Book Week Celebrations were a lot of fun! We loved our Book Parade Days and all the colourful, fun dress ups children wore to celebrate. We also had a lovely time reading with our visitors who came in for Books and Brunch. Book Week is always a highlight of the Preschool Calendar each year!

Gratitude Project

Our Colour Monster Emotional Check has been a much-loved feature of our foyer over the last term. It is so lovely to hear different conversations throughout the day as students and families check in with how they are feeling each morning or afternoon. Thanks for all your support with this and for spending the time stopping at this check in with your child. 

We are working on setting up another Community Project in our Foyer to build on our learning around Resilience and well being – this project centres around Gratitude.

In our foyer, we are setting up our Gratitude Suitcase. You are invited to add a couple of items to our suitcase over the next term. There will also be some gratitude slips available in the foyer which we invite you to complete together with your child to display with the items in the suitcase. By the end of the term we hope our suitcase is packed with all the things that fill our hearts with happiness. 

We can all feel gratitude for the different people and things in our lives every day. Please take some time to add to our suitcase during the term to support your child in celebrating the positives that exist around us all. Items that you can bring in to add to suitcase include notes, drawings, photos and artefacts. Please add a name  so that we can return items to you when it is time to put our suitcase away ?.

When thinking about all the things you are grateful for, you may like to consider:

• Who has done something kind for me/us recently?
• What/who made me smile today/recently?
• What/who am I proud of?
• What do I love about my/our home/community?
• What are the small things (glimmers) that make me happy?

The students in the Koala's class have been thinking about what fills ther heart with happiness.

Why Gratitude?

Working on gratitude helps us to be thankful and appreciate what we have in our lives, rather than focusing on what we don’t have, or what we want. When we practise being grateful, we start to scan the world to look for positives. 

There are many benefits to practising gratitude regularly, these include: 

• You are less likely to get sick.
• You will have higher levels of energy.
• You will feel happier.
• You will have better quality sleep.
• You can have lower levels of anxiety/depression.
• You can be more enthusiastic, focused, disciplined and optimistic.

Parent Committee

We rescheduled our first Parent Committee meeting to this coming Tuesday the 2nd of September from 5.30pm to 6.30pm. At this stage we have three volunteers who have put up their hands to help with this - Thank you!!

If you are interested in getting involved it is not too late.  Please reach out to let us know if you would like to join ?

Lunch Orders

We have noticed that we have an increasing number of families ordering menu items for students from the canteen, that are from the School menu rather than ELC menu. As an Early Learning Centre we have an obligation to ensure that the foods we have available to serve to children regularly as menu items are healthy and nutritious. In planning our menu for afternoon tea we strive to include predominantly healthy choices and this was also our goal in setting up the ELC Menu at the canteen. 

You can read more about the ELC AND SACS NUTRITION, FOOD AND BEVERAGES, DIETARY REQUIREMENTS POLICY we work within using this link to the policy page for ELCs in Catholic Education.

https://cg.catholic.edu.au/parents/policies/

We would encourage you to support us in striving to encourage life long healthy eating habits in students by ordering from the ELC menu items at the canteen.