The centre bus pulls out with your child on it, and the question in your head is not learning outcomes. It is where the bus is going, and whether your child will enjoy the morning.
So here is where children from our Rockhampton centres have actually been, taken from what our educators have written up.
A group has set off for the zoo for a story time session. Hats on, water bottles packed, sunscreen applied, onto the centre bus.
At the zoo the children listened to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, with singing and dancing to follow and smiles all round. On the walk back to the bus, the group passed the chimpanzee and meerkat enclosures, which our educators called an exciting way to finish the visit.
A Darumbal storytelling session has also run at Rockhampton Zoo, under the gum trees, with kangaroos and an emu listening in, followed by artwork inspired by native animals and traditional Indigenous symbols.
Kindy children have also taken the centre bus to the Rockhampton Art Gallery for a Darumbal story time. The excitement started on the bus, with children naming everything they saw along the way.
At the gallery they listened to Shoo Apa, written by Lelarnie Hatfield, then joined in dancing, colouring and a hands-on show and tell. The children explored a range of cultural items, including tools used to start a fire and musical instruments, and some had a turn at the didgeridoo. Our educators noticed how many stood up to join a demonstration or share an idea.
A Kindy group has also seen works by Ken Done and local artists at that gallery and tried origami, with plenty of conversation on the ride home. Vacation care children have looked at different kinds of art there and made self portraits for an art gallery project back at their centre.
A group has been to Woolworths at the Parkhurst Town Centre for the Fresh Foods Kids Discovery Tour. Hair nets and aprons on, they toured the store, then went out the back to see where the food is kept, including the fridges and freezers, and our educators wrote about just how cold they were. Afterwards the staff put out a platter of fruit to try.
That is the supermarket you push a trolley through every week, seen from the other side of the counter.
Children have visited the Rockhampton Library as part of the kindergarten program. Two stories were read to them, This Book Is Not a Present and Why Should I Brush My Teeth, the second a fitting topic for the health and hygiene discussions happening in Kindy. The library organised a play session afterwards.
A library has also been how children meet school. Kindergarten children have gone to the local state school, visited the school library, read a book with the librarian, been into a prep classroom and had a play on one of the prep playgrounds. Another visit was lined up to follow. The aim, as our educators put it, is to help familiarise the children with a primary school so that the move to prep is as smooth as possible.
Bush Kindy is part of the program here. On one of those excursions, kindergarten children found a creek bed to follow. They fished with sticks, collected bark for the Kindy room, gathered enormous leaves and different sized rocks, and came across wild ducks.
Children have walked the Botanical Gardens and the zoo together, seeing snakes, koalas, an emu, a cassowary and crocodiles sunning themselves, then eaten a picnic lunch under the huge fig trees.
The gardens have also hosted Romp in the Park, where the stalls ran sensory activities, slime to bring home, and a big teddy bear who let the children listen to his heartbeat. There the Kindy children have also thrown a football, played soccer and looked over the emergency services vehicles and their personnel.
School holiday programs have taken the older children further afield, and sometimes just down the path:
If your child is little, or still settling in, this is the half that matters more. The fire brigade has come out to one of our Rockhampton centres to talk with staff and children about fire safety, and let them look over the truck and its equipment. They even got a go at the hose.
An outing does not always finish when the children get back, either. Pre-Kindy children have worked with natural treasures collected on an earlier excursion. Set out with cardboard, paper plates, flowers, leaves, sticks and beads, they became boats, zoos and one flower vase: a paper plate, stick stems, painted pink. When the glue would not hold, the child asked for tape.
