Genny's Family Day Care Service

09/10/2018

11/07/2018

Family Day Care Cairns will be at the Innisfail Show today and tomorrow growing our scheme. Call past and see what our scheme has to offer! We are planning to start running regular Forest School sessions and play session in Innisfail if we can recruit enough educators. Katrina and Janeen will be there. Call in and say hi!

05/04/2018

?

28/01/2018

There’s a fantastic new business starting up in Cairns run by one of my friends. Check it out! Would be great for kids sleepover parties.

Cairns Slumber parties is Cairns one and only kids slumber party specialist. We come into your home to set up the party, and again the following day to pack away.

23/01/2018

Lakyn”s first day of prep today! So grown up!

23/01/2018

Felix on his first day of prep!

23/01/2018

A busy morning this morning, cooking and cleaning - the children that is! Today we did some intentional teaching around sneezing and coughing ettiqute as well as correct handwashing procedures. Some serious work to do in relation to hand washing! Once we had everyone's hands completely clean we baked chocolate chip biscuits for morning tea. This morning we also hosted playsession and enjoyed playing in the yard, playing with playdough and lots of loose parts. We have been doing lots of maths concepts play lately too and some children are now starting to recognise their numbers which is really exciting!

22/01/2018

William and Finn started Kindergarten today... feeling old

22/01/2018

Welcome to Jasper! A lover of paint, magnetics,gardening and science too just judging from this morning! We were busy building an obstacle course this morning leading on to fantastic imaginative, collaborative play. Children were busy planting out sunflower, bean and cucumber seeds and were working maths concepts into everything they did today! We even discovered pirates treasure(number stones) in the sand pit... shame it wasn’t gold or I wouldn’t be posting this right now!!

08/01/2018

Today the children learned that there is a world beyond Australia. Chaelin & Seung-Gi joined us today, all the way from South Korea. We took them to the Figtree Park. The children said they don't have enormous trees in South Korea, the children weren't so sure about climbing our trees. We went for a walk on the boardwalk and the South Korean children were taken with some flowers and plants so we went to Bunnings to check out a large variety of plants. As we wandered around the children found a few plants they have in Korea. We bought some potting mix and some seeds and came home. Over lunch discussions developed about food. Our children started wondering why they eat rice? The Koreans asked about what the Australian kids eat for lunch.... Scarlet asked them for some chopstick lessons. Frankie talked about his trip to Bali over the holidays so we looked at the globe and the Korean children showed us where Korea was in relation to Australia. Cody suggested that planes were not the only transport option they could have taken a boat, it would probably have taken "12 years!"

Our international visitors have provided learning about the world globally, opening up new thought processes and extensions for learning. It was wonderful to observe the fact that children have no obvious language barrier. The children were able to communicate with each other despite the language barrier. The Korean children talked to us about life in Korea and taught our children lots of different words and our children did the same. It was an honour to be a part of this exchange. The South Korean children will be with us over the next fortnight and we look forward to learning with them about the world and new cultures.

06/01/2018

First day back to work in 2018 and we went to Hartleys Creek Crocodile Farm. What a great place to visit! Amazing day cruising down the croc infested river, observing lots of Australian wildlife and learning about the Australian bush. We finished the day by stopping at Ellis Beach and playing in the sand. The children I had today are visiting from Korea and loved the ocean reporting that the Korean ocean. Is small and polluted. The Korean children will be with me over the next week learning about Australia and our way. It will be wonderful fir all the children to learn about different cultures. A great way to start off the year.

18/12/2017

We caught two more fish today to add to our tally, one on a homemade fishing rod (branch with a line and hook attached), most of the children have overcome their fear of worms able to dig and now handle the poor critters! The children are developing the patience required to wait for the fish to bite now feeling the line for nibbles, today we added small sinkers to the mix, some children tried catching flies to put on the hooks but they weren't quite fast enough!

Today the children spotted large golden orb spiders in big intricate webs. We watched one spider run down its web and start eating a cricket that was trapped. We remembered that spiders don't have teeth, they drink their prey. We also looked at the web pattern and carefully touched the web discovering it was not sticky at all. Questions arose as to why insects get trapped in the web and why the spider doesn't get stuck in its own web. Throughout the morning we spotted other large orb spiders noticing that whereever there was a large spider there was another smaller different coloured right beside it, some children wondered if one was male and one female - we will research this in collaboration with the children and solve the mystery.

This morning we also found a small snail on a leaf. We picked up the snail for a closer look and the children watched it stick its little antennae up. We talked about the eyes of the snail being on the top of its antennae. We noticed the slimy trail the snail left, the children wondered about that and the observation was made by one child that the shell of the snail was very similar to the shell of the hermit crab - is there a relation there - something else we need to research. The bush is a wonderful classroom for open ended learning, questioning and wondering isn't it!

Today we took the children mountain climbing and also balancing on rocks across the creek. Another fantastic day for all!