Winter is here, in our Kindy garden, and we are all enjoying our work and play in the winter sunshine. We sing songs of King Winter, sleeping seeds, golden glowing mandarin trees, and Mother Earth and her Helpers. 

As well as getting started with our preparations for our Kindy Winter Festival, the Birdsong children have been busy making their own set of wings! Each child coloured their own wings and finger knitted their straps. Our wings turn us into dragons, butterflies, dragonflies, eagles, magpies, sugar gliders and all sorts of flying and gliding creatures.  Special thanks to the Kindy parents who kindly offered to help us with the overlocking of our wings.

Kat Barwick
Kindergarten Teacher

We don’t often have a chance to experience the simplicity of inner stillness in full consciousness. Winter is a time to look within and reflect on our lives and gather for the next year. To ensure your children experience this mood of soul here are a few possible suggestions to continue the mood into your home life:
 
• Create a quiet family ritual that you enact each year on the longest night.
 
• When you arrive for the Winter Festival in your car, ensure the radio is turned off for a quiet ride home.
 
• After the festival, go home and share a meal by candlelight. Immerse yourselves in a rich peace and quiet. Prepare the meal during the day so that you don’t have to turn on any electric lights.
 
• Have the whole family at home - no sleep-overs - for the longest night.
 
• Light candles instead of turning on the electric lights.
 
• Have a family campfire and go to bed early.
 
• Wake up early in time to watch the sun rise on the new year ahead.
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Below are the words of our new Winter Festival song, composed by Lisa Cameron and written by Liz Kee.

With the cooler winds blowing and Old Man Winter about, some children gravitate to more inside play where the heaters are keeping our cottage toasty warm. In the pictures above (clockwise from top), Mercury has built the biggest ‘dragon’ we have ever seen out of the blocks. Pippa is ‘telling us a story’ with our new story pieces, hand felted by Quinn’s and Neela’s Mum Karuna. Shearwater graduate and playgroup parent, Cobberty, shows us how to finger-knit the fastest way. Raffaella and Ayla are experiencing the colours carmine and ultramarine, which together make many shades of purple. Elara and Taloe are using the same colors and creating their own unique tones.

Ren has a handle on the nutcracker and is helping the younger children to get a macadamia nut out of its hard shell. Raffaella is collecting some flowers in the garden, but not too many, as the busy bees will need flowers to make honey, particularly over the winter months. Ren and Taloe are and enjoying a leisurely swing and keeping ‘warm’ wrapped up in the hammock (kindly donated by Susan).

Warmly,
Carina Halliday
Playgroup Coordinator

At Humming Bee Kindy we celebrated our beautiful Autumn Festival at the end of last term, sharing songs and dances with our families, and enjoying a feast together. Our Sunny Sunflowers reached for the Sun and grew as tall as our roof!

This term we have done lots of work in our garden, harvesting sunflower seeds to nibble and to share with the birds who visit our garden, and watched as our watermelons grew bigger and bigger, until we harvested them this week.

Bobber Blue Wrens have been nesting in our ever-growing garden and raised their family of babies, who even came to our lunch table to find crumbs to eat. We have just started planting vegetables in our veggie gardens, and are busy going around and around making rainbow pompoms to decorate our tie-dyed craft bags. Father Sky has sent many autumn rainbows to arch over our beautiful Kindy home.

After the expansion and activity of summer, the rain and cooler weather over the autumn equinox helped us to begin our inward journey, a process that continued this week at Preschool, with our wonderful autumn festival under the branches of Grandfather Fig. When we come together to celebrate with reverence and joy, the seed of renewal begins to grow and nourishes us all, as individuals and as a community.

We've been noticing the changes in the light during our autumn mornings, with mist in the air and the cattle egrets flying above, along with the fairy wrens, sparrows and Happy Harold Heron. The Tibouchina Sisters have been greeting us as they dance in the teasy breeze, as have our King Sunflowers, with their golden glow.

With the cooler weather, we enjoyed a walk to the creek to visit the gnomes, and the wee fairy folk. We were lucky enough to see many of Mother Nature's special gifts, including mushroom rings, orange fungi and Spindle Spider webs, and we collected some bark, sticks and twigs to make homes for our beeswax mushrooms.

Back at Preschool, the children painted liquid amber leaves to invite their parents to our autumn festival, taking as much care as Little Starry Amber, the autumn fairy.

The pumpkins have grown abundantly in our Preschool garden, perfect for our Rolly Polly Pumpkin game, followed by pumpkin and mushroom pizzas, which we all enjoyed with fresh basil from our garden.

 We look forward to meeting up again in the new term, ready for more adventures.

Susan Denney
Preschool Group Leader

Here at Playgroup, orderliness and rhythm plant the seeds for good habits, starting in these very early years. Here are Satori, Ezra, Pandora, Sahara and Ariel (at top), who have joined our new Wednesday group this year, practising cleaning the table after making ‘crunchy buns’ and doing a wonderful job.

We have some older children in our Tuesday group who are very familiar with our Playgroup routine, allowing others, who have started more recently, to imitate the more experienced children. Lily, Raffaella and Isiah are taking great care in their work or is it playing and being purposefully active…

We have been planting beans and pumpkins. Bodhi is absorbed in ‘tucking his little seed into its warm bed’ and Jasmine is watering her plant ever so carefully.

Rosewood Cottage has a veranda with a railing and this has been a great test for many children to practice their gross and fine motor skills; social/emotional skills such as taking turns; balancing; hand-eye coordination and being aware of each other. Despina, Pandora, Sonny and Sahara proudly show us their skills.

Hunter and Liberty both have baby siblings and in their self-directed play we can observe how they imitate - looking after the dolls and doing some busy work.

At the end of the Playgroup day, after so much busy work and learning, it is time to sit down and rest and books and stories are wonderful opportunity for a more inward and quiet experience.

Warmly,
Carina Halliday
Playgroup Coordinator

We are off to a wonderful start in Birdsong Kindy. The children are quickly realising why our Kindy is called Birdsong as they meet many new bird visitors daily! Merrily Magpie has been to visit, as have the Butcher Bird Brothers, Willy Wagtail, Chitter and Chatter the Rainbow Lorikeets, the little wren family and more. We are grateful for their visits and spend quiet time each day listening for their songs and surprises, thanking them by singing songs of our own. We acknowledge and celebrate Mother Nature’s gifts and the wonderful world around us.

The children have quickly settled in to our Kindy rhythm and are participating enthusiastically in our drawing, craft, painting and baking lessons. They are capable, persistent and ready for a challenge! Play is passionate and busy. It is a delight to observe new friendships being made, old ones changing and deepening, as well as a general love of fun permeating through the group, connecting our class as a whole. We are having a very jolly time, with lots of smiles and laughter, just right for the Kindy year!

Despite the ongoing heat, we have begun to notice changes around us as we transition into the autumn months. We are learning new autumn songs and looking forward to beginning our preparations for our Autumn Festival to be held at the end of term.

With love from Kat and all at Birdsong Kindy

All of the Preschool groups are settling in nicely with new and old friends, enjoying story and song,
laughter and fun, and our lush green environment. The Banksia Rose Preschool children went down to Crystal Creek to keep cool during the hot summer days of the first weeks back. They found no water, but there were many of Mother Nature’s treasures under her tall, shady trees and in the little nooks and crannies. Back at their room they splashed in the paddle pool and rested in the gentle breeze on the verandah.

The children were also excited to have a visit from Greg, our Golden Hat Gnome, who came to Preschool with his handy tool belt to take care of a few things which needed fixing. The children watched with wonder and provided Greg with a steady stream of sustenance - cups of tea, glasses of water and even a crunchy bun! 

Susan Denney
Preschool

A year at Preschool is a journey shared with each child, their family and educators. We have had an amazing year and, as the children have grown, so has the Preschool - into a flourishing, nurturing space where everyone has a part to play.

As the end of the year rushes towards us, we endeavour to create space for quiet reflection. It is important for the young child to maintain a steady rhythm, with plenty of rest, which will hold them in good stead over the holiday season.

We have some big changes in staffing underway for 2019, with the much respected and admired Danni Noad, Sandy Dobbins and Karen McKinnon all finishing with us at Preschool at the end of the year. It is too difficult to put into words what Danni, Sandy and Karen have added to our Preschool community in their time with us.  They are much loved and will be greatly missed. I am sure that the fortunate children and families who have gotten to know them will feel the same. We wish all three the very best for the future and the best of luck for their new endeavours.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to each and every one of the families and children that create our Little Shearwater community. For the children going on to Kindergarten, we will be giving you lots of waves over the Preschool fence when we see you next year! I wish each family an enjoyable holiday season.
Craig d'Arcy
Preschool Coordinator

Shearwater students proudly showed their year's work to families and friends during the School's annual Open Day at the end of November - a breathtaking display of colour, creativity, beauty and incredible energy.