We had such a great turn up at the Parent Information which really helped us start our year strengthening the connection between our home and Kurilpa life. We’ve created goals for our year ahead and have become ever so busy in the first Project of the year “CONNECTIONS”.
We’ve explored connecting to CULTURE – working up our own style of acknowledgement of country, adding to our vocabulary with Turrbal words (even learning a few songs!), discovering Dadirri and what it means to have deep listening and a sense of connection with the land we learn, play and grow upon. We’ve discovered more about our individual cultural connections, joining together every morning to sing ‘Hello’ in all the many languages we may hear spoken at home. We’re exploring dance/corroboree and the artistic side of our Indigenous cultures which has led to our Toddlers researching body paint, traditional painting techniques, dance moves, storytelling and musical instruments.
We’ve explored connecting as FAMILY – We’re learning more and more about what makes us who we are and how similar and different our lives can be. Something as seemingly simple as knowing every parent’s name within our Toddler Community and having those little discussions about home life strengthens that sense of BELONGING to Kurilpa. We’ve had great feedback from our Parent Information evening and our room blog also provides a great link between home and Kurilpa life for families to share with their Toddlers at the end of the day. The addition of the video screen in the Toddler room has also allowed us to share our Toddlers learning journey with the rest of our Kurilpa Community.
We’ve explored connecting as COMMUNITY – Our visits to the Kindy yard have begun in earnest now that we have all our Carpark Permission letters back which has been a fantastic time for both the Toddlers to learn from the oldest of our Kurilpa children and the Toddlers to view their part of our community as more than just the Toddler play spaces. We had a beautiful invitation to the Junior Kindy room created by the Junior Kindy children that Nikki and Sam delivered. We can’t wait to visit and see the changes to the Junior Kindy’s deck area and see some of our old Toddler/new Junior Kindy friends! You may have seen us exploring the ‘Jungle’ that is the front garden of Kurilpa where we crawl, run, hide, sit and listen to the world going on around us. We love stopping in at the office to tell Linda and Catherine about our adventures. We’ve also taken further responsibility for our well-being with clearing up after our morning play session, cleaning the tables, setting up for lunch and visiting Lizzie to collect our lunch or return our dirty dishes, thanking our friend Lizzie for all her hard work creating our amazing meals. We’ll also be planning a visit to our greater West End community with an excursion toward the end of April to Lyons Park.
Our biggest project this year will be redesigning the Under Three’s backyard. We really believe this area needs an overhaul from the mostly 1980’s design, bringing it into a more challenging, open ended, natural environment. So far, we’ve added new palms and native grasses to create a greener, more ‘jungle’ look to our mud kitchen and dirt pit areas with some of the funds raised from the Bake Sale Kurilpa hosted at the recent State Vote. We’re looking forward to seeing an even more successful turnout at the Bunnings Sausage Sizzle coming up to add to the much needed funds for even more additions and preparations to the yard (a cubby house? A better bike path? Removing the old ‘cage’ pool fence and adding barked areas for climbing, running, jumping and more?).
Cass, Felicity and Catie
