We ask our existing families in August, what their requirements are at the end of each year.
We don’t assume each family wants the same care or what their needs are each year. After submitting your Re-enrolment form by the 17th August, Monique will confirm places in a formal letter for the following year.
Updated bonds due by the 27th September, are required to secure these positions.
Once a confirmation letter has been received and bonds are updated you are committed to this position for the following year. No reducing days or withdrawing your child after this date (27/9), then normal notice period (as above) occurs. Please see confirmation letters for more detailed information.
You will receive confirmation mid-September 2022. Update of bonds are due by Tuesday 27th September 2022 (via iPay, added to your invoice) to secure your child’s days of attendance for 2023.
Reducing confirmed days for 2023 after Tuesday 27th September (eg: reducing days from 5 days to 2 days) will mean you to forfeit your bond for the days reduced.
Withdrawing your child’s enrolment for 2023 after Tuesday 27th September will forfeit your full bond.
Your child’s current enrolment pattern (from September 2022) must be ongoing throughout 2022 to maintain your confirmed 2023 enrolment. Any notice / withdrawal / reduction will void this 2023 confirmation.
***** Poohs Corner enrolments cease at the end of the calendar year eg: last day at Hunny Pots 23rd December 2022.
If you do require care for January 2023, please send an email with your requirements. We will confirm if we can do this in November.
COVID 19 / FLU SEASON
What a crazy time! We continue to thank you all for your assistance in keeping Hunny Pots ELC and our community a COVID19 safe place.
Please continue to wear a mask inside Hunny Pots ELC, use the hand sanitisers upon arrival of the centre, keeping 1.5m apart where possible.
We thank you for keeping unwell children at home. Our educators have been doing the same. We understand how difficult this can be, but we truly hope that throughout this time we can work in partnership and keep Hunny Pots ELC a safe place.
ABSENCES
It is greatly appreciated if families could call the centre (9629 9200) or email (info@hunnypots.com.au) if your child will be absent.
It assists with monitoring illness, make up days and staffing arrangements.
4 YEAR OLD EYE TESTING
NSW Health Steps eye testing for 4 year old’s will occur on Wednesday 3rd and Friday 5th August. Permission forms have been handed out and are due back by Friday 29th July 2022.
The Steps NSW Health nurse will commence eye testing at 9.30am – please be here by 10am at the latest.
PHOTOS
Professional photographers, GS Imaging group, will attend Hunny Pots ELC for two days – Tuesday 23/8 and Thursday 25/8.
On these two days, children will have an individual photo and class photo if families have ordered a package. All children will appear in the class photo if they arrive before 10am.
Please don’t feel pressured to buy a package – it is an option to all families.
Photo envelopes will be handed to families and must be returned by Thursday 18/8/22.
EXCURSION UPDATE
We have reached out to Caddies Creek Public School to request a Poohs Corner excursion. Due to COVID, they are not taking any external visitors at present. When Term 4 commences, we will reach out again to see the status on an excursion to the school.
Due to COVID/Flu season, we won’t be looking into further excursions for this time.
CURRENT IMMUNISATION STATEMENTS.
If you have immunised your child recently e.g.: 1yr immunisation, 18mth chicken pox immunisation, 4yr old immunisation, please provide us with the updated record of this immunisation.
We must have a copy of your child’s up to date immunisation status on the premises.
No immunisation = no enrolment. This is a government regulation.
WITHDRAWAL OF YOUR CHILD/REDUCING DAYS
Parents must give at least three weeks written notice to the Director before withdrawing their child from Hunny Pots. If the child does not attend the centre during this period, fees are still payable (please see the below section: A child who has not yet received care or who has ceased receiving care) If the child is withdrawn without notice, three weeks full fees must be paid regardless.
Parents may reduce their child’s days of attendance by giving three weeks’ notice to the Director.
No notice period accepted in December and January for withdrawing or reducing days.
A child who has not yet received care or who has ceased receiving care
Below is from the Child Care Handbook Australian Government Department of Education and Training:
Child Care Subsidy will not be paid for absences where a provider charges a family to reserve a place for a child who has not yet physically started care.
If a child is booked in to start at a service on a particular date, and does not start on that day, no Child Care Subsidy will be paid until the child physically attends a session of care.
Similarly, a child care service is taken to have permanently ceased providing care for a child on the day the child last physically attends a session of care. This means that Child Care Subsidy will not be paid for absences submitted after a child last physically attends a session of care.
If a family has confirmed their child’s last day at a service, but that child does not attend their last booked sessions of care, no Child Care Subsidy will be paid for any days after the child’s last physical attendance at the service.
If a provider continues to charge fees for sessions on days after a child has left the service because the family did not give the agreed period of notice, Child Care Subsidy will not be payable for these sessions of care. If absences are reported in the above circumstances and Child Care Subsidy is incorrectly paid, these amounts will be recovered from the service.
You must attend the last day of care to receive child care subsidy on your last day.
REFLECTION OF OUR RECONCILIATION ACTION PLAN JOURNEY
Reflecting on our RAP Journey, we are really happy with how far we have come working towards and taking steps to achieve our goals. At the beginning of our journey, we felt that as a centre we required attendance of some webinars to enhance our understanding of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander perspectives and how we can embed and sprinkle these perspectives into our program. With Hunny Pots Early learning Centre providing our educators with adequate training, we feel that our journey has been successful. We have purchased resources to embed Aboriginal perspectives into children’s learning and the educators have reflected on their own individual cultural competence through their own journey with our Reconciliation action plan.
We have a Bush Tucker Garden with Ginger, Pig face and other bush tucker native plants, which the children have committed to look after along with their educators.
We have worked on our community collaboration by engaging with our local Cultural Centre Murru Mittigar by respectfully requesting for a community Elder to give us approval to teach the Dharug language. Miss Jo spoke to Uncle Greg and received permission to teach the Dharug language in children’s learning. We have introduced some key words such as Woromi, Yanu and numbers 1-5 in Dharug language.
Our RAP journey has been over seen by our Elder Aunty Mary and her daughter Vickilee, who have given us support and positive feedback on how we have achieved the goals we set in our RAP.
Miss Jo also liaised with Aboriginal land council, Antar education to include United Nations Rights of indigenous people’s poster. We will Unwrap and work on some of the articles relating to our centre.
We are celebrating completing our first cycle of our Rap journey in July this year.
Quality area 1: Focuses on ensuring that the educational program and practice of educators are child-centered, stimulating and maximising opportunities for enhancing and extending each child’s learning and development. It recognizes that a quality program that builds on children’s knowledge, strengths, ideas, culture, abilities and interests is likely to have long term benefits for children and for the broader community.
The national quality standard is in linked Early Years Framework.
Educational Program:
A quality educational program views children as capable and competent learners who have agency and learn best through a play- based program. The learning framework also acknowledges the importance of intentionally including opportunities for children to progress towards the learning outcomes. Play provides a context for learning through which children organize and make sense of their social worlds as they engage actively with people, objects and representations.
Play based learning;
It provides opportunities for children to learn as they discover, create, improvise, test theories and imagine.
Enables expressions of personality and uniqueness
Promotes positive learning dispositions, such as curiosity and creativity
Enables children to make connections between prior experiences and new learning
Assists children to develop relationships and concepts
Supports a sense of wellbeing and promotes a value of diversity
Standards elements and practice:
Quality area one has three standards that focus on;
1.Educational program
2.Educational practice
3.Assessment and planning
Educator Practices:
- Intentional teaching in Early childhood settings is a recognized approach to facilitate each child’s learning and development.
- Responsive teaching values, scaffolds and extends each child’s strengths, skills, knowledge, interests and ideas, and child directed learning promotes children’s agency.
- Critical reflection informs the assessment and planning cycle and drives improvement in program, and practice, resulting in continuous enhancements to children’s learning
Families who are informed about the program and their child’s progress are better equipped to engage with the service and collaboratively make decisions about their child’s learning and strength.
How this is seen at Hunny Pots Early Learning Centre:
At Hunny pots Early Learning Centre, the role of the educational leader is to work with educators to provide curriculum direction and to ensure children achieve the outcomes of the approved learning framework.
Observation of all the children enrolled at the service is documented and kept for future reference and reflection through use of portfolios. Portfolios are available for families to view. Portfolios consists of observations.
Our curriculum is based on children’s interests, educators extending on children’s interests, spontaneous experiences and family input.
We set individual goals for the children based on observations and collaborating with families. Goals are also set from yearly and half yearly reports.
We use intentional teaching to build upon children’s interest by co constructing with children and educators. We also use intentional teaching through role modelling and scaffolding by further enhancing their learning.
Our curriculum planner is a working document in each room, Eeyore’s combine indoor /outdoor in one book.
Tigger’s and Pooh’s share the outdoor curriculum planner.
Both Tigger’s and Pooh’s have their own room indoor planners which all staff contribute, you are welcome to view our program planners which are kept in the playrooms.
Educators listen to children’s voices and document this in the planners, reflections of the day and in the children’s observations.
Our planning and documentation demonstrate children’s ongoing learning
We critically reflect and evaluate our program, how it is documented and how our evaluations are used to make informed curriculum decisions to improve outcomes for children. Also reflecting through NQF questions, Room reflection questions, Quality improvement plan and mentoring from the educational leaders and management.
What is a Quality Improvement Plan (QIP)?
The education and care services National Regulations require an approve provider of an education and care service to ensure that a QIP is prepared by the service and reviewed annually. The aim of a QIP is to help services to self-assess their performance against the National Quality Standards. There are 7 quality areas that centres conduct a self-assessment on.
At Hunny Pots Early Learning Centre our team work collaboratively together to create our QIP. We conduct a self-assessment of our practices to find out what our key practices are (meeting the standards) and any goals we are working on. The QIP allows us to always have that continuous improvement. The educators are always reflecting on the standards to see how we are meeting and exceeding the standards.
We currently set a goal at the start of the year which we have been working on based on our educational program and practices to further exceed in our observation documentation. The goal we set was for educators to link our observations to previous observations and to further extend on the children’s learning. Our team have been reflecting on our educational program and practices. From this reflection we strongly we believe that we are providing the children with individual program working on their goals and interests, extending their learning, listening to children’s voices providing a stimulating environment for the children to learn through their play. We are always striving to make improvements to go above and beyond which is why we have set this goal. You can view the gaol and our steps and progress notes in our evidence folder which is situated in the foyer. Also in this evidence folder are all our key practices for the quality areas. Take the time to have a look.
As a centre we are always wanting feedback from our families to add to our QIP. If you any feedback regarding our key practices or any goals you would like us to work on, please feel free to email or talk to one of the educators or write in our evidence folder. Your feedback is appreciated.
UPCOMING EVENTS
NSW Health Steps eye testing for 4 year olds. Wednesday 3rd and Friday 5th August
Aboriginal Children’s day –Thursday 4th August
Commonwealth Games fun week 1st-8th August; fun events to support Commonwealth countries in sports and Athletics!
Jeans for Genes Day – wear jeans on Friday 5th August (Jeans for Genes day is Saturday 6th August)
Red Nose Day – Wear RED on Friday 12th August (Red Nose Day is Saturday 13th August)
National Science Week – 13th-21st August
Book week – 21st– 27th August – bring in your favourite book each day this week. Dress up as your favourite book character each day of attendance this week.
Photo day/s – Tuesday 23rd and Thursday 25th August.
We will keep in touch regarding Father’s Day.
Police visit – Tuesday 6th September
Educator’s Day – Wednesday 7th September
SAVE THE DATE
Poohs Corner Graduation – Friday 16th December 6pm-8pm
Lollipops Playland Castle Hill
More details closer to the date.
ENROLMENTS FOR EARLY LEARNING CENTRE – 2023
We will be asking what your requirements are for 2023 in August this year.
All families must complete the re enrolment forms – no attendances ‘roll over’. see above for information on re enrolments.
Centre Closure over the Christmas break – We will be operating up to and including Friday 23rd December 2022 and reopening on Monday 9th January 2023. No fees are charged for this period.