webmaster

OOSH NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 24TH

IT’S HERE!!!!!

The program and booking form are available on our website now!!!

We have some fantastic activities planned for the January holidays, so be sure to get those submissions for any days you require early. We are limited to the number of children we are able to accommodate and we know places will fill quickly.

If you have a child starting kindergarten in 2024, or know of anyone who has, we are more than happy to welcome them in the January holidays.

Even if they are not going to attend Before or After School care, it’s still a great opportunity for a break over the Summer for Mum and Dad and to familiarise the kindy kids with OOSH and school on an informal basis.

We still have a few vacancies for our Pre-Christmas program from Monday the 18th to Wednesday the 20th. The program will concentrate on gift making. We have some very special ideas and some very talented staff implementing some really beautiful craft activities for the kids to enjoy that will be suitable for gift giving and decorating for Christmas Day.

Our annual Family get together will take place on Friday 1st December at 6.30. Please join us for a drink and some nibbles to celebrate another wonderful year at OOSH.
This evening is a great opportunity to connect with families also using the centre and have an informal chat with our staff. Please let us know if you will be joining us.

Thanks again to all our families for your continued support.

It’s week seven and you guessed it, it’s all about Christmas from this week on.
We will start decorating OOSH for Christmas. The children are all very excited to start making Christmas decorations.

Don’t forget our Christmas Party on Friday, December 1st. We hope to see as many families as possible to help us celebrate another great year of OOSH. This is a fantastic opportunity for parents to meet other families whose children attend the centre. Always a lovely end to our year to be able to kick back and celebrate with our families and the children who make our days so much fun.

If you haven’t already done so, please make sure you get your bookings for the pre Christmas program. Places are filling very quickly and we know the week before Christmas is an especially busy one for everyone.

Thank you all for your continued support

We are creeping towards the end of the year, yes it really is week six, with only four to go until the end of the term.

Here are a few dates for your diary:-

Friday November 17th:-
Our Pre-Christmas, three day Vacation Care program will be available along with the link to book the days you require.

Friday November 24th:-
The January program will be available with the booking link.
Please make sure you book the days you need early, as we are restricted to the number of places available.
Please remember that there are no refunds for non attendance during the holidays nor can we swap days.

Friday December 1st:-
We will celebrate another successful year at OOSH with our annual Family get together. Starting at 6.30 after all the children have been signed out.

We hope you will join us for a drink and some snacks with the staff and other families who attend our service.
We would also like to extend the invitation to any new families joining us in Vacation Care or in 2024. If you’re new to our school or Avalon this is an opportunity to meet some families already attending OOSH and to meet our staff.
Please let us know if you would like to attend for catering purposes.

What a fantastic Vacation care we had!!! Lots of outdoor activities, cubbies, building shelters, 9D movie van and magic sand. Plenty of mess and dirty happy faces. The children have already given us plenty of ideas and requests for the January break.

Our excursion to the City and the Chinese Gardens was amazing. We could not get over the incredible behavior of our children. They had all been briefed on our expectations before we left and we must compliment them all as they exceeded our expectations.

This year school will break up on Friday the 15th of December. The centre will open on Monday the 18th, Tuesday the 19th and Wednesday the 20th. We will then close and reopen on January the 8th. Our Pre-Christmas program will be out in week seven. The January program in week eight.

As it’s getting towards that time of year again where we all hardly have time to scratch ourselves.
Here are a few reminders for the fridge:-

Tuesday October 31st – Halloween
We will hold our annual Halloween Party at OOSH. Children have a party afternoon tea, face painting, play Halloween games etc. The kids can bring their own dress ups to change into for the afternoon. The party is strictly after school so children will need to be picked up by 6.30. If your children don’t normally attend on a Tuesday and you would like to book them in, please email by Friday afternoon.

Tuesday November 7th – Melbourne Cup Day
Melbourne Cup day is a pretty busy day for us, if you are going to a Melbourne Cup day lunch and want your children to come to OOSH please make sure you book them in.

Friday December 1st – OOSH Family Christmas Party.
We hope you will join us to celebrate another great year at OOSH. This is our annual gettogether for our families and children before the holidays.

Please email if you have any queries.

Thank you for your support.

Friday’s Excursion to Darling Harbour – Please read carefully

Children need to arrive at the centre before 8.30am for a prompt 8.45 departure. Staff need to prepare children for the bus:-  Roll call, head count, toilet etc.  We WILL NOT wait for latecomers.  This excursion is on a strict schedule.  The bus will return, depending on Friday afternoon traffic by 4.00pm.

You will need to provide morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.  A refillable water bottle and closed shoes.  Please NO thongs or sandals.

Itinerary:-

• Guided walk-through Chinese Garden of friendship – learn about the art of bonsai, legends and mythology, lunar calendar, and feng shui.

• Guided walk-through Chinatown – learning significant colours, architecture, and festivals.

• Kids create their own unique dragon heads and participate in a dragon dance.

View our excursion risk assessment via the following link:

https://avalonoosh.com.au/excursion-activity-risk-assessments/

Thank you for your cooperation.

Karen, Sarah and the Team.

Can you believe it’s the last week of third term.  The holidays are upon us.

Please get your bookings in by the end of this week as we are limited to the number of children we can accept into the program daily and don’t forget to complete permission form for the excursion if your child is attending.  We cannot take children away from the centre without written permission from parents or guardians.  Please follow the link to secure your booking:- https://avalonoosh.com.au/vacation-care/

When you submit your booking form, you will only be able to book days with availability.  If you can’t tick the box it’s because we are fully booked on that day.  You will receive a confirmation message when your booking form has been submitted, along with an email copy for your records.  Many of our families seem to miss the confirmation, so please check your spam.

Don’t forget to send your kids with plenty of food.  Long days with lots of activities make for some very hungry children and unless we are doing a cooking activity, we do not have food for them.

Please put them in clothes that don’t matter.  They will get dirty.
Don’t forget –  Hats and sunscreen.
If the weather is hot we will include water activities so it might be a good idea to throw an extra set of clothes in their bags.

If your child has any allergies or requires medication please download a medication form and bring it with you when you come in.  We will not give children medication that is not in its original container with the childs name on it and the prescribing doctor.

The children love making cubby houses, so if you are going through the linen cupboard and have any sheets or quilt covers you no longer need, please think of donating them to OOSH.

If your children have any suggestions for anything they would like at OOSH, please encourage them to write it on our whiteboard.

Thanks for your support

This week at OOSH our theme of mythical creatures will carry on to the ocean.  We have had so much fun making our unicorns, fairy houses, fairies, goblins and trolls to decorate our room, it’s time to move under the sea and the magical land of Mermaids.

We hope you all like our holiday program as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. The children have put so much effort into letting us know what they wanted  to do, already giving us ideas for the January holidays.

To secure your spot for any vacation care follow the link to book your children.https://forms.gle/BdfF1fk2NgfWvsXy8  Please remember to choose your days carefully, we do not offer swaps or cancellations over the holidays.

Congratulations to the Matildas!!!!!!!!!! We had some very excited children arriving at OOSH this morning after watching the game on Saturday night. Their enthusiasm for soccer is overwhelming with games happening every morning and afternoon at the moment. They have even asked for a day of soccer in the holidays.

Our Vacation Care program is almost ready to go and will be available to our current families in week seven. The children have contributed their ideas so we have a pretty full program with lots of fun activities planned.

Please remember to check our lost property bin, on the deck, under the sign in desk. We have taken a huge amount of clothing down to lost property at the school, however, we seem to generate more each time it’s emptied.

We would greatly appreciate it if you could let us know if your child is not attending the centre. Especially if they’re not coming after school. We are chasing up to 15 children each afternoon. This is a huge headache for the staff, especially if you don’t reply to our SMS message as we are legally bound to ensure that your child is safe. We do understand that in the grand scheme of things we are often forgotten, a quick phone call, an email or a text message in reply is all that is required to let us know your child is safe and accounted for.

Thanks everyone for your continued support.

First week of the holidays is almost over and what a week it has been!

Be sure to check out our Instagram and Facebook pages to see some of the fun activities we have provided this week!

We welcomed our chickens on Monday morning with two chicks, a clutch of chicken eggs and three duck eggs. They have progressively hatched each day, we now have 8 little chicks. We are still waiting for our ducklings to emerge.

Our first ‘Minute to Win it’ day was a huge success with lots of crazy games and spontaneous fun. Both the children and the staff thoroughly enjoyed themselves with a resounding request from the kids “please can we do it again”. The pink team won the inaugural gold cup.

On Wednesday we had a great excursion, taking 80 children to Avalon Cinema, now there’s a challenge! They were all very well behaved walking to the cinema and back just in time for Newport Pizza Hut to deliver 30 pizzas. We reckon the staff at the pizza hut were kept busy for a couple of hours getting that order ready for us.

As this week is NAIDOC week, we have been celebrating all week with craft and art activities. The children had great fun designing Boomerangs, Bullroarers and even weaving baskets!

Today (Friday) we had a visit from “Feathered Friends’. The kids all had the opportunity to handle some owls and large birds and learn all about them and their envioronments.

We are fully booked for Wednesday and Thursday next week, we currently still have a few spots available for the rest of the week.

We hope your kids are coming home tired and dirty, having had a great day, we look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great weekend everyone.

Well there you go, how quickly did that 10 weeks fly by? Second term over and done with, a little more than halfway through the year.

Just a few reminders about Vacation Care:-

Yes, we do have spots available for every day other than Wednesday the 5th and Wednesday the 12th. We have a long waitlist for both days.

If you can’t submit a request for a particular day, it’s because we are full for that day.

Don’t forget to supply your children with plenty of food. They will be busy running around and will get very hungry.

Please don’t put your kids in their best clothes, they will get dirty. We want them to have a great time without having to worry about their clothes.

If your child is not going to attend a session, please let us know. Please don’t advise a friend to bring their child to fill in the spot as we have a waitlist of parents who have tried and may not have secured placement for their child.

If you have any question regarding the program please contact us.

Thank you for your support