Warm Clothes

As winter seems to have struck this week could all parents please make sure they send their child's ELC rugby top each day . It has been quite cold in the outside play area and we do take the children out each day .Even if your child chooses not to put it on in the morning we will ensure that they put it on for outside play. There is also a wet weather jacket available at the Uniform Shop

Thankyou

Edgerley Room

Dear Edgerley Parents,

We have enjoyed another packed week, full of investigations into familiar machines. Alex shared his corn popping machine with us and we enjoyed it so much that Mrs Cooper brought her clear panned lid to school so that we could repeat the experience and see how the kernels heat, spin and pop. Mrs Bishop set us a challenge to work out what two machines we could use to make jelly (a kettle and a fridge of course!) and then we discussed how kettles and fridges must have different machine parts inside them to do different jobs.

Led by Tom, Daisy and Fergus we used a sewing machine to create an ocean for our light table. We practiced a tricky fine motor skill to create hundreds of fish with pipe cleaners for the ocean. We used another machine to attach them, can you guess what it was? We will continue with this project next week and share the book The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister to inspire us to add other parts to our fish.

We are starting to create a Reception gallery so please feel free to send in or e-mail any photos of your child (or children) in their new school uniform

Kind Regards

Mel, Pip, Amelia and Coney

eduKART visit

Dear Mead, Cooper and Chapple Room Parents and Friends,
We visited the Yr 8 eduKART workshop on Tuesday as part of our unit, Mighty Machines. It was a wonderful hands on, exciting learning experience for the all the children. Paul and Anthony spoke to the children about the go-karts, their mechanical components and let us touch, look and explore their workshop. It was a quick, but valuable excursion for the children. Thank you to all the parents who joined us on the day!

"They look like little racing cars.The numbers tell the boys which place to park their cars." Oscar

"The peddles are for stop and go." Stella

"We saw the wheels go round when the man turned the key." Abhi

“Making a go-kart” said Rocco, “why de battery at de back?”

“A helmet” said Cooper.

“Stop hurting your head” added Jacob.

‘We learnded to use the brakes and steering wheels. You put your foot on the brake. If you’re going fast on the slippery roads you might crash.’ Ryan

‘We seed a strange car that had a seat at the front.’ Grace

‘Anthony said if it goes on slippery roads it will go around and around and be dangerous.’ Owen

 Thank you to all the parents who joined us on the day!

Chapple , Cooper and Mead Staff

Langley Room

The children have been eagerly investigating our unit of inquiry ‘Mighty Machines’ this week. We have been looking at cogs and how they move and work,

“It’s a wheel, it has a engine. It is a magnet. There’s batteries in it, just one. It’s a machine” Hugo Sen explained,

“It goes round and round” said Joshua,

“A clock” observed Hugo Sanders.

Hugo was right! The cogs turned around just like the inside of a clock. To investigate this further we looked at the inside of Miss Kerry’s watch, we examined photos of cogs inside clocks and we even pulled apart a real clock to have a look inside!

We’ve also been creating our own machines using box construction. We’ve had trucks, tractors, bikes, cars and aeroplanes being created with much imagination. On top of all of this, we have begun to explore real machines and what they are used for. On Friday, we explored the coffee machine and shared baby cinos!

We are on the hunt for more clocks that we can pull apart as well as more recycled boxes and containers for construction. All donations would be much appreciated.

Best wishes,

Jess, Kerry, Pippa and Ange

Centre Quality Improvement Plan

Our self review process and the resulting improvement plan has now been completed and sent to the new regulatory body for all Early Childhood facilities : Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority.
We will undergo a review  by them in a few weeks and will keep you informed about the process.

Jeanine

Excursion to EduKart

Just a reminder that if your child is going on this excursion next Tuesday to return your permission slip. All parents who are going as volunteers must complete a Stat Dec with Mrs Dry before going .

Thankyou

Spare Clothes

We are missing quite a few of our spare pants and underpants. If anyone has some at home that they could donate we would be grateful

Thankyou

" Pringle Cannisters"

If any one has empty "Pringle" cannisters (or similar) could you please save them for us for the children to make shakers to use in their music sessions

Thankyou

Thankyou

We would like to thank the Babyzka family for the donation of a wonderful selection of tools for children to deconstruct simple machines with. The allen keys were a huge hit. With this many tools at our disposal the teachers will have to start watching the machines in our classroom not meant for deconstruction!!!

Thankyou again

From the Edgerley Children

Turning COGS

The Mead room have a small group of children very interested in COGS. We would love to borrow a Spiralgraph drawing toy if anyone has one.  We are also keen to find a clock where the mechanics can be seen so the children can watch the cogs interlocking and turning. If you are able to help us please speak to Susan, Emma or Cristina in the Mead Room.



Thankyou

Edgerley Room

Dear Edgerley Parents,

As we have begun to more deeply explore machines in our lives in the past two weeks we have been using real machines for a purpose. We have used a blender to make vegetable soup after a lot of interest in veggies in our home corner play. We experimented with a bread maker after cooking bread by hand to compare the two. We also began to sew some reflective strips for our dancing place with big fat needles and then created the same strips using a real sewing machine! That was exciting!

Below are some of our thoughts about making soup with a blender

We made soup. The machine went round and round. Daisy

The machine chops the vegetables to pieces. Apollon

When the machine went on it did so much blending that I couldn’t even see the chopper. Joshua

The soup tasted good. The machine went fast. Fergus

It went so fast the vegies got cutted up. Luke

This week we also invited in another grandma to help us cook delicious Polish Pierogi. Jacob's Babcia helped us knead lovely soft dough, cut it into circles and fill it with spinach, potato or strawberries then we all used a pierogi cutter (or a crocodile, as the children labelled it)to crimp the pierogi closed. In the afternoon the children created an outdoor pierogi restaurant (much like our gnocchi restaurant) and Miss Kasauskas served them steaming yummy bowl fulls. Thankyou Babcia for visiting us.

Kind Regards

Edgerley Team

Chapple Room

Dear Chapple Room Parents and Friends,

We have had a resident DJ in the Chapple Room lately- DJ Owen. He has selected some great music for us all to dance to. The most popular songs have been Peter Combe’s ‘Mr Clickety Cane’ and ‘Juicey, juicey green grass’. Some children furthered the experience by making instruments to play along to each song with. A day doesn’t go by when Owen is asked to be DJ. All the children are enjoying learning the words and movements and having a dance at the daily disco!

Chapple Room Team

Cooper Room

The Cooper children have used familiar machines for cooking this week. Early in the week we made toast and practised spreading skills with butter and vegemite.

“It smells nice” said Archie.

“Hot” said Priyanka.

“My mum does this” Alyssa told us.

“It’s still toasting!” said Alec while we waited. “That’s a very long time.”

“It got holes in the top of the toaster and then it goes down. When it goes down it cooks the toast and then it goes up again” described Toby.

On Thursday we used a kettle to boil water for our playdough. We talked about being safe in the kitchen and watched the water bubble and the steam come out. In our machine investigations the children have also been thinking about how we could do things without the machines. You might like to try boiling water the old fashioned way in a saucepan this weekend!

Kind regards,

Ali, Rachel and Renee

Mead Room

As part of our exploration into machines, the children went on a machine walk this week to see what machines we could find. As luck would have it, we ventured to the site where the new school Health Centre is being built and struck gold!
There's a red cement truck. It's rolling the cement and water - Luc
Look, a highscraper! It lifts the man up in the air to fix the houses - William
You know cement has water. That mixer has water that sprays out - Raphael
Look at that. It's orange. Wait a minute, it's rolling up the hill! - Leonardo
It's a tonka truck. It pulls the trucks off the mud - Oscar
There's a blue crane. It lifts up people and it's driving backwards - Sebastian
That's a digger. Hey, it's moving. He's dumping rubbish. He's trying to break the dirt - Marcus
Best wishes

Emma, Susan, Cristina and Janine

Langley Room

The children have been eagerly identifying and sorting colours this week as they match the coloured blocks to matching coloured card. This experience has led to the children engaging in some rich social discussions as they negotiate which colours go where;

“Same, blue” commented James as he matched the blue blocks,

“Where’s all the colours?” questioned Harrison, “I got dis one, orange and yellow” he continued.

“I got hong, its red” said Dougal as he used his knowledge of Chinese,

“Where’s the lan?” asked Miss Kerry as Dougal searched through the basket to find the blue blocks,

“Blue matches here” Angus suggested to Dougal as together they continued to sort the blocks.

Best wishes,

Jess, Kerry, Pippa and Amy

We would like to say farewell to Miss Amy who is off to start her Teaching career and thank her for her time here.  

Princess'Tea Party

The start of this week was centred around the children preparing excitedly for our Annual Mothers Day event which included making their gifts , drawing their Mother's portrait , practicing their songs and organising the table flowers.
The Tea Party on Thursday morning was a wonderful  time for the children to share with their mothers and we hope you enjoyed it as much as the children enjoyed preparing for it .
I would like to thank all the ELC staff for their hard work and team effort to organise this wonderful occasion . Special thanks to Susan Lock and Emma Mckenzie who took responsibility for this event and to Rob who started work at 5.am to bake the scones!
Due to a technical hitch we were unable to show you the video clip about the orphanage that we were raising funds for . If you would like to view it you can find it at  www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhsQMgDwUswThank you to all the mothers who generously donated towards our charity 'Loreto Vietnam Australia Program' at the Mothers  Day Morning Tea on Thursday. Our current amount raised is  $458.65, which is wonderful! There were some mothers who said they didn't have change or a wallet on the day who said they wanted to donate. Also, any mothers who were unable to attend the morning tea may like to donate also. The 'pink pig' for collections  will be eagerly sitting at reception on Mrs Porter's desk for another two weeks. Please help us change the lives of Vietnamese orphans and donate generously.

Jeanine

Princesses Tea Party

The children are very excited about our Mothers Day morning tea next Thursday morning at 10.00am and are busy preparing surprises !
We hope all our Mothers can join us for this special event (even if it is not your child's day) . If you have not sent your RSVP yet could you please let Mrs Porter (at the front desk) know asap so that we can organise seating and catering,

Thankyou
ELC Team

Winter Uniforms

As the weather has been so changeable please make sure your child has an ELC rugby top for colder days. The children still need to wear the ELC Polo shirt underneath so that they can remove layers and still be in uniform .With the introduction of the new striped shirt we have decided to change to only the colours of moroon or grey for pants/skirts/shorts .(under shirts need to be white only) As you replace your child's ELC clothes please purchase them in these colours only . Moroon pants/shorts are available at the uniform shop but may be purchased elsewhere also. A fleecy lined waterproof jacket for cold days is also available at the uniform shop.
We are happy to phase this in across the remainder of this year.

Jeanine

Edgerley Room

Dear Parents of Edgerley Room,

You may have noticed us deconstructing lots of home appliances this week. We have finally begun to sort them in to components and you will see the different parts we discovered and grouped on the wall behind our construction table. We would love to add more so please keep those appliances coming in. We have also begun to build new machines with our spare parts and early this week created our very own moth catcher!

We have also continued to build our dancing space and hung some disco balls to shimmer in the sun. We were very inspired by a particular photo of a male dancer on the wall and all insisted in dancing with our shirts off just like him!! We have also enjoyed creating our own music with musical instruments. Next week we will look at different types of machines that can play music, a CD player , a record player (when Mrs Bishop finds the amplifiers!) and we are hoping to hear some music on an i-pod.

Have a great weekend

Mel, Pip, Coney and Amelia

Chapple Room

Dear Parents and Friends,

This week in outside play, the Chapple children have been exploring the large blocks and looking at different constructions they are able to build. One of the more popular structures was a house that was fitted out with curtains and rugs for the floor.

Jack was careful to think about the size of the structure before he commenced and was sure to remind his peers that they needed to be careful! Particularly in regards to the floor,
 Jack was sure to use the blocks that were solid so as to make the blocks with holes in them available for the windows and walls.

We found that the house we built together as a team inspired lots of different ideas for play and discussions on how it could have been different!



Kind Regards
Chapple room team

Cooper Room

On Thursday the Cooper children were very excited to have a demonstration of a popcorn machine which Miss Renee had brought in. Miss Renee tipped a small amount of popcorn in and the children eagerly waited while it warmed up. All of a sudden popcorn popped out of the machine!
"I can hear it!" exclaimed Lara.
"It's popping out" said Asher.
"The machine - look! Popping!" said Rayan excitedly.
"I can't believe it!" said Toby.
We had a great discussion about how the machine worked, heated up and changed the popcorn and of course everyone had a taste of the delicious fresh popcorn.
Kind regards,
Ali, Rachel and Renee

Mead Room

Dear Mead Parents,
We have had a selection of tools and appliances in the classroom to engage the children's interest in machines this week. As a group we had a discussion about 'What is a machine?' We got some wonderful responses.
A machine is when you drill things and they go zzzzz, zzzzzz - Oscar
Something you build with - Luc
It's like a car, it goes fast. It can take you home - Andre
A machine digs up dirt and puts it in a dump truck. It uses the digger at the front - Jack
Daddy does fixing and screwing with machine things in my bedroom - Gwen
It's a bathroom thing that has a round about thing and the water makes it go round and round - Izabella
It's a crane that carries big blocks with the big hook - James Snook
You can cut things down with machines. It goes round and round and it cuts like this (showing a sawing action). Look it's this one (pointing to the chainsaw image).
Oh, I know. We've got a machine at home. It makes coffee for Dad - Molly
Best wishes,
Emma, Susan, Cristina and Janine

Langley Room

While outside in the big yard this week, we discovered the fallen autumn leaves under the tree. With much excitement, we collected the leaves from the ground and took them back to the classroom to explore them further. There was great interest in the different colours of the leaves and why they had fallen off the tree. As we illustrated the leaves, we discussed our thoughts;

“Why do the leaves fall off the tree?” asked the Teacher,

“So we can pick them up” replied Tom,

“Cos the wind blows down” suggested Hugo Sanders,

“Round and round and round and round and round” added Joshua circling his arms around like leaves falling off a tree.

“I draw one, leaves, red” commented Dougal,

“Leaves, red, more red, more orange” said Ammar.

Thank you to Alec who brought in some photographs of the machines working in the yard next door to him. If anyone has any other photos or real machines to come and share with us, we would love to see them.

Best wishes,

Jess, Kerry, Pippa and Amy