Just Kids

Last night, a special evening as our teams from Just Kids, Cairns South Early Learning Centre, and Natural Beginnings Childcare Gordonvale came together for a shared professional development experience.

At Just Kids, working in partnership with other services is a big part of who we are. We believe that by coming together, sharing ideas, and learning alongside one another, we strengthen not only our own practice but the experiences we provide for children across our wider community.

We were incredibly honoured to welcome Steph Bennett all the way from the UK, who introduced our teams to the awe and wonder of The Curiosity Approach

Investing in our people is at the heart of everything we do. Creating opportunities like this allows our educators to grow, feel inspired, and continue delivering the highest quality early learning experiences for every child.

And to finish the evening, our teams enjoyed dinner and drinks together at Little Sister — the perfect way to connect, reflect, and celebrate as one team.

While exploring this year’s National Simultaneous Storytime book, Luna Roo the Kangaroo Baller, our eagle-eyed little learners spotted someone very special hidden in the pages — GINDAJA!

This exciting moment sparked rich conversations as children connected familiar symbols and stories from our learning environment with those represented in the book, supporting a growing sense of identity, belonging and connection to Country and community.

Embedded learning in everyday moments, it’s the JK way 🌿✨

Finding MAGIC in ‘mess’; shaving foam painting ✨🫧🎨

This week the toddlers explored colours and textures through shaving foam painting, using their hands to swirl, squish, press and create. What may look messy at first glance was filled with rich sensory learning, creativity, experimentation and joy!

Through mixing colours, making marks and feeling the soft textures, the children were building fine motor skills, confidence, curiosity and self-expression — all while having lots of fun discovering the magic hidden within the mess.

Keep an eye out — these beautiful creations will be displayed in our toddler room from later next week!

More professional development this week when Skye, Mareeta, Hayley and Heath attended the FNQ Nature Quest event on Tuesday evening, engaging with Marc Armitage to explore innovative approaches to creating optimal play spaces.

We are looking forward to bringing these ideas to JK!

Investing in our people, it’s the JK Way!

Hayley, Jess and Mareeta had the pleasure of attending the Red Shield Appeal Launch Breakfast, which provided a valuable chance to connect and initiate our support for Salvos Cairns, with further details on our donation launch coming soon at Just Kids.

Investing in our people, it’s the JK Way!

Birthdays the JK way, celebrating a special 2nd Birthday in our Toddler Room today! 🥳 🎈

Today we wish one of our favourite teachers a very Happy 30th Birthday .
Happy Birthday Miss Ash!
Miss Ash is celebrating in style this year, travelling through the amazing New Zealand and Japan! And ….. she is not travelling alone!!!
I spy with my little eye ….. Can you see who is travelling with Miss Ash?
Enjoy your special day Ash and your well deserved holiday. Xx

A HUGE thank you to all our families who took time this morning to stop in, pause and connect. Love really does make a family, at JK 💚