new roles! · celebrating 55 years of educating and caring for children! cessnock multipurpose...

www.cmcc.nsw.edu.au Educating and Caring for Children since 1963…

Cessnock Multipurpose Children’s Centre

Dudley St - OOSH and Vacation Care - Cessnock Occasional Care – Nulkaba Preschool

Welcome to our 55th Year!

CELEBRATING 55 YEARS OF EDUCATING AND CARING FOR CHILDREN!

Cessnock Multipurpose Children’s Centre Dudley St - OOSH and Vacation Care - Cessnock Occasional Care – Nulkaba Preschool – Playgroup

Have you seen our new website? www.cmcc.nsw.edu.au

New Roles!

October 2018

Director Dudley Street and Nulkaba Preschool Nic Morris

Educational Practice Facilitator Carolyn Schofield

Centre Manager Occasional Care Jo Calabretta

Operations Support (And Team Leader – Dew Drops Nursery) Tracey King



http://www.cmcc.nsw.edu.au/






Upcoming Special Events

• Hula Hoops and Handstands Thursday 15 November (10.30am Nulkaba)

• Children’s Photos – Sandpit Photos. $49 package.

Dudley Street 30th Oct to 2nd November Occasional Care 6th November to 9th November 2018 Nulkaba 6th November to 9th November 2018. Photo envelopes will be distributed for pre-payment in the week prior to your child’s photos.

A Special Thank You

To all of our amazing Families, Friends and Business Partners

• Nail It Constructions

• Thomas and Associates

• East Coast Air Conditioning

• AAA Locksmiths

• Craig Thomas Cleaning and Maintenance Services

• Bruce Archard Electrical Services

• Vineyard Shuttle

• Advanced Pest Control

For all the support shown for the Burrumbuttock Hay Runners

Fundraising Appeal.

We are proud to announce we raised $2,922.00

As we move into the warmer months please remember to pack a hat for your child every day that they attend preschool. Please ensure that your child wears appropriate shoes that allow for climbing and balancing. Play clothes are also recommend as they Children take part in many art, craft and water experiences on a daily.






Gumnut Nursery Gross Motor Skills

Our Children in the Gumnut Nursery have demonstrated a great interest in their physical environment, which has been shown through the re-visitation of our indoor - outdoor area. Through collaboration the Expert Educators, Children and Families adapted the indoor play area to provide an extension to our gross motor program by adding a balance board, hoops, bean bags and tunnel. The Children’s abilities were extended upon and challenged, skills such as turn taking, sharing, spatial awareness, balance and coordination were promoted as every child engaged within the play-based learning environment.

Arts and Crafts We have introduced play dough within our daily program. This has provided the Children in the Gumnut Nursery with an opportunity to explore textures and introduce new vocabulary, smooth, roll, squash, sticky and many more. Using our arts and craft cupboard the Children are encouraged by our Expert Educators to resource their own learning by being provided with a variety of materials and resources, the Children have the autonomy to make their own chooses from the shelf to use at their own pace and pleasure, sparking their curiosity, experimentation and imagination. Natural resources such as flowers, twigs, stones and a variety of leaves were gathered by the Children in the outdoor area and added to the craft areas, the children are learning to engage with both made and natural resources, and to become environmentally responsible.

Expert Educators Jasmine, Meigan, Tammy, Sue, Kathy and Dianne






Waratah Preschool Welcome to Spring! Firstly, We hope all our Father’s Day had a great Father’s Day and to all our wonderful, Uncles, Pops and Grandads. We appreciate everything that you do. The past few months have been a very busy and productive time in the Waratah Preschool Room with many experiments and excursions taking place. Recent incursions / excursions:

Bollywood The Children in Waratah Preschool were immersed in Indian culture... Shyamla Eswaran showed how sights, smells and sounds of Indian Culture inspires dance. The Children wore costumes and experienced dance moves, spices, numbers, music and storytelling which promoted belonging and cultural connection. The Children just loved this experience which will flow over to future conversations and experiences. Living Safely with Dogs Presentation

We had Nic and Thunda the Staffy visit us from 'The Living Safely With Dogs’ Program! This program teaches the Children through the use of visuals, songs and movement how to live safely with dogs, things we should not do to dogs, how can you tell if a dog is happy, scared or angry, safely approach and greet a dog and what to do if approached by an unknown or aggressive dog.

Each of the Children were also given the opportunity to interact and safely greet and pat Thunda the Staffy with the guidance of our Expert Educators and Thunda’s owner, Nic.

The Princess Bride The Waratah Preschool Children were invited to watch St. Philip’s Christian College Senior School Cessnock perform ‘The Princess Bride’ at the Cessnock Performing Arts Centre. This was a wonderful experience allowing the Children to visit a local theatre and watch a live stage play by older Children within the community.

Baby Calf Visit

We also had a special visit from "Violet" the baby Calf and Kylie from Sweet Valley Animals. Violet was the centre of attention and the Children are very excited about her next visit! We are hoping that Violet can bring along a lot of her friends next time!






Experiments with Seeds. As part of National Tree Day the Children in our Waratah Preschool planted some pea and clover seeds. There was a lot of discussion during the planting process about what seeds need to grow. Some Children thought perhaps water or sunlight, maybe both sunlight and water. To discover the effect that sunlight and water has on a seeds growth the Children and Expert Educators undertook an experiment.

➢ Experiment 1 - exposing the seeds to water and sunlight everyday

➢ Experiment 2 - exposing the seeds to water everyday but no sunlight

➢ Experiment 3 - exposing the seeds to sunshine everyday but no water

➢ Experiment 4 - no sunlight or water

After a few weeks we discovered that seeds grow best with both sunlight and water.

As many of the seeds had begun to grow we transferred the seeds to our vegetable garden. We will continue to support the seeds in their growth and ensure they receive both water and sunlight daily; the Waratah Preschool enjoy caring for their environment and taking responsibility.

Rainbows, exploring primary and secondary colours and colour mixing as well






Rainbows have been a huge interest over the past few weeks. The interest started by a Child asking if we could make a rainbow. Since then we have explored different ways to make rainbows, making rainbow flowers has been a favourite. Additionally, the Children have been exploring primary and secondary colours and how a secondary colour is made. The Children worked together to create a colour mixing poster to help them remember how to create secondary colours. This poster has been on display in the art station.

The Children are continuing to show interest in experiments. The Expert Educators will continue to support an facilitate experiments based on the Children’s interests, questioning and thoughts.

Exploring different types of artworks

The Children worked with Expert Educator Debbie to create a 3D visual of their home. Each child was encourage to explore their creative skills to add to the artwork. Wow this is the result of a collaboration of artist talents put together. We had houses, caravans, cars, cats, dogs, trampoline, trees, sun, clouds, flowers, trees, a dad’s shed and a chicken coop with two chickens in it. It was so great to see all the Children sharing and taking turns with the material that was on offer.

is coming to the Waratah Preschool Children, Families and Friends. Cessnock Multipurpose Children’s Centre is moving to an on-line digital programming platform called Storypark. Storypark allows you to have instant access to your child’s learning and development (and photos as well) as it is documented by our Expert Educators via an app. You can also provide feedback and comments regarding your child’s learning and development. Our Waratah Preschool is very lucky to be the very first room of CMCC to utilise this new programming system. All of the Expert Educators in the Waratah Preschool have been exploring the program’s potential and becoming familiar with the program before it goes live to families. We are expecting to go ‘live’ to all families in the Waratah Preschool soon. For more information on Storypark and how it can benefit you as a family, please visit https://www.storypark.com/au/families/ alternatively please talk to one of the Expert Educators in the Waratah Preschool. We are very excited about the potential of Storypark and the collaboration that this will allow between Families and our Expert Educators. You may have noticed something a little different in our Waratah Preschool, Arwen has requested to reduce her days. Arwen will continue to work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.


https://www.storypark.com/au/families/





Expert Educators Arwen, Deb, Gen, Jeck and Lana

Dew Drops Toddlers Our Expert Educators and Children have been getting into the spirit and enjoying our farm themed dress-up days in order to raise awareness and much-needed funds for the drought-stricken farmers. Our dramatic play has extended into the backyard at this time with many Children riding horses and bulls and driving tractors.

See our chickens They are growing very quickly! They hatched on 2nd August, and are now out in the yard with the Children during the day. Stop in and say HI and give a pat to Darcy, Edie, Big Bird, Tweetie and McNugget. The Children are learning to care for the chickens; providing food, water and shelter each morning and afternoon. This is beginning to tie in with our discussions about farmers and their animals.






Card Games We have recently introduced card games into the room as a method of teaching colour, numbers, sequencing and memory all of which are early mathematical concepts and skills. The Children refer to the game as ‘Quack-quack’, however the cards have been turned into games of Go Fish! Memory, Same-Same, and a variety of dice games.

Expert Educators Tracey, Brooke, Jan, Mel, Sarah, Amelia, Ashleigh, Katenee, Kara, Lee and Sally

Blue Gum Preschool






The Blue Gum Children continue to be kept busy with our many projects and activities.

Let’s Get Physical Each day the Children participate in structured physical activities. These activities are fun and varied, but all are focused on team work, resilience and a sense of belonging. Our many activities include, parachute games, egg & spoon races, bean bag relays, duck duck goose, What’s the time Mr Wolf, yoga and dance. It is our hope to make exercising a fun and rewarding experience.

Weather The Children have been exploring the weather with our Expert Educators. Daily discussions about the weather outside helps them to decide the type of clothing that they need to put on before outside play. To do this we use the weather calendar, on the calendar we decide what type of day it is, sunny, windy or rainy. We discuss the seasons, days of the week and month. To extend on this learning process we have been creating works of art using the weather as our inspiration. These can be found displayed around our Blue Gum Preschool. Our Pets As part of our ongoing interest in animals and our pets, we have moved onto the topic of dog safety. Many of us own dogs, as a group we thought it was relevant to understand that not all dogs are friendly. So, we sourced a Dog Safety kit and set about learning life skills to help us understand dog mannerisms. We read a story about Jenny and her dog Maisy, we learnt that there are times when dogs need to be alone, such as sleep time, when they are eating, when they are sick and when they are with their babies. We also learnt that dogs get scared and angry, and how to identify a dog’s body language. Sometimes we might come across an unfamiliar dog and it may frighten us, we learnt that it is best to stand still, keep our arms down and not to look at the dog. When the dog loses interest in us and moves away, we should back away slowly. We all know that most dogs are friendly and cute which makes us want to pat them. If we come across a dog on a lead with their owner, we must always ask if it is ok if we pat their dog, if we are allowed we must first let the animal sniff our hand, once we are sure the dog is ready we can pat it on the back only, never the face. We must never cuddle this dog around the neck. We practiced this technique using a dog puppet from the Dog safety kit.






The Children continue to be inspired by our pets. We were recently visited by Violet the calf. The Children were given the opportunity to pat violet and talk about her care. Aubree also brought in a piglet that her family had been caring for and William introduced us to his Blue Cattle dog “Max” these visits give our Children the opportunity to interact with animals that they may not otherwise have access. A visit from Kirstin and Logan Kirstin dropped into pay a visit this month and the Children got to see how much her baby Logan had grown. The Blue Gum Preschool Children had watched with much interest as Kirstin’s belly grew during her pregnancy. Kirstin was a great sport during this time allowing the Children to watch and feel her belly as the baby grew and moved. We are looking forward to the weather warming up so Kirstin and Logan can come back to visit us again. At the next visit we are hoping to bath and dress Logan. Recycling We have introduced a compost bin into our room to continue our effort to be sustainable. The Children place their unwanted food scraps into this bin and at the end of each meal break, the Children carry the bucket up the chicken pen and feed our hens. We have a wall chart at the back of the bucket that displays the foods that are suitable and unsuitable for our chickens. The Children are really enjoying this part of our recycling project, we are learning not only to care of our pets but how to reduce land fill and care for our environment.






A trip to the Waste Management Centre A small but dedicated group of Children travelled by bus with Expert Educator Jane to the Cessnock Waste Management Centre to recycle the centres used batteries, mobile phones, e waste and ink cartridges. After the excitement of the bus trip we arrived at the centre, there we weighed our recycling and sorted it into bins. We learnt about the things that can be recycled and what these things can be made into. It was an awesome and interesting excursion; the Children had a great time. I strongly recommend setting up this kind of recycling program and taking the trip to the tip with the family. It’s not only fun, its teaching our Children to be environmentally responsible and helping our planet. Things that Creep and Crawl Our Tuesday group were paid a visit by David from Just Dream Productions, who presented an interactive, hands on Bug Show. We learnt about Molluscs ... bugs without bones, Myriapods... bugs with many many legs, Insects... bugs with 3 parts, a head, thorax and abdomen and 6 legs, and Arachnids... bugs with 8 legs such as spiders and scorpions. The Children were able to touch these spikey, slimy and squishy bugs before using their creative selves to paint their own plaster bug.

Welcome Back Suzy The Blue Gum room would like to welcome back Suzy Marr from maternity leave after the birth of her beautiful twin girls Lottie and Marley. Suzy will be in our room each Monday and Tuesday.






Expert Educators Jane, Jann, Danielle, Kieran, Nestor, Laurel and Apple

Nulkaba Preschool All About Re-using

We use our old textas to make watercolours for our spray bottles! We have a spray bottle for each colour and when the textas are old or dried out instead of throwing them into the rubbish bin we place them in the spray bottle full of water and leave for a few hours.

We then have beautiful, bright watercolours to use! When using the spray bottles for art, the Children explore a new way to create and paint, whilst having to use their fine motor control and skills and stimulate their hand eye coordination.

Our Very Own Ninja Warrior Course!

There has been lots of talk recently at Nulkaba Preschool related to the Ninja Warrior show. The Children told the Expert Educators about all the different challenges that they had seen on the show. Together they made their own Ninja Warrior course using all different types of loose parts equipment.

The Children showed a willingness to accept and attempt these new challenges with some guidance from the Expert Educators and encouragement from each other!






The warriors on the show should be worried, these Children have started their training ready for the next show!

Thank You Cessnock Toyota

Cessnock Toyota paid a visit to Nulkaba Preschool in support of National Tree Day! The Children were really excited to see Chris from Cessnock Toyota when he brought along plants, soil, clothes, gloves, and shovels. Everyone had a great time gardening lead by our Green Thumb Jane!

Living Safely with Dogs

At Nulkaba Preschool we had Nic and Thunda the staffy visit us from 'The Living Safely With Dogs Program'. This program teaches the Children through the use of visuals, songs and movement how to live safely with dogs, things we should not do to dogs, how can you tell if a dog is happy, scared or angry, safely approach and greet a dog and what to do if approached by an unknown or aggressive dog.

Each of the Children was also given the opportunity to interact and safely greet and pat Thunda the staffy with the guidance of the Expert Educators and Thunda’s owner, Nic.

This program has now encouraged and promoted discussions about the Children’s pets they have at home.






Book Week Parade

Nulkaba Preschool was very lucky to be invited to Nulkaba Public School to participate in the Book Week Parade. Over the past few weeks the Children and Expert Educators have been very busy designing and making costumes for everyone to wear from one of our favourite book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". There was lots of excitement as we had a practice of the parade before we went.

It was wonderful to watch all the Children as they paraded around in front the school, we had lots of lovely comments from the Teachers of Nulkaba Public School, Our Families and Children and Mrs Zoneff mentioned our beautiful costumes and team work at the end of the parade. We think we also got the biggest claps at the end!

A huge thank to our parents that helped us walk safely over to the school and who also came to watch.

Risky Play

We jumped high off the table into the sandpit. We took turns with our friends, lining up patiently for our turn and making sure we waited behind the table until our friend jumped off and moved away.... these were some of the control measures we had in place to make this risk taking activity safe. We also thought it was a great idea to pop in some counting. Counting each friend as they jumped. The Children chanted together all the way to 30! Risky play is important! Involvement in risky play gives Children the opportunity to access risks and manage situations. Even very young Children are learning experiences, such as walking, running, climbing or riding a bike. In our preschool risky play helps to develop important life skills such as: -building resilience and persistence -balance and coordination -awareness of the capabilities and limits of their own bodies






-the ability to assess and make judgement about risk -confidence and independence -curiosity and wonder -problem solving

Due to water play, messy play, accidents and weather changes please ensure your child has a spare set of clothes.

Expert Educators at Nulkaba Preschool Lauren, Casey and Jane

Occasional Care Occasional Care has been a hive of activity with many new enrolments. We would

like to offer a big warm welcome to all our new Children and Families😊 Underwater Explorers As you would be aware, our glorious new fish tank has been a real conversation point amongst our Children. This inspired our Expert Educators in creating a small underwater world with the Children, including a sparkly goldfish, bouncy jellyfish and a table full of sea creatures to explore. It’s great to hear little voices sing ‘slippery fish’ and ‘baby shark’ as they role play the different sea creatures. Cessnock Cops Are Tops!

At the beginning of August, some of our Children discussed what they would like to be when they grow up. Annika and Tayah would like to be Childcare Educators which is a lovely compliment, most of the Children were interested in joining the police force or fire brigade. This interest influenced our invitation to Senior Constable Kerrie to come in and discuss her important role in the community. The Children listened attentively to Constable Kerrie’s knowledge on road safety, but they couldn’t wait to sit in the police car and hear the siren sound. Thank you so much for visiting Constable Kerrie. Expert Educators are looking forward to extending knowledge on a broad range of careers in the coming weeks.






Pre-Writing Skills Mini whiteboards have been very popular, and they provide opportunities to practice writing and drawing skills. The Children are engaging with their friends as they develop pencil grip and fine motor skills and are developing skills in preparation for school. Expert Educators extend on the Children’s skills by encouraging drawing and to write letters, numbers, patterns, shapes and lines onto our large chalkboard and tables covered in coloured shaving cream.

NAIDOC Week NAIDOC Week inspired many different experiences to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture. We read the traditional story ‘Warnayarra the rainbow snake’ which prompted educator Rhe to bring in a real snake skin for the Children to examine. Expert Educator Selena made clay symbols and sculptures with the Children and Expert Educator Brydee collected mud from her damn for the continuation on symbols and pattern systems.

Green Thumbs Our garden is looking fantastic, thanks to the trees that were donated from Cessnock Council for National Tree Day and the assortment of fruit, vegetables, herbs, succulents and natives. The Children are learning to be responsible for their environment and are bursting to taste the delicious strawberries, blueberries, carrots, tomatoes and snow peas. Yum! Everyday at afternoon tea we all sit at our new timber picnic tables and take in the calming outdoor space. The edible garden is helping to promote discussions on healthy eating and being more adventurous by trying something new.

Expert Educators Selena, Ang, Rhe, Peta and Joab

OOSH and Vacation Care






The Winter Vacation Care was a huge success. The visit to Revolution being one of the favourites.

Other Vacation Care activities were Hunter Valley Gardens “Snow Time”, a cultural visit to Wollombi and JD’s Magic Show.

The Before and After School Children were very excited to get the improved outside “Turf Area” area and have been utilizing this area every afternoon playing many different games.






As Winter is now over Mad Science enthusiasts made the last “Snow Storm” and our budding gardeners created terrariums.

Expert Educators Wendie, Gin, Joab, Declan, Carolyn and Lee


new roles! · celebrating 55 years of educating and caring for children! cessnock multipurpose...

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