Terry Aizen – Director Kornmehl

How lovely it was to see everyone again at the start of the Term. The weeks are already flying by. This week was very busy with both the Starfish and Dolphins going to Bush School on Tuesday and Thursday respectively. 

On Friday we all raised money for teenage cancer sufferers by supporting National Bandanna day.

We also began our Shabbat Project celebrations with a big Kornmehl challah bake with all our Kornmehl families on Friday morning. The children each baked two challot together with their Mum, Dad, Grandparent or special friend. The Pre-school smelt delicious with the aroma of fresh challah baking in the oven. Our sincere thanks to Jesse Meguideche from Jesse’s bakery, for very kindly supplying the challah dough for us. We are very grateful for his support.

We wish you all a peaceful, relaxed Shabbat Project weekend.

Children’s Week

Children’s Week is a national celebration of children’s rights, talents and citizenship and is always celebrated around Universal Children’s Day which is held on the 4^th Wednesday of October in Australia.

Children’s Week celebrates the right of children to enjoy childhood. It is also a time for children to demonstrate their talents, skills and abilities. Some of the main rights of children are:

A child’s right to be healthy; a child’s right to discover; a child’s right to be safe; a child’s right to speak and a child’s right to play.

This is a reminder for us to think about all the children in our care, and how lucky we are to be teaching them on a daily basis and how much we can influence their future. As educators we need to celebrate children and value them as capable, competent little people who deserve to have rights and a voice.

The Governor-Generals message:

“For all of us, children represent hope and the future, how we care for, respect and nurture our children that will determine our prosperity and happiness. It makes sense that we should actively encourage the views of children, listen to their ideas, and value their insights. The theme for this year’s Children’s Week has been nominated as Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that ‘Children’s views and opinions are respected. They have the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child and the right to be heard.’ So this year, as we continue the journey of rearing confident, happy and safe children we resolve to listen to our children, to take heed of what they have to say and their perspective on the world. This will be good for children; it will be good for all of us.”

Orientation visits for Year K

The first of four orientation visits began on Thursday afternoon. Half of our children excitedly walked up the hill to meet the Year K teachers for the first time. The children enjoyed the visit very much and coped well with this first orientation visit to Year K. Many thanks to the Primary School and the Year K teachers for making it such a lovely, clam experience.

National Recycling Week

We are very excited about national recycling week coming up in week 5 from  12-16 November. We hope that you will all help us collect a variety of recycled materials for the children to explore and investigate, to make and create. Examples of these are washed, coloured plastic lids, clean egg boxes, plastic milk bottles, plastic, washed yoghurt containers, paper towel rolls, polystyrene food trays, boxes of all shapes and sizes, buttons, tea bag tags and so on

We hope also that families are working collaboratively to reflect, think and collect what they would like to use to make their recycled Chanukiah together with their child at Pre-school during that week. We are excited to see all your wonderful creations.

Enhancing your child’s language – Part 1, by Belinda Fisher, Speech Pathologist

Parents often ask what they can do to enhance their child’s language. Here are a few ideas:

Descriptive language

Difficulties with descriptions can limit your child’s language to labelling and commenting.  Descriptions provide additional information and allow your child to express him or herself using more complex sentences. They also provide children with the opportunity to learn and use new words that describe such things as size, colour, shape, texture and feelings.

Activities at home that you can do to help your child’s descriptive language include the following:

• Look at the colour, size and shape of things when you look at pictures together or are driving or playing with toys. Say things like “Find me a green toy” or “Look at the cow, it’s a big cow”.
• Expose your child to various describing words as much as possible, talking about the size of things, their smell, shape, taste, colour and texture.
• Make a ‘feelie bag’ where you put different textured objects into a pillowcase and ask your child to put their hand in the bag. Then ask your child to describe what the object they are holding feels like. Make a list of different words they can use such as slimy, cold, smooth and rough.
• Describe objects to your child that they can see or touch. Then ask your child to describe things that cannot be seen or touched, such as feelings or things in a different room.
• Play guessing games and ask your child to describe an object or a person so you can guess what or who it is. This can be a family game where everyone has a turn.
• Play I spy where you use the first sound and descriptive language to guess items.

Concepts

It is also important to develop your child’s understanding of concepts – things like beside, after, many, next week, next Monday and before.

Some activities that you can do to help your child’s understanding of concepts include the following:

• Providing a model of concepts in conversation, for example, you can emphasise words that illustrate time in sentences such as: “We are going to Grandma’s house next week”.
• Ask your child to act out concepts during games or playtime. Things such as “Touch your nose after you stamp your feet” (time), “Put the block beside the teddy” (place), and “put some of the pencils in the pencil case” (quantity).