Check out a few learning stories to show how we bring community into our centre and support our children to be curious about our world, to communicate effectively with others, to learn to generate and apply new ideas, and to question, think and reflect about our community.
C&K Announces 2022 Excellence & Innovation Award Winners
One of Queensland’s largest not-for-profit early learning providers, C&K, has announced the winners of its 2022 C&K Excellence & Innovation Awards, recognised for their exceptional practice and efforts to fulfil the organisation’s vision, where every child flourishes.
C&K’s Chief People Officer, Paula Holden, said there were many inspiring applications this year with winners selected from across C&K’s 338 kindergartens and childcare centres in the categories of Pedagogy and Practice; Children, Families and Community; Exceptional People; Kaizen (Japanese for ‘improvement’ or ‘change for the better’) and Leadership and Advocacy.
“It’s been another challenging year for employees in our sector, navigating COVID-19, natural disasters and staff shortages. We wanted to ensure we acknowledged the commitment and dedication of our exceptional workforce, so we introduced an additional award in each category – one for continuous improvement and another for exceptional practice,” said Ms Holden.
CEO, Dr Sandra Cheeseman, said it was a proud moment to see so much rich practice taking place in C&K centres.
“Children come first in everything we do at C&K, and these award submissions showcased genuine partnerships with children, families and local communities; exceptional practice in inclusion and care; respect of diverse cultures, challenging thinking and advocating for the environment. This is what high-quality early learning looks like when we nurture and inspire children to succeed, it’s truly something to celebrate!” said Dr Cheeseman.
A special mention went to double award-winner Louise Stallard, Director, Teacher and Educational Leader at C&K Forestview Community Kindergarten in Bundaberg. Louise was recognised for exceptional practice in Leadership and Advocacy and was the overall winner of the MTA Emeritus Professor Mary Mahoney Award for Excellence in Early Childhood Education and Care.
“No educator applies themselves to their work with the sole mission of receiving awards for their efforts, however being acknowledged for many years of passionate service to both early childhood education and C & K and receiving not one but two awards was an absolute honour. I am a passionate educator and adore inspiring and mentoring peers in the industry to see the possibilities in their teaching and connections with children, families and community, especially around embedding global citizenship perspectives in all that we do each day with and alongside advocating for play and all that we hold dear in the early childhood years. It is an absolute privilege to support young children on their learning journey to be curious about their community, country and world, to learn about different perspectives and that we are part of an interconnected world that requires our care, connection and respect for a sustainable future,” state Louise Stallard.
Adding to her 28 years’ experience as an early childhood teacher, 21 years of those at Forestview Kindergarten, Louise is a passionate lifelong learner, supportive leader and champion of exceptional practice.
She has become an outstanding advocate for Global Citizenship in early childhood, developing quality resources to engage with children and families on what global citizenship looks like, feels like and sounds like in a kindergarten setting.
The strong, authentic relationships she has developed with local First Nations people have enabled her to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and learnings into everyday practice at Forestview Kindy, so children can learn the importance of ‘interconnectedness’ and being ‘caretakers of the land’.
Louise was also instrumental in employing a Japanese teacher to support children’s learning of language and culture through the Early Learning Languages Australia (ELLA) program, extending this to the broader community where children have been able to collaborate on cultural celebrations and events.
C&K CEO, Dr Sandra Cheeseman, said she was particularly impressed with the professionalism and passion that shone through in each of the award submissions.
“I am proud to be part of the C&K team with people who bring joy and exceptional skills to their roles each day, and I congratulate all the 2022 winners for their outstanding efforts,” she said.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2022 WINNERS:
*OVERALL WINNER – MTA Emeritus Professor Mary Mahoney AO Award for Excellence in Early Childhood Education and Care: Louise Stallard-Director, Teacher and Educational Leader at C&K Forestview Community Kindergarten.
*PEDAGOGY and PRACTICE
Exceptional Practice – C&K Ripley Childcare Centre (Kindergarten team)
Continuous Improvement – C&K Caboolture Kindergarten
* CHILDREN, FAMILIES and COMMUNITY
Exceptional Practice – C&K Wilston Childcare Centre
Continuous Improvement – West Moreton Community Kindergarten
*EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLE
Exceptional Practice – Kylie Goodwin, C&K Marian Community Kindergarten
Continuous Improvement – Carly Smith, C&K Kuluin Community Kindergarten
*KAIZEN (Japanese for ‘improvement’ or ‘change for the better’)
Exceptional Practice – C&K Coolum Childcare Centre
Continuous Improvement – C&K Wynnum Manly Kindergarten
*LEADERSHIP and ADVOCACY
Exceptional Practice – Louise Stallard, C&K Forestview Community Kindergarten
Continuous Improvement – C&K Gabbinbar Community Kindergarten
Special thanks to Modern Teaching Aids, Cos, HESTA, Story Park and Childcare Now for their generous support of the 2022 C&K Excellence & Innovation Awards.
Gymfinity Gymnastics in conjunction with Forestview Kindergarten have recently been successful in acquiring a grant through the Young Athletics Program and Special Olympics Australia to implement Kinder gym sessions for veach child at Kindy. We are so excited and thank Gymfinity Gymnastics for offering to work with us to secure this grant and the wonderful resources and program for our children.
Special Olympics Young Athletes is an early childhood play program for children with and without intellectual disabilities, ages 2 to 8 years old.
Young Athletes offers families, teachers, caregivers and people from the community the chance to share the joy of sports with all children.
The program increases the skills of teachers, coaches, and volunteers to provide better programs for students, underpinned by the principles of physical literacy, creating meaningful experiences that demystify intellectual disability and promote lifelong participation in sport and physical activity. It introduces basic sport skills, like running, kicking and throwing.
It aims to connect schools with the Special Olympics movement in Australia and ensure that:
- More students are active every day
- More students are developing their physical literacy
- Teachers are more confident delivering sport and physical activity
- Sport and Physical Education lessons are more inclusive and of a higher quality
- Strong relationships are built with community coaches
- Strong links are built with community sports clubs and providers
EXPLORING LANGUAGE CREATES A PASSION FOR LEARNING ABOUT OTHER CULTURES.
At Forestview, we are passionate about helping children connect with culture and become active global citizens. One of the main resources we use for this and we feel very privileged to have access to is the ELLA language program. ELLA is a fun and easy digital language program for kindergarten. The program is an Australian Government initiative aimed at encouraging more students to study language. ELLA introduces children to learning a new language via interactive tablet apps, which have been developed in consultation with experts in languages, early childhood and technology. The Polyglots are a cast of characters who – through play-based learning – introduce the children to words, sentences and songs in another language. The apps draw on the interests and activities of young children, such as celebrations, cooking experiences, art activities, building and role-play. At Forestview our focus language is Japanese.
At Forestview, however, we go above and beyond just providing the ELLA App for children to independently explore and hear the language on IPads. We employ an assistant educator who is passionate to share her Japanese heritage and Japanese culture with the children, educators and families and budgeted funds are allocated for her to ensure that children extend on from experiences they explore in the App and to enable her culture to be embedded daily within our program.
Our passion for inclusiveness is a bit part of what we do each and every day and from the Ella Language Program children and families are passionate to share other home languages and are curious about other cultures.
We believe that becoming a global citizen is about creating a passion to learn about other cultures. We are aware that we can’t possibly learn about every culture present in our country and there isn’t a presence of every culture in our community…but by exploring other languages and culture through the ELLA Language program families are more comfortable to share their home language and the momentum builds from there. We are planting the seed and creating an interest in the fact that while people, places, languages and cultures in our world have similarities there are also lots of differences and that learning about these deepens our knowledge of people, places, languages and cultures and that everyone has the right to be proud of their culture and who they are in our world. In turn this creates understanding and an increasing desire to explore and be passionate about everything in our world including the cultural experiences of those around us in our community.
The skills that our children are developing to embrace culture through our approach to the ELLA Language Program are transferrable to any culture children may encounter in their future lives and will support them greatly in their journey to exploring other cultural presences in our community and foster inclusiveness and greater understanding for all.
Family fun day & 50 years of Forestview success
Recently the Wombats and Koalas came together to have their much anticipated Family Fun Day! It was a lovely sunny Sunday and all of the kindy kids and their families had a wonderful time with face painting, old school bake stall and fresh produce, face painting, entertainment and raffles and a good ol’ snag sizzle.
A massive thanks goes to the Forestview Staff (Mrs Melanie, Mrs Louise, Mrs Leisha, Mrs Nicole, Mrs Yuka, Miss Chelsea) and our wonderful fundraising and parent committee for all of their hard work to make the day come to fruition.
Thank you too to those families who help man the sausage sizzle, bake stall, bike track, chocolate toss and Mrs Yuka and her daughter Koydi who provided an immersive Japanese experience.
Some special mentions to all of our wonderful community sponsors:
And special mention to these families for your support and help:
- Dickson family
- Shilton family
- Ang Yarrow for hosting
- Sam Hargraves for the chocolate toss frame
- Mrs Leisha & Chelsea for coordinating the facepainting
- Mrs Yka and Kodyi and Leio for Japanese name writing and origami
- All the parents who contributed to the chocolate toss, bake stall or fresh produce stall
- Krystie Lee-Maddern for organising the whole day! Congratulations.
On the same day we also celebrated Forestview Community Kindergarten turning 50!! What a wonderful achievement and honour it is to look back and forward at both the students, families and friends, community connections and wonderful educational experiences our centre has achieved.
Thank you to our community partners
We are pleased to announce that an amazing nearly $2000 was raised from our term 2 fundraiser – The Fabulous and Fifty Raffle. There were lots of happy raffle ticket holders who went away with some awesome prizes.
This is an awesome effort from everyone – thanks so much to all those involved with preparing raffle tickets, selling of tickets, organising prizes, collating prizes, preparing prizes, drawing raffle etc. Everyone has done an amazing job.
Biggest of thanks also to the following local businesses who donated to this raffle. Your support is very much appreciated. Click through to check out more about these fabulous businesses.
- North Bundaberg Vet Surgery
- Salty Co
- The Boat Club adventure cruises Hervey Bay
- Bargara Beach Holistic Health Centre
- Mitre 10
- Raven Dance Aerial Arts
- New Vintage
- Duplic8
- Of the Earth Juice Bar
- BTR Performing Arts
- Leanne Wilson
- AMS Computers
- Alliance Pharmacy
- Serenity Skin Spa
- Flying High Bird Sanctury
- Dymocks Bundaberg
- Officeworks
- Tomorrows Earth Eco Store
Tanabata Festival 2021
Forestview Kindy is always a busy place! We have many amazing programs, educators and ideas and love to share some of these with our wider community.
We are very lucky at Forestview to have Mrs Yuka run our ELLA (Early Learning Languages Australia) program and as such we get immersed in lots of wonderful Japanese culture and celebrations – from language, to special events and learning lots of Japanese culture.
The Tanabata Festival, or Star Festival is one of those important celebrations we participated in July, with families and the kindy children writing their wishes for the year ahead and then attaching them to bamboo (supplied by Bundaberg Regional Council staff at the Botanic Gardens). Those wishes then travel up into the sky and we can reflect and look forward to the year ahead.
Bundaberg Now wrote about how Mrs Yuka and Forestview were instrumental in the first festival in 2020 and this year the wishes were included in the gardens as part of the celebrations.
You can read the article here
Kindy kids learn first Australian Culture with Bush Tucker garden
Thank you to ABC Wide Bay and Brad Marsellos (Dad to Winnie in the Koala group) for shining the light on our wonderful Bush Tucker garden and learning circle. This interview is a wonderful insight into the garden, how it will be used and what the kindy kids think.
You can read the article and listen here it’s very special.
Bundaberg Now also visited to talk to Mrs Louise (Educator of Koala Group and co-Director of the kindy) about the partnership between Gidarjil and the kindy and what the Bush Tucker garden means.
2021 Corporate sponsors
Thank you to our confirmed sponsors for 2021. Your support is invaluable and we will cherish every dollar that you have enabled us to put back into our kindergarten, its resources, the children and the facilities.
Silver:
Greensill Farming began in 1945 with Roy Greensill planting, raising and cutting 66 acres of sugar cane by hand on our Home farm in Qunaba. Roy progressively expanded operations to over 200 acres in 1966.
From these humble beginnings, the now third-generation farming operation has grown to become a large-scale agribusiness covering more than 8000 acres.
Over the past 75 years, each generation has refined farming techniques to continuously evolve Greensill Farming operations through innovative practices to achieve sustainable farming for future generations to come.
Sweet potato and sugarcane farming remain at the heart of our business, supported by a range of broadacre crops.
The Greensill family received the 2019 Hinkler Innovation Series award for their local, national, and global contributions to innovation.
Bronze:
At Miller Street Law, the team can assist with a wide variety of services and legal needs. Spanning small to medium business, property and real estate, farming and agriculture, wills and succession planning, the Miller St Law team has a wide variety and depth of experience to assist with legal requirements.
The Place Hairdressing has been operational for the past 15 years providing exceptional service and styling to the Bundaberg community. While we have been voted Bundaberg’s best salon for the past six years, our salon team is always striving to learn and keep up to modern trends. We understand life is busy, so we have extended opening hours, including late nights Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and early starts from 7am on Saturday.
BUNDABERG NOW FEATURES FORESTVIEW KINDY’S TANABATA FESTIVAL CELEBRATIONS.
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