It has been wonderful to observe the sights and sounds of happy chatter and smiling faces filling the Early Learning Centre (ELC) this week as the children returned from the Easter break. The children are certainly feeling relaxed and refreshed, and have returned with many stories to share of their exciting adventures.

Our focus as educators for this first week of term has been on supporting the children to re-connect. This involves re-connecting with the educational program and current interests and inquiries. It also involves re-connecting with peers and educators to re-establish these connections and relationships after the break. The children also need to re-familiarise themselves with classroom routines and expectations as they adjust to being back in this group learning environment.

St Catherine’s ELC children have enjoyed re-connecting with the educational program, peers and educators after the Easter break.

We have an exciting term of learning planned for the children. There are many interesting ongoing inquiries happening in each classroom and many more will evolve as the children’s natural wonderings lead to further discussion and learning. This term our full complement of specialist classes will commence with the addition of French for the 4-Year-Old classes and Library and PMP (Perceptual Motor Program) for the 3-Year-Old classes. We also look forward to connecting with our ELC families as the children host various Mother’s Day celebrations and we welcome guests for our Grandparents and Special Visitors Day events. It is sure to be a wonderful term ahead.

Natural Materials

Our early learning programs are inspired by a nature-based approach. We use a range of natural materials for various purposes within both the indoor and outdoor educational programs. We are always looking for additional natural materials such as sticks, branches, pine cones, seed pods, shells, rocks etc. If you happen to collect any of these items on your visits to local parks, gardens, farms or the beach, we would welcome contributions of any of these items to add to our collection.

Ms Sarah Bethune, Head of Early Learning Centre