Happy Birthday to these children who have recently turned another year older! Emma, Holly, Kalyan, Ethan, Jack M, Viktor, Penny, Lou, Max and Emily.

A big welcome to Penny, Carys T, Carys M, Ollie and Jamie who are transitioning/have transitioned from the Infants and Toddlers Room, and to Kean and Jack M who are new to our centre.

Congratulations to Amber who married Chris on a beautiful sunny day in January and looked stunning! You will have noticed as well that she is pregnant, expecting a boy in May. Amber will be finishing at the end of April, and Mel will be covering her year of maternity leave.

We’ve been on a few trips since we came back in the New Year … to the Buskers Festival in Hagley Park, the Court Theatre and over to OLA school playground. Our 4 year olds love the opportunity of being able to go on trips, it’s a great treat and it really adds to the depth of our programme.

Over these last 8 weeks we’ve been settling in a group of new children, and getting back into the swing of things after the Summer holidays. It’s been neat hearing about everyone’s trips away and the fun things they have been up to in the glorious sunny weather. The children’s experiences definitely affect they ways in which they play – so many of our children have been enjoying ‘camping play’! The children have shown to us their interest in the outdoors recently – watching the caterpillars turn to chrysalises and then to butterflies, discovering bird nests, wanting to extend themselves on the outdoor equipment and so on. At a recent planning meeting, we decided that our new focus will involve “Discovering the Great Outdoors”. We’ve been planning ways to offer new challenges for children’s physical development, ideas for nature related crafts, trips to places we can explore, baking ideas using resources from our garden and much more!

If there is something your family can offer to this aspect of our programme, please let us know.

Thank you very much to Arie for bringing her bird’s nests to share with us, and wood for our carpentry area. Thanks to Cooper for bringing in vegetables from his garden, and to Quintin for bringing in fruit for making smoothies. Thank you to Neave for the bag of plums, and to Elena for the bag of apples. Thanks very much Juno for sharing the tomatoes grown in your garden. We were very lucky to receive a large pile of books from the Hoon Hay Children’s Library when it closed too.

And a quote to finish (because children really do say the cutest things). Julia- “Cool shorts, Flynn!” Flynn-“I know, but my Mummy is cooler!”