One of the best ways to encourage children to grow a garden and to develop a range of skills is to create an edible garden. An edible garden is a garden that contains flowers, herbs, seeds, berries and plants that can be eaten.

Designing An Edible Garden

Edible does not have to be large. It can start small with a few pots and containers, or even just a window box with a few herbs.

When planning an edible garden, some suggestions include:

• Space - Where to create the garden? How big will it be?

• Position - A sunny spot with easy access to water will work well and partial shade.

• Veggies - What Would You Like To Grow and Eat.

What To Plant In The Edible Garden

When planning what to plant in an edible garden, you can include:

• Favourite fruits, vegetables, herbs.

• Sensory appeal - grow plants you like to see, smell or touch such as herbs are a good example.

• Climate - consider which plants are best suited to the local climate.

Herbs - rosemary, basil, chives, sage, mint, oregano, parsley, thyme, coriander.

Seeds and Berries - blueberries, mulberries, pumpkin and, sunflower seeds.

Fruits - kiwi fruit, strawberries and passionfruit.

Veggie Garden - Vegetables that are good choices and easy to grow to include:

Beets, Carrots, Radishes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, silverbeet, corn, capsicum, Beans.

Gardening Activities For Children

 Young children are curious and highly motivated to learn new skills like gardening and cooking. With adult encouragement in a safe, carefully prepared, and supervised environment, growing and cooking abilities can advance rapidly, aligned with age-appropriate activities:

Appropriate activities for two-year-olds include:

• pushing child-size wheelbarrows

• watering plants with help from a teacher

• pushing large seeds, such as beans and peas, into the soil

• observing insects and ripening produce

Appropriate activities for three-year-olds include:

• mixing soil to prepare garden beds

• planting large seeds and seedlings

• filling up watering cans

• watering plants

• pulling weeds

• observing plant growth

• comparing leaf shapes

• describing the appearance of fruits and vegetables

Appropriate activities for four- and five-year-olds include:

• shovelling compost and mulch

• raking soil to prepare garden beds

• planting small seeds and seedlings

• harvesting ripe produce

• training and weaving vines onto a trellis or fence

• collecting seeds

• filling up watering cans

• watering plants

• pulling weeds

• identifying garden insects

• weighing produce

• comparing shapes and sizes of produce

• observing insects and birds

• drawing garden scenes or items

Creating an edible garden enables children to develop sustainability practices and brings an abundance of learning opportunities such as understanding how food is grown, the lifecycle of a plant and more!

I would like to take this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to our new families at the centre, we look forward to building strong and lasting relationships with you all. Additionally, we look forward to observing your children as they grow and develop here at Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest.

We trust you are enjoying your time with us so far and that your children are settling nicely into their rooms and into the Kidi Kingdom family. We would also like to welcome Miss Mackenzie, Miss Jashanpreet, Miss Gurwinder and Miss Yujing into our Kidi Kingdom family and valued Team Members who have settled in and already formed warm relationships with the team and children.

At Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest, we have been all enjoying the variety of our centre events ( please see the up-comming events at the top of this newsletter). The children have been expanding on interests regularly through our fun and educational programs.

As the weather is getting cooler please remember to pack warm clothes for your children to keep them warm during the day if needed.

Our centre now has limited vacancies and most age groups have a long waiting list, please ensure your child care fee account is a minimum of two (2) weeks paid in advance as per enrollment agreement, in order to to secure your enrolment.

We encourage all our Kidi Kingdom Families to feel free to post a review regarding our service and how we have made a difference in your child's life.. Please like our Facebook page and we always appreciate our loyal families helping our centre by sharing your positive experiences to the local community by writing a quick Google, CareForKids or Facebook review. Thank you to our families that have already taken the time to write a review.

Kind Regards, Mrs Julie Hunter - Centre Manager

Welcome to all our Valued Centre Families who have enrolled at Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest.

My name is Miss Cheri and I am your Educational Leader for Kidi Kingdom Child Care Hillcrest. The Educational Leader has an influential role in promoting positive outcomes for children and families. Effective educational leadership builds the capacity of educators by inspiring, motivating, affirming, challenging and extending their practice and pedagogy. This joint endeavour involves inquiry and reflection and supports ongoing learning and professional development.

I will be mentoring and supporting educators' understanding of educational programs and practice, e.g. building relationships and interactions with children to assist their learning through play and leisure based programs; developing documentation that is meaningful, relevant and promoting reflection on educators' pedagogy and practice. Drawing on educators' strengths to develop professional skills and confidence. Mentoring and supporting educators to assess learning.

Ensuring the assessment and planning cycle is applied to each child and the program. Assisting educators to understand and implement reflective practice and leading critical reflection discussions to examine policies, programs and practice. Talking to families about the educational program.

Educators are doing a great job in preparing activities with their fabulous ideas to encourage the children to learn through play and to build their confidence and skills.

As the children settle into their new rooms, I would like to take the opportunity to re-evaluate their learning and development goals and would like to request our families to please complete the family goals sheet. Your feedback on your child's learning is highly valued. Please feel free to leave comments on the classroom daily news feed and monthly observations. This provides us with the opportunity to start discussions on information regarding your child's development.

As the Educational Leader, I am committed to ensuring our program and learning experiences are of high quality and the children are gaining and developing lifelong skills. We look forward to making positive relationships with our families and welcoming your feedback into our program.

Kind Regards, Ms Nivedita Cheri - Educational Leader.

Welcome Valued Families of the Early Learners Room,

We are excited to share with you the latest happenings and highlights in the Early Learners Room for this term!

I would love to welcome our new friends Amritha, Xiyue and Elouise to the Early Learners and Kidi Kingdom family. It has been a pleasure to see all our friends welcome one another as we make them feel safe, secure and supported.

In March, April and May the children participated in a lot of different events. We all took part in lots of different activities and experiences to celebrate cultural and traditional events. In the Month of March we had fun learning about nature throughout our learning experiences. The highlight of this month was definitely our trip to the vegetable garden watering and caring for our environment.

In April we focused on our five (5) senses from touching, smelling, seeing, hearing and tasting, we each participated in different activities that promote all these different areas.

In the month of May our main focus is learning about all the different animals around the world and also we will be creating our lovely mothers and carers gifts as Mother's Day is near.

We look forward to another wonderful term together here in the Early Learners room. Miss Emily will be heading onto maternity leave this month, as we farewell her for this wonderful new journey we would love to welcome Miss Yujing who will take over alongside Miss Alexis. As colder months are approaching, please remember to dress your children appropriately for this weather, and please don't forget to bring shoes to wear outside to keep our feet nice and cozy!

Kind Regards, Miss Emily and Miss Alexis - Early Learners Room Educators.

What a great couple of months we have had in the Junior Early Years Room. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new families that have come into the room. We hope you are enjoying your time with us so far as it has been wonderful watching your children grow and learn each week.

During the month of March the children have been using their fine motor skills, imagination and creativity as we explored a variety of different topics. At the start of the month we were focusing on the garden, by visiting the garden,watering and weeding the vegetables. We also did some art experiences where the children had lots of fun creating a butterfly, a bee and a flower.

In the month of April we started to introduce some colour flashcards where we decided to learn some of the basic colours and the children showed interest as they engaged in learning the colours pink and red. To extend on these colours the children participated in a variety of activities including painting, collaging, playdough and the sensory tub. Thank you to our families who shared photos of their amazing weekends with their children which were trips to the Currumbin Wildlife and exploring the Dinosaur Festival. From these family inputs we thought this would be a good opportunity to explore Australian Animals and dinosaurs. The children showed interest as we extended on these events through lots of fun arts and crafts.

During the month of May the children have been very busy working on their Mother's Day presents. Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mums. We have also been learning about sea animals. The children have been exploring this through the sensory tub, creating their sea animals as well. We will be continuing to explore more animals including farm animals, insects and bugs, jungle animals and we will continue to learn our colours and some of the basic shapes.

Kind Regards, Ms Kylie, Miss Rowena and Miss Mackenzie - Junior Early Years Educators.

Hello and Welcome to our families in the Early Years Room,

In the month of March we continued on with our learning of animals looking at farm animals such as sheep, ducks, horses, cows and jungle animals such as tigers, crocodiles and snakes. We explored these animals through role play, arts and crafts and sensory. We have also been reflecting on our numbers, colours and shapes, through activities that we plan during the month.

To start off our April journey we started with exploring some of our colours such as red, pink and green. While exploring these colours we created collages with materials and paint, we also built on our senses with play dough and kinetic sand as well as exploring with cooking and making yummy pizzas. To extend on the children's interests we moved onto butterflies as one of our peers noticed a beautiful butterfly while playing outdoors, this then encouraged us to create butterfly paintings and dress up as butterflies. Extending from our butterflies we explored caterpillars by looking at life cycles, creating a caterpillar painting and making caterpillars with paper towel and water.

In our May journey we will continue our learning of colours, focusing on Mother's Day gifts as well as celebrating Families Week and Reconciliation Week.

Kind Regards, Miss Tia, Miss Regina, Miss Carmela and Miss Jaz - Early Years Room Educators.

Dear Valued Families of the Kindergarten Room,

During the month of March, we have been starting our day by identifying our emotions. We do this by transitioning to morning tea each day by pointing to the emotions posters and indicating how we are feeling. This is important as children who learn to understand emotions in themselves are better able to regulate their own responses to strong emotions.

Other educational experiences we have been participating in each morning in March involve learning the days and months through songs and writing our letter of the week on the chalkboard.

Another experience we have loved being involved in was icing biscuits for St Patrick's Day and making chocolate crackle nests for the whole centre for Easter. These cooking experiences allow the children to develop a variety of skills including independence skills, literacy skills, numeracy skills, communication skills, fine motor skills and turn-taking.

One experience we absolutely loved participating in during April was the science experiment. We explored the letter L as we created lava lamps!. We explored scientific skills such as predicting, investigating, observing and collaborating as we made lava lamps. We developed our independence skills and fine motor skills as we added the ingredients and used the droppers independently.

In May, we will continue our sports program. We will develop our gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination as we participate in tennis and a range of games with the sport coaches each week. We will also be going on different excursions including trips to the local park where we will explore nature and the local community. Thank you to our Kindergarten families for your ongoing support.

Kind Regards, Miss Aimee and Miss Kara - Kindergarten Teachers.

Cooking with Children! Easy Pizza Scrolls. How to Make this Recipe ● Super easy     ● 10:00 Prep     ● 20:00 Cook

Ingredients:

● Easy Pizza Scrolls

● 1 cup self-raising flour

● 3/4 cup Greek style yoghurt

● 100g ham, shredded

● 1/2 cup cheese, grated

● 1/4 cup bolognese pasta sauce

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line a baking tray with paper.

2. Combine self-raising flour with yoghurt in a bowl. Mix to form a smooth ball. Knead for 5 minutes.

3. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to a 30cmx25cm rectangle. Spread pasta sauce over dough and top with ham and grated cheese.

4. Roll up from the long side and cut into 3cm thick slices. Place cut-side up onto tray. Bake for 20 minutes until golden.