Eden Hills OSHC

Sunday, 19 March 2017

March 17th 2017

We’ve had lots of variety over the last couple of weeks, from hair salons to creating intricate mazes.

We have seen more children enjoying time in the playground while the weather has been fine. We are always pleased to see children swapping skills. We have seen people teaching others how to do stunts while jumping off the playground and landing in different ways to different twists and turns on the monkey bars.

Paper planes are back in vogue. We have tried out many designs and tested a lot to see which works best. We have compared these to some toy men with parachutes. It is interesting to see how the kids make guesses about why things work better than others. We have found the best place to throw from is the SAC balcony.

We have spent more time on the ripstick this week. There is lots of improvement, from just learning to balance to being able to navigate around objects and people! This has been leading up to a wheels day during vacation care.

One evening we took it easy and just had a hair salon. This was a great opportunity to take it slow and chat about everything under the sun. We are all probably familiar with how hair dressers seem to have us talking about anything and everything while they cut our hair. Here are some of the pictures.

We’ve had lots of variety over the last couple of weeks, from hair salons to creating intricate mazes.

We apologise for the lack of posts, our writer has been away doing her professional placement.
Our next post will have the vacation care program!

See you in OSHC! J

Tuesday, 14 March 2017

March 3rd 2017

We have had a big ‘making’ week this week. We have baked, constructed buildings from pop sticks, built waffle block houses and sewn toys.

We have set a challenge this week to build a tower that is at least 30cm tall and can hold 1kg of weight. The children can only use skewers, pop sticks, pegs and masking tape. So far every is designing slowly and trialling different techniques. This has been a great chance for everyone to develop their problem solving and teamwork skills when working in groups.

While everyone has avoided the outdoors and the heat, some have relished the air con and developed different skills indoors. Sewing has become popular again for some people, with one student producing a felt gnome.

We have been enjoying watching some David Attenborough documentaries in the last couple of weeks. Although the picture quality is not as good as what we are used to, the sense of adventure and wonder is still engaging from Sir Attenborough. We were even lucky to find a baby blue-tongue lizard during our hot weather! Not fluffy and cuddly, but still adorable.

In our kitchen we baked banana cup-cakes and apple and cinnamon cupcakes on Wednesday. On Thursday we ditched the cooking because of the heat and made chocolate crackles instead. The groups were challenged to do as much as they could on their own. They had to rely on their reading and comprehension skills to cook.

Our Vacation Care program is being developed as we speak. If there are dates that you know you will definitely need, you can always let us know ahead of time.

Sunday, 26 February 2017

February 27th 2017

Blog 24/02/2017

We have had a quiet week, with lots of children going to play sports and some leaving early for Parent/Teacher interviews.

This week has been heavily focused on art and sports. Craft has also been popular, with dream homes, hotels for snails and lots of different objects being constructed out of recycled materials. Here is a water park that was designed with slides, swings and showers.

Our young people have also been putting together some collages, displaying images that they liked or felt represented them. Some people also made mashed images with different heads on different bodies. We even had a couple of girls construct a magazine!

We have also seen a bigger interest in painting lately, particularly abstract images and shapes. Because we have a hot week next week, we will be supplying a lot more art and craft activities to help keep everyone cool.

With the cooler weather on its way, football has started to reappear. Along with cricket being a constant, we have been playing lots of soccer, badminton and basketball. Gymnastics is being practised frequently. But not just on the blue mats, we are seeing it practised on the oval, in the play ground….inside the OSHC building. But it is great to see!

Roller skates and roller blades have been used a lot lately. It is always a source of great pride when we see our older students lending a hand to our receptions, helping them balance, strapping on the shoes and giving advice. This supportive behaviour is seen during sports, arts and helping out with afternoon tea. We are very impressed!

There seems to be many people reading at OSHC lately. Harry Potter seems to be back in vogue, along with Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Northwood. A bit about Northwood from Gemma:

“A girl called Cecilia, lives with her mum and dad in a six story balloon house. She finds out that a man who was once kind, turned mean owns a dog called Rocky, who he treats badly. When Cecilia steals the dog, the man takes revenge”. – Gemma C.

Board and card games seem to be rising in popularity. Uno, battleship, Super Fight and Fluxx are played the most. But we see other games being played too. These games are a great way for the adults to get involved and spend more time with the kids.

We will soon start planning the April Vacation Care program. If you have any excursions, incursions or activities that you have liked in the past, please let us know! Also if you know you will be away in the lead up to the holidays please come see us early to arrange dates.

Monday, 20 February 2017

February 21st 2017

Firstly we would like to apologise for the delayed blogs this year! We have been without internet for sometime now.

Welcome back and welcome to new students and families for 2017!!!

We have kicked off this year and are back into the swing of things. We have some new students and families joining us, so this is a great chance to give you all some reminders.

Reminders

Lost property can be found next to computers. Clothes, containers, water bottles and personal items accumulate there. After a long period we move these to the schools lost property.

Tuesday is going to remain our electronic free day. We will also continue to be limiting time on devices in the evenings. Children get to watch a turn and play a turn. Turns last 20 minutes. This is so we can promote other options, such as sports, outdoor play, creative arts and crafts, role playing games and more.

Bookings are to be honoured or paid for. If children are absent due to illness or emergencies, we will make exceptions. But we expect a cancellation before 11am on the day of the booking to avoid an absent fee. This is so that families who are looking for bookings can find a place. As some nights are booked out, this is important to us so we can continue to provide care for families.

This year there are some changes to staffing. Maya has now graduated from uni and is a qualified teacher. She is starting a part time role at another school.

Brandon has heard the call of the mountains once again, the whispering of wind through the valleys. He will be going to spend three to seven months in Falls Creek. While working he will be able to mountain bike and snowboard.

Sarah will be completing her studies and will be gone most of May and June on placement but will be back for the remainder of the year.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been playing volleyball, cricket, football and tennis in the SAC. We have avoided being outdoors while the weather has been unbearable, both to avoid sunburn but also heat exhaustion for a little ones.

This has meant that we have spent more time indoors. We’ve been watching more movies, playing more video games, building cubby houses, reading books and playing board games. Battleships has been the favourite this week. We love board games as they can help to build on skills the students are learning in class. Battleships can build on coordinate and grid understanding; monopoly can develop addition and subtraction and so on.

We have now introduced a written poster for wii and computer games. These rules have always been in place but are now being supported with visual aids.