Welcome back to OSHC for 2017!
Because we had such a busy end to 2016 unfortunately we
didn’t get a blog out for the end of term.
We are glad to have Dianne back with us after extended leave
from last year. Welcome back Dianne!!!
We are expecting that 2017 will be an interesting year at
Eden Hills OSHC. Both Maya and Damian have graduated their Bachelor of
Education degrees at the end of 2016 with Sarah expected to finish mid this
year. This will mean there are potentially some changes to staff coming.
We have had lots of fun over vacation care with a few excursions and some really cool activities at home. We started the week with a cooking and food day, with fresh juice from apple and carrot, berry and banana smoothies and customised pizzas.
We have had lots of fun over vacation care with a few excursions and some really cool activities at home. We started the week with a cooking and food day, with fresh juice from apple and carrot, berry and banana smoothies and customised pizzas.
We further expanded our knowledge of food and produce with a
trip to the Central Markets. There we ate wallaby salami, pickled octopus,
dragon-eye fruit and lychee. It was amazing how brave everyone was when trying
something new. Everyone got to spend a bit of money and buy some small things
of interest; we even went to Haighs’ for a taste test.
Mid-weed Damian changed roles and became our soccer coach.
Damian has played for years and loves his soccer (football). He taught
individual skills, like dribbling, passing and shooting goals. After so much
interest from the children we were able to run a friendly game to try out our
newly acquired skills.
Thursday was our creative day. Matt visited us and taught us
about animation, its history, purpose and how it evolved over the years. We
then got to create our own animations using a stop-go animation app on ipads. If
you want to see the end result, click here. The password is edhja11013.
We also inked our skin with henna, which is a temporary
tattoo. These are some of our results.
In the second week of Vacation Care we added even more variety to our activities.
We started off by having a basketball clinic with Dwayne
Nelson, who taught us the basic skills. This was a great chance for
inexperienced children to learn something new and for seasoned players to help
others and develop more confidence.
We got our hands dirty on Tuesday when we re-potted some
herbs and flowers to take home. We love this cruisy activity as it is a great
opportunity to sit and talk with kids and get to know more about them. As we
toil away we get to hear stories of home, what their gardens are like and what
chores they have to do.
Wednesday we had an excursion to Gorge Wildlife Park where
we fed animals, had a tour and got to pet a koala and a snake. The park has an
amazing collection of animals including Australian animals (Dingos, Tasmanian
Devils, Fruit Bats etc) and others from around the world (Gibbons, Capuchin
Monkeys, Tamarins, Marmosets, lemurs and spider monkeys). The Park also has a reptile
house full of scaly slithering bodies!
For our final day of holidays we were so lucky to have one of our favourite nerds, David, join us for a program called ‘In your guts’. David used some clever ways to explain how things worked in the digestive system. They used a stocking with a ball in it to explain how the muscles in our oesophagus contract to push down food. David also had some hands on activities, and performed some chemical reactions to explain how food is dissolved and processed in the body.
We are so excited to start another wonderful year in term 1. Sad, that some of our children will not be returning, either moving away or starting high school. But eager to meet some new faces too!
Bookings from last year will be carried over to this year
unless we are otherwise notified.
