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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

Only one week left of school and then time to kick back and enjoy the holidays. We have had so much fun this term.  The children have had some amazing ideas for craft activities over the past nine weeks.  You are more than welcome to pop inside the centre to see some of our wonderful creations and to view our visual diary.

Our Vacation Care program and confirmation form can be located via our website:
https://avalonoosh.com.au/vacation-care/.  We are fully booked for both excursions.  Please submit your bookings as soon as possible as remaining spots will fill up quickly as we have some pretty special days planned.

A reminder regarding Before & After School Care Vouchers:-

Any remaining credit on Government Vouchers will expire next week on Fri 30th June, we are unable to submit any fee claims under this voucher scheme after this date. This means that Winter Vacation Care fees will not be covered by the current voucher.

Changes to Child Care Subsidy

We have been asked to share the latest Government information sheet regarding the changes to CCS coming into effect from July this year.
Please use the following link to view the newsletter:
https://avalonoosh.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/230620-Standard-CCS-changes-letter-final.pdf
Please don’t hesitate to email if you have any questions regarding the changes.

Thank you all for your support.

We are almost there!!!!

First term is nearly over, the Easter Bunny is getting all chocolatty, the camping gear is being checked, and Easter Vacation Care is ready to go. The program and the link to the booking form are on the website. You will receive a confirmation email when it’s received.

We hope that your children have all enjoyed their first term, loved their teachers and had a great time at OOSH. Our kindy children have settled in incredibly well. Most of them crying because they need to go home, not when they are being dropped off. They have proved to be a very independent and confident group.

Your current booking schedule for Before & After School Care will roll over for term two. If you wish to cancel any permanent bookings next term, please email us to let us know. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer permanent spots from Mon – Thursday afternoons for term two. If the situation changes due to Winter activities commencing we will contact families on our waitlist to offer requested spots.

Please don’t hesitate to give us a call or send an email if you have any questions at all regarding vacation care or before and after school care.

We are pleased to announce that our Easter holiday program is up on our website today.  Please book your days early as we have a limit on the number of children we are able to accept into the program.   Don’t forget to check your account is up to date as we are unable to accept a request for care if there are any outstanding fees. Please use the following link
https://avalonoosh.com.au/vacation-care/

At Avalon OOSH we believe that children today lead very structured lives. After a full day of school, some starting quite early, they have music, choir, sports training etc. in the afternoons.  Then of course there’s weekend activities.  We feel that our service should offer the kids as much free play as possible and the freedom to choose what activities they wish to participate in, especially after school.  We encourage the children to take part in craft activities but appreciate that not all kids are crafty.  Some would rather sit and read or do a puzzle, play sport and games and prefer to play in the dirt, make forts and generally do their own thing.  Some days they are just tired and want to chill out in front of a movie.  We want them to have freedom of choice as we believe that childhood is a very short time in life and a time to be treasured.  Our program is very loosely structured to allow children to have this freedom.

Each year we complete a Quality Improvement Plan – QIP.  This is done in conjunction with our families, children and staff.  Since  Avalon OOSH is a service run by our parents your input is always needed if we are to continue to provide your children with their best OOSH experiences.  We will be sending a link to a short survey before the end of term. We hope you will take the time to complete it.

As always, thank you all for your continued support, have a great weekend and stay cool.