Green Leaves Bowden

This week our Nursery 1 & 2 children have taken advantage of the sunshine and enjoyed some outdoor play; running around, sweeping the paths, climbing through their tunnel and engaging in some drawing too! ☀️🌱

This week our children and educators celebrated Teddy Bear Picnic day! Children had their favourite teddy bears from home join them for a day at Green Leaves! The children shared stories and a lovely picnic outside. 🐻

Recently we celebrated our amazing Director Katie who is expecting a little girl any day now! We wish her all the best for her newest addition to her family as she finishes up with us this week for maternity leave. 🩷

We welcomed our Grand Friends on this wet and windy Thursday! Luckily we had plenty of great activities to enjoy inside, such as puzzles, painting and our book corner.

We are enjoying seeing the connections grow, as our children have begun to recognise our Grand Friends each time they come and visit. Bringing these different generations together fosters something unique for our community.

Our Toddlers have been getting creative with natural resources from our Upcycle Station!

They used a mixture of resources to explore textures, patterns, and designs. Some of these included pine cones, acorns, sticks, and corks.

If you received Family Tax Benefit (FTB) or Child Care Subsidy (CCS) in the 2022-23 financial year, please don't forget to confirm your family income by 30 June 2024.

If you don't:
- You may need to repay all the FTB or CCS you got that year.
- You'll miss out on any top ups or arrears of FTB or CCS you were eligible for.
- Your CCS will stop and you will have to pay full fees for child care you use.

You will also need to estimate your 2024-25 family income if you receive either FTB or CCS. If you don't provide Centrelink with an estimate by 14 June 2024, Centrelink will calculate these for you. But you should still check to make sure your estimate is correct and update as necessary.

If you have any questions you can visit https://brnw.ch/21wKHsq or https://brnw.ch/21wKHss.
Alternatively, you can speak with your Centre Director.

Natsumi was awarded our family recognition award during our staff meeting for her amazing relationships, her bright personality and her personal drive to be an incredible educator.

Our families are provided with the opportunity to nominate educators that are showcasing the values that our Green Leaves educators embed in their practise. It is wonderful to be able to provide our educators with some recognition for their hard work.

Our Junior Kinder explored World Environment Day on Wednesday the 5th of June. World Environment Day is the United Nations day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment.

Our children were offered opportunities to discuss the environment while engaging in different creative experiences, such as using different textures to create their own trees. Our children also explored the importance of placing our rubbish in the bin through a sensory ocean bin that included rubbish.

This was a great way for the children to further their learning about littering and pollution in our environment.

We are continuing to celebrate our anniversaries as our amazing Lucy celebrates her 1 year with us!

Lucy’s positive attitude is always a welcome ray of sunshine in the middle of winter. Her relationships with the children are always lovely to see, as she supports multiple rooms across the service. Thank you for being a flexible and caring educator!

During our art classes the tiny tots painted some natural and recycled materials. When they dipped their paint brushes and fingers into the paints they engaged with the unique textures of their canvasses. The roughness of the recycled cardboard and the smoothness of an acorn shell added an extra dimension to their art work, making the process even more exciting. This allowed the children to connect with nature, learn about sustainability and create these beautiful art pieces.

We didn't let the wet weather bother us this week! We popped on our wet weather suits and splashed around outside, enjoying spending time with our friends. We still rode bikes, explored the mud kitchen, and used our trucks.

No spirits dampened here!

As we explore Reconciliation Week, it is a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia. Our Kinder children have been singing Nina Marni and discussed who the first people were in Australia. We also talked about how we can take care of the Kaurna land and made our poster about it.

While the weather might be starting to cool down in June, we still have lots of fun activities to do! Check out our monthly calendar of events for Bowden this month!

We are looking forward to starting our new Winter Menu next week!

Chef Cameron has planned an incredible menu that includes lamb and lentil pie, mediterranean crumbed fish, and tandoori chicken. We can't wait!

Happy one year anniversary to Dilshi!

During her time with Green Leaves, Dilshi has developed warm relationships with everyone, while always being a calm and nurturing presence for our Nursery children.

In the Toddler room, our children have been exploring the Aboriginal culture through looking at art. Our Toddlers created these Aboriginal inspired art pieces using charcoal to draw on their canvases and then using their fingers to spread it, exploring new textures. It has been lovely watching all the children enjoy extending their knowledge of the Aboriginal culture through art.

Tiny Tots had a fantastic excursion to the local library today! They engaged in lots of different experiences, such as drawing, riding mini bee bikes, reading books, and exploring some new and exciting resources.

To say thank you to the library for hosting us, we provided them with some homemade apricot and coconut biscuits from Chef Cameron.

Every child deserves to grow and learn in an environment that celebrates diversity and individuality. Educators play a vital role in fostering positive attitudes and values among children by embracing and teaching respect for all types of families, including those with LGBTQIA+ parents or guardians.

To support our team in their understanding, we hosted a morning tea alongside reflection questions and resources to build on their understanding. Through doing this, we hope that all of our families feel valued, respected, and supported.

Our children enjoyed their visit from the Port Adelaide Community Library bus this Friday! Our children were able to choose some books to borrow and read with their educators over the next month, before doing it all over again next time!

There are many benefits of reading to children, with a few of them including helping them build language skills, learn about the world, and develop empathy and emotional awareness.

Our Pre-Kinder children have been starting each day singing the Ninna Marni song to acknowledge that we are learning and playing on the Kaurna land. They follow on from the cultural song by singing 'cuddly koala'. allowing children to familiarise themselves with native Australian Animals. It's been lovely watching all the children enjoy extending their knowledge of the Aboriginal culture through song and dance!

Our wonderful Sherahia was awarded our Family Recognition award for her kind nature, beautiful interactions with children and families, and the connections that she has built across the service.

Sherahia consistently goes above and beyond her role, and it shows through her strong connections and relationships. We are lucky to have her at Green Leaves Bowden!

At Green Leaves Bowden, we acknowledge and honour the contributions of our mothers for their unending love and unwavering effort in supporting their children in their everyday lives.

Today, we are so delighted to celebrate this year’s Mother’s Day in our service with our wonderful moms. We shared some afternoon teas, checked on one another, and had a small party with the children. Indeed, it was a great afternoon!

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

On Monday, the kindergarten children went on an excursion! They got the chance to explore our community by going to the train station near our service and walking down to see the park nearby. The children had fun checking the trains that were passing through, and it sparked our discussion about the places that they could stop. We then continued our journey, and the children had fun collecting things that could be found in nature. They picked up some twigs, rocks, leaves, and the like. When we got back from our service, the children used the things we collected from an excursion to make some bracelets! Indeed, it was another day of learning and exploring our community!

Chef Cameron is excited to get stuck into our Inside Out Program! This program marks an exciting new chapter in our culinary journey at Green Leaves Early Learning.

Cameron received a resource box that contains a variety of tools and materials that will support in developing his professional knowledge to implement the program effectively for our young people. This will offer the opportunity to enrich children’s culinary experiences and create an environment where children can explore, learn, and grow.

With Cameron’s commitment and dedication, we can’t wait to see it come together!

This week our Junior Kindy and Kindy children were very lucky to have Glenn the Junk Man visit our service! He had set up his myriad of recycled loose parts, musical junk instruments, mud, rocks, stick and branches. The children enjoyed this experience a lot, they built houses using large branches, old ropes, cloths and tarps, they crushed the rock and made mud sausages and pies! They also created their waterfall pathways at the water section. This wonderful experience provides the children a nature rich environment for their open-ended play!

We went and visited the local IGA and did some shopping for our service, choosing some healthy fruits and vegetables to bring back to the service!

Many of our children also wanted to bring their binoculars to make sure that they didn’t miss out on seeing anything.

Our educators have been extending on this learning through creating shopping lists and using the ingredients in their culinary classes.

This week we wanted to recognise Theodora, who goes above and beyond to ensure that the children, families and staff are supported.

Her selfless and easy-going energy is incredible to have around every day! We are very lucky to have Theodora as part of our team.

This week our Toddler children had the opportunity to get their hands dirty and help plant some rosemary in acknowledgment and remembrance of those who served for our country to align with ANZAC Day. They will now transform this garden into a special remembrance garden and hope to use the rosemary in future cooking experiences.🌱

The children also had fun making their own Anzac Biscuits for afternoon tea and they were delicious!

We are looking forward to May as we have many exciting things planned!

We can't wait for the Junk Yard Man to visit our service and talk about different ways we can reuse items in our play!

Exploring Animals in Nursery 1!
Our children have been very interested in animals, collecting the animal hand puppets often so educators collected animals to make a small world experience for the children but they were too quick and got straight into the box of animals! The children picked up various animals, including cows, elephants, and even some creepy crawly spiders. 🐮🐘🕷