of these concepts into our daily classroom activities so that the children continue to further develop their recognition of these. This month we celebrated the Aussie Backyard Bird Count which led us to explore birds and nests, especially those in our environment. We used some real nests as stimulus and built some of our own in the block area. The children used their imagination and some natural resources to make their creations come to life. We used some bird books that were our focus for that week as stimulus’ at the easel and the children did such a good job of replicating these. We have them stuck up in the classrooms – please take a look! We also previously touched on hygiene reading a book called Yucky Mucky Manners which began our easel stimulus journey. We enjoyed a Bollywood Show at the end of the month which focused on traditional Indian culture. The children all got to wear a jingle sash and shimmy around, making a noise throughout the show. She showed us some Indian dance moves and we talked about some of the spices before using them in our play dough play. As the weather warms up again, please ensure your child is wearing sun cream before coming to kindy. We apply sun cream 20 minutes before going outside throughout the day so the children are always protected. Please ensure you always bring a hat and a change of clothes as we like to use water to cool down! We are looking forward to the exploring that will be had in November; we hope you have a lovely month, The Bilby Team Bec, Dionne, Ashleigh and Jennifer

ONE BOWL BANANA MUFFINS

CONNECT-THE-DOTS WITH LETTERS

Good old connect-the-dots gets revamped when you write a handful of repeating letters in random patterns down a length of butcher’s paper. Kids can connect the letters in any way they like, so long as all of the G’s are connected

to the other G’s, and so on. Choose only 5-6 letters at a time and try to include one or

two letters your child is confident with. You can alter the difficulty of this activity by

using one single colour or writing all the A’s in one colour and the C’s in another. You

could also mix uppercase and lowercase letters depending on your child’s ability.

Source: A great activity from ‘Hands on as we grow’.

https://handsonaswegrow.com/big-connect-the-dots-letters/

PREP 10 min | COOK 12 min | SERVES 12

INGREDIENTS

2 very ripe bananas, peeled

2 eggs

½ cup (125 ml) olive oil

½ cup (125 ml) Greek or natural yoghurt

½ cup (90 grams) brown (or coconut or rapadura) sugar

⅓ cup (80ml) golden syrup

1-tablespoon vanilla extract

2¼ cups (340 grams) plain wholemeal (wholewheat) flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon, ground

½ teaspoon nutmeg, ground

¼ teaspoon ginger, ground

METHOD: Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F) and line a 12 hole muffin

tin with papers. Set aside. Place bananas into large mixing bowl

and mash using a fork. Add eggs, olive oil, yoghurt, sugar, syrup

and vanilla and whisk to combine. Add flour, baking powder,

cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and stir using a wooden spoon

until just combined. Evenly divide the batter between the

prepared tin and bake for 12 minutes or until a skewer inserted

removes cleanly.. Enjoy mylovelylittlelunchbox.com

SAFETY – Remember to always supervise kids in the kitchen.

Source: Recipe and images belong to mylovelylittlelunchbox

HEALTH & SAFETY: Water Safety for Preschool Children During this stage your child is far more independent. They will dress themselves, feed themselves, clean their teeth and take themselves to the toilet. During this stage many parents have their hands full with new additions to the family. Very often this results in the older child being given more responsibility and independence. While children seem far more mature and capable of making more complex decisions they still need their parents or caregivers for supervision and direction to maintain a safe learning environment, particularly when water is concerned. During this stage the unsupervised child may be capable of • Filling the bath, laundry tub or play pool with water • Climbing the fence • Pulling objects up to the pool fence to help them open the gate • Opening the front door and wander into the neighbours

unfenced pool or fish pond

As a result parents need to continue their diligence with supervision and check and secure the home from potential water hazards. This is also a great time to set some ground rules with your child around water. Remember your child’s comprehension is improving and they will begin to learn their boundaries. Creating a routine in preparation for water play will also play an important role in water safety. For example teach your child that before playing in water they must get dressed into their swim wear and collect their towel, sunscreen and toys in preparation. In doing so you may actually be alerted to your child displaying signs that they want to play in the water. It’s important to supervise your children at all times. No child is drown-proof and preschool children are best kept at arm’s length even if you think they are safe in shallow water. Even children who are

BIG AUSSIE SWAP

Planet Ark is calling on Australians to join the War on Waste and take part in the Big Aussie Swap during National Recycling Week from 13th — 19th November. Savvy shoppers who take part in their local Big Aussie Swap will experience a unique dose of retail therapy. To take part participants simply exchange good-quality, but unwanted, items like clothes books, CDs, children’s toys, accessories and sporting equipment for tokens that are then used to ‘purchase’ pre-loved products that have been brought along by other swappers. Swaps extend the lives of useable items, are a great alternative to buying new items that people don’t need and promote community engagement and awareness about reducing waste.

very confident and competent with swimming skills can find themselves in dangerous situations. Once children have learnt to swim and are independently mobile in the water it is important that they are given an opportunity to explore and play in deep water. Parents must remain within arm’s reach closely supervising but allow children the freedom to do things for themselves so that they learn their limitations and boundaries. Doing things for themselves will help in teaching children a respect for the water. Article Source: Worldwideswimschool.com http://worldwideswimschool.com/water-safety-for-preschool-children/

. You can take part in community and local council swap

Or host your own swap party at work or at home!!! Planet Ark’s Big Aussie Swap ‘How-To Guide’ has helpful advice on running a successful Swap session and useful resources such as invitations, swap tokens and signage. To download the ‘How-To Guide’ or find an event near you go to http://recyclingweek.planetark.org/news/display/1344

KOOKABURRA NEWS Here we are in the last school term of the year 2017, and looking back on the extended learning that has occurred in the last month we once again realise how much our pre-schoolers fit into their days, which seem to fly by too fast. Numeracy has been high on the children’s interest agenda and facilitated with a variety of tasks, games and activities that have highlighted how much the children have progressed since the beginning of the year. Pre-literacy skills have also been extended upon with a variety of games, work sheets, sequencing tasks, literature and resources at the drawing/writing centre, where the children can help themselves to satisfy their window of interest. Dramatic play scenarios have been engaged with, via a “school” setting, complete with school uniforms, tables and resources organised to facilitate the play. Home corner play has also been popular both on the carpet area with restaurant type set ups and on the hard floor where play dough was used creatively for a variety of culinary delights. The ‘Ella’ program has been a highlight for our keen Spanish speaking cherubs and they have all progressed to level three, which focuses on number. Some of the children have even been observed in the playground playing hide & seek and counting in Spanish. Our “bucket-filling” concept is alive and well, and the star chart is slowly but surely accumulating many stickers. The children are often commenting on bucket filling or bucket dipping moments, which we feel is a positive way to describe how one feels or reacts to certain situations and it particularly reinforces kindness. Last week we got on the ‘band-wagon’ of “The Aussie Backyard Bird Count” week. Although we did not actually spend time counting the native birds we saw, we did use this conservation interest to extend upon our knowledge of Australian animals by focusing on the Kookaburra, Emu, Pelican, Cockatoo and Magpie. We talked and learned about their size, habitat and characteristics, and followed up this learning with a variety of activities and literacy experiences, including Indigenous concepts. We were entertained by a visitor of Indian descent who gave us a wonderful presentation called “Bollywood”. Through dance and storytelling, we learned very much about the Indian culture, and appreciation of difference, and others’ ways of being and doing.

How can we make our newsletter even better? What information would you like us to include?

MKenquiries@MimosaKids.com.au 9453 1162

Mimosa Kids P&ELC

Short simple activities to get some active minutes in the day.

Assign an activity to each letter of your child/ren’s or your name.

Each activity only needs to be quick, like do 3 pushups, plank or

hop in a circle. With your child complete each letter’s activity.

There has been much excitement around the children’s school orientations and there will be a list on the sign in desk with children’s names and a space for families to write where their child is going to school. This will be very helpful for play dates or simply knowing where children are moving on to. The children’s sign-in sheets will also be changing from dotted names that have been traced to names that need to be written next to a printed name on the class list for that day. Lastly, TRANSITION TO SCHOOL forms have been put in each child’s pocket. Could they please be returned as soon as possible, as educators need to begin collating them in readiness for passing them on to relevant schools. If you need another form please just ask one of the Kookaburra educators. Please look out for our end of year farewell disco invitations due to be posted in your child’s communication pockets this month. The disco will be held on Friday 8

th Dec, from 6pm. We

hope to see you all there! Have a lovely November, The Kookaburra Team Irene, Jacqui, Ashley, Eloise and Brigette

What’s your name?