Six weeks can be an awfully long time when you're home with all the kids wanting to do all the things. It is especially tough when you haven't got the budget to go out and do things. So easy to book in for an organised 'school holiday activity', isn't it? But it's so expensive too. Save your pennies and your sanity. We have got ideas for the six weeks of the school holidays covered for home-based families. Things to do and a basic plan for when to do them. Because life with kids is always so much easier with a plan.

IMPORTANT! This list is a COVID considered list. We have checked everything on this list is open, however, we highly recommend visiting the website and/or social media pages of anywhere you plan to visit well in advance. In some cases, pre-bookings are required and in other cases, there are limits or changes to operating hours and of course, things can always change. Stay safe, social distance and enjoy the Summer Holidays with your kids!

• Take a drive up to Mt Cootha to check out the view. FREE (pick up a McDonalds cheap soft-serve cone on the way as a treat!).

• Enjoy some mini golf at Victoria Park at Herston or Golf Central at Skygate which is close to the DFO near the airport.

• Head out to a BMX track, skate park or mini traffic track with the bikes, scooters and skateboards. FREE.

• Head to Redcliffe, Wynnum or the Gold Coast for a twilight fish 'n' chips on the beach or a picnic.

• Check out any of the play centres in Brisbane for some indoor, air-conditioned fun -Many indoor play places are reopening with limits and pre-booking so just check their website first before you go.

• Explore the Karawatha Environment Centre and enjoy a picnic in the bush setting.

• Have you seen the new Harry Potter Shop at Samford yet? It's incredible with butter beer and the kids can get sorted into their houses! They also offer holiday workshops you can book into now.

• Go strawberry picking at one of the many strawberry farms around Brisbane.

• Picnic out of town and head past the local bakery for all your yummy supplies and shop local.

• Make a kite and go and fly it. FREE.

• Play putt putt and one of Brisbane's best putt putt courses.

• Go to Lone Pine Sanctuary for a day amongst the animals, (make sure you check out their annual passes if you plan to visit again).

• Visit Opal Downunder up towards the Sunshine Coast, kids can fossick for gemstones.

• Walkthrough Burleigh National Park and finish with a picnic on the headland.

• Find a local river or creek with kids and enjoy some waterplay, dam building and creek fun. FREE.

• Book in a ninja session with Urban Xtreme.

• Head to the Queensland Zoo - to see the animals, the Big Pineapple and to have a picnic. Read reviews first, they have some extremely unusual animals and animal encounter opportunities.

• Go to Mount Glorious for a picnic, child-friendly bush walk and scones with Jam and Cream on the way down. If you want to eat surrounded by rainforest you might like to head to the LEAF cafe for coffee and a warm feed while you listen to the resident whipbirds FREE.

• Take a trip to Springbrook for a glowworm tour.

• Enjoy the lorikeet feeding at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

• Go to the beach- collect shells and build sandcastles for FREE. Take some gloves and a bucket and collect a bucket of trash while you are there. I know it doesn't seem fun, but it will teach the kids an understanding of how we continue to be blessed with some of the best beaches in the world and the importance of leaving only footprints.

• Enjoy a day at Australia Zoo.

• Have an astronaut read a book from space to your kids, preferably after a visit to the planetarium, Kingaroy observatory or one of the many astronomy viewing nights at Mt Coot-tha.

• Get up close with rescue deer at Lyell Deer Sanctuary.

• Visit all the mega slide playgrounds in Brisbane. FREE.

• Head to New Farm Park to let the kids climb the trees or Scarborough Beach Park if you are closer. Climbing trees is good for the soul. FREE.

• Have ice cream for lunch- head to any one of the best ice cream shops in Brisbane, as nominated by you!

• Check out your local Bunnings for FREE holidays activities for kids and the Bunnings Playgrounds.

• Go for a drive up to Mount Tamborine - take in the views - pack a picnic - enjoy the fresh air and if you fancy take the treetop walk or book the kids into some thunderegg seeking at Thunderbird Park.

• Discover Brisbane's best hot chocolate!

• Head to one of the many zoos in and around Brisbane> Brisbane Kids offer great deals and discounts.

• Take the kids to the local farmer markets or second-hand markets.

• Road trip to Maleny and enjoy a visit to The Maleny Botanic Gardens and Bird World to see some of their incredible bird life.

• Go for a bike ride on one of Brisbane's awesome kid-friendly cycle paths.. better still..if you can.. drive with your bikes to somewhere lovely like Redcliffe and go for a ride or a skate if you rollerblade. FREE.

• Make a family time capsule. FREE.

• Head to the Crystal Castle just outside Byron, it has the biggest Amethyst Cave in the world and plenty of amazing crystal structures to inspire and bring peace to a busy world.

• Climb the Brisbane clock tower.

• Take a road trip to the Crystal Castle in Northern NSW.

• Go camping or camp in your backyard!

• Say hi to the cows at Trevana Glenn Farm.

• Head out for a picnic at the Cleveland Lighthouse. FREE.

• Book the family into an escape room experience at one of Brisbane's best escape rooms.

Dear Families of Kidi Kingdom Child Care Springfield.

It has been a pleasure being promoted as your Centre Manager. I would like to thank Mrs April for her time in the role and the skills and knowledge that I have gained from her. I wish her all the very best in her new role as Educational Program Leader. Throughout the weeks you will still see Miss April around the centre as she visits our rooms and educators to promote her knowledge within the educational programs and practices with our wonderful educators.

I would also like to take this time to thank you all for taking the time to have a discussion with me on your drop off and pick up on your kind words of my new position. I feel very much appreciated and pleased knowing that you find the trust in me to be the Centre Manager. If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to approach me at any time.

I would also like to introduce Miss Chrystal who has been appointed Assistant Centre Manager. Miss Chrystle will still remain in the Early Learners as a Lead Educator till the end of the year and then going into the new year she will be in her new role.

We would like to welcome all our new families joining us over the last few months. We look forward to building strong relationships with you all and your child.

Please head on over to our Facebook page or search us on Google and share your experiences with us by writing a 5 Star review.

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 for the families that have already taken to the time to write a review.

Mrs Natalie Centre Manager

Click here to visit our pages at Facebook and Instagram

Welcome Valued Families of Kidi Kingdom Child Care to our Final Newsletter of 2021.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our current and new families for choosing our services and how excited I am to be the Educational Programs Leader across our Kidi Kingdom Child Care Centres. My new role will consist of ensuring all children are receiving the best high quality education and care and supporting our amazing educators to enhance each and every child's strengths, interest and needs. I will be visiting the centres on a weekly basis working with the children and educators to provide support and guidance where necessary. I look forward to reaching new goals with our educators for 2022.

Kind Regards, April Hall Educational - Program Leader.

Welcome families to Early Learners Room Spring Newsletter.

First of all, Miss Jaz and I would like to extend a very big welcome to our new friends joining the Early Learners room recently. Welcome to Nola and Cooper, it has been a delight to have you both join us and getting to know you! We would also like to say, "Happy 1st Birthday!" to Brianna, Alice, Nola and Cooper, from all your friends and educators here at Kidi Kingdom Child Care.

It has been a busy few months for our Early Learners children. In August we celebrated all things literature which saw the children enjoying story times in our dedicated book corner where we explored different book themes, languages and text materials. We extended our readings with various art, decorating and sensory activities and finished off our literature month with National Book Week where we focussed on both classic children's tales as well as new stories with modern themes and the children also shared their favourite books along with having a fantastic dress up day.

"All about Me" was the focus for September where we had a great time learning about our amazing bodies with their functions and senses and what our bodies need to stay healthy. This led to activities such as building an indoor gymnasium for testing out our physical abilities, utilising group times for dancing and learning themed body songs with actions and making discoveries about our five senses with creative art and sensory play. We also took the opportunity to observe and document all our Early Learners' current abilities, interests, needs and strengths and we hope our families and carers found this information insightful as to their children's progress and accomplishments while at Kidi Kingdom.

In October we revisited previous learning subjects of colours, shapes and numbers as our children grow and develop in their understanding and knowledge and display higher levels of engagement and participation. With experiences including felt board rhymes, story books, matching and sorting, we were able to stimulate and build upon the children's recognition, memory and problem-solving skills.

As we head towards the end of the year and all the festivities that come with it, we will be focussing on learning more about all our families, heritage and culture. We look forward to celebrating this with activities and classroom displays. As always, if there are any questions, concerns or requests regarding your child's learning or routines, please feel free to have a chat with me, leave messages in your communication book or contact the centre via email.

Kind Regards, Ms Chrystle and Miss Jaz.

Welcome to the Spring Newsletter for the Junior Early Years Classroom. Myself (Miss Sarah), Miss Maddy and Miss Janet have had a wonderful season with your children and we would love to share our learning adventures with you.

As Spring arrived in September our focus of learning turned to plants, trees, seeds and all things that grow. We enjoyed venturing to the gardens and tending to the plants while planting our own flowers using recycled vitamin jars donated from our friend Demi. Each afternoon we enjoy watering our plants and talking together about what we need to give our plants to help them grow. Lots of sunshine, water and love. This month we also created our loose parts play learning area and with the help of our wonderful families we have a well stocked, inviting and stimulating learning area for the children to explore in their own individual way.

During October we began a new learning project focusing on World Space Week. During this time, we enjoyed creating stars, asteroids, comets, a large scale moon, sun and earth group painting, telescopes, shape rockets and milky way chalk art. We explored dramatic play as we became astronauts and pretended to walk on the moon while playing in our space station. We used our hands to create aliens complete with lots of googly eyes. At group time we sang space songs and read lots of books about the stars above us and rocket ships. Towards the end of October we prepared for Halloween through the exploration of Jack o lanterns, ghosts, spiders and green monsters.

As November arrived, we were inspired to revisit our learning of colours, numbers and shapes and have been enjoying experiences related to these learning areas. We are enjoying using our light box to discover colours and the creative arts to discover how colours can mix together to form new colours. At group time we have enjoyed sharing our knowledge of shapes through identifying shapes using our felt board and felt shapes. We are looking forward to continuing our investigations of shapes, colours and numbers for the remainder of November before beginning our Christmas celebrations in December.

As the weather is warming up, could I please ask for families to provide more spare clothes as we will often be enjoying water play in the playground in the afternoon. Thank you very much.

Kind Regards, Miss Sarah, Miss Maddy and Miss Janet.

Welcome back to another great season here at Kidi Kingdom Child Care. What exciting fun we have had this term as the children and educators have been doing a lot with exploring our imagination and self-help in the room while also learning about who protects us in our community and what we want to be when we grow up. We want to discover how the children and centre can be more involved within our community and learn about how we can help to protect it and make change.

As most of you know drop offs can be hard but with interest and building friendships, we are happy to say some children are settling in nicely. There have been many milestones achieved this month with the children's toileting, self-help and exploring new challenging experiences that we are excited to extend and share with you all in the following months. Keep an eye on through the HubHello portal.

We would also like to say a Happy Birthday to Martin, Mason, Benji, Knox, Elina, Lincoln and Kalani who all had birthdays in the last 3 months. If you have any questions or ideas for interest and/or your children's milestones, please feel free to speak with Miss Raquel, Miss Anum or myself. -Miss Taneeka.

Kind Regards, Miss Taneeka, Miss Raquel and Miss Anum.

Welcome Valued Families to Spring Newsletter in Senior Early Years.

What an amazing month in the classroom! We have had some great feedback from parents regarding their children's Developmental milestones. This information has been valuable for me to better establish where the child needs assistance in their growth and implementing that information to build challenging individual plans. Then implement these activities into the daily workings of the room.

Thank you again to all the wonderful parents who have brought in recycled items for the children to utilize in the home corner and through the art and craft table. This month we have been teaching the children how to implement Recycling, Reducing and Reusing items to encourage sustainability in the centre and for our children's future. We will continue to implement these ethics in The classroom on a regular basis.

We have done a lot of work on social and emotional development, encouraging the children to work as a team, use words when talking to their peers and sharing. This is the age to encourage appropriate language skills and use their words to communicate. Building on language skills and boundaries supports your child to become an independent and confident little person.

Kind Regards, Miss Maddison and Miss Jayde.

Welcome to all our Pre Prep Families and Community.

It has been an amazing and joyful year being involved in and encouraging children to be agents of their own learning.

In the last few months, we have explored many different topics related to the interests of the children such "Growing Up Healthy", "Five senses exploration", "Amazing Journey inside our Body", "Engineering and Building" and we worked in our community garden, planting new vegetable seeds and learned how to care for it from day to day, watching the plants grow and harvesting the fruits from it. We began an amazing journey inside the human body. We have been exploring practical activities, using recycled materials to learn "How our Body Works inside".

The children have also been learning and practicing how to write their names and associating it with their letter sounds. We will keep reinforcing our ongoing objectives for this year: Counting, association of numbers and quantity, ABC's letter sounds (Phonetics: Short and long vowels), reading the calendar, recording the weather, days of the week, sorting, sequence, memory recall, measurement, body awareness, and problem-solving skills.

We will also be covering many other different topics and child-initiated play based learning experiences for very important lifelong development skills. We are developing observation and listening skills everyday by reading dreamtime stories and participating in 'Show and Tell' activities.

Over the coming months the children will continue working with the "Transition Into Prep Program". This program allows the children the opportunity to visit a local school to familiarize themselves with the new school environment.

We are all very excited about up-and-coming events to complete our last year before School. We are all looking forward to Graduation Day, Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

Kind Regards, Miss Maritza and Miss Sandy.

Welcome Families to Our Spring Newsletter.

This term with the school care children has been amazing. They have had more opportunity to decide on what they would like to do based on their strengths, interests and needs.

We had our Vacation Care Program where the school care children had fun with Miss Natalie and Miss Janet. We've been having little dance competitions or participating in Just Dance on the smart board.

The school children have been spending more time outside playing games like red light green light, hide and go seek, tiggy and handball. This is fantastic to ensure the children are experiencing the great outdoors.

It has been great to see the school children have been encouraging the younger children to play some of the games they are playing like uno and teaching them how to play. This is a great way to maintain relationships with all children of all ages. It has been a great year with all the children and I look forward to seeing everyone in 2022.

Kind Regards, Miss Jo.