Kool Kidz Rowville

🍁🍂 Autumn Trees - Fork Painting 🍂🍁

The children in our Ladybugs room have been loving our art and craft activities lately! We’ve noticed so much active participation and pure enthusiasm whenever the paints come out. Since painting is a major current interest for many of the children, today we explored a unique texture experience: Autumn Tree Fork Painting! 🌳🎨

Instead of traditional brushes, the children dipped plastic forks into vibrant autumn colors and tapped them onto the paper. This clever technique created a beautiful pattern of lines, mimicking the falling leaves of the season. They repeated the process, layering different colors to create their own unique, beautiful autumn trees.

Not only was it incredibly fun, but it was also a fantastic way to develop fine motor skills and explore cause-and-effect through creative expression.

🎨 EYLF Learning Outcomes:
Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners – Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, and imagination.

Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators – Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.

The Heart of Mentorship in the Honeybees Room! 🐝💛

We are feeling so proud today! One of our wonderful students just finished her placement in the Honeybees room, and she left behind this incredibly touching note and gift for our Room Leader, Jemma.

Seeing the "flavor map" for the chocolates and reading such kind words reminds us why we do what we do. Jemma, your patience, guidance, and passion for early childhood education don't just inspire the children—they shape the next generation of educators.

Thank you, Jemma, for being such an amazing mentor, and a huge congratulations to our student on completing her placement! We know you’ll go on to do great things. ✨

What a joyous excursion to Rowville Manor

Kool Kidz Rowville's children from the Butterflies and Dragonflies rooms embarked on a special journey focused on spreading community spirit, bringing immense delight to the residents at Rowville Manor. The residents' faces lit up with pleasure as the KKR children visited, and the children's infectious energy and enthusiasm brought boundless joy to everyone. Some residents were touched by the children's genuine engagement in the activities. The array of fun activities, including storytelling, colouring, ball pits, balloons, and puzzles, was a resounding success. The children showcased their talents by performing the Acknowledgement of Country and a heartfelt Mother’s Day song, filling everyone's heart with pride. As we bid farewell, we promised to return soon and hope to welcome the residents to KKR in the near future. This excursion was a truly uplifting experience, and our next community involvement will surely be just as exciting. It was a truly unforgettable and enriching experience.

Kool Kidz Rowville

🦋 Puzzle Portraits: Seeing Ourselves & Our Friends in our Butterflies Room🧩

Our "All About Me" theme took a creative turn this week! We turned our own faces into puzzles to explore identity, belonging, and the beautiful diversity within our group. 🎨✨

The children became little detectives, looking closely at eyes, hair, and smiles to guess which piece belonged to which friend. "That's Sarah's curly hair!" and "I know those glasses!" were heard all around the room.

This experience isn't just about fun—it’s about Visual Discrimination and Social Connection. By piecing together these portraits, the children are building memory skills and a deep appreciation for the features that make us all unique.

As the great theorist Jean Piaget suggested, children learn best by doing. Today, they "did" the work of building a community, one puzzle piece at a time. ❤️

Making a friendship tree 🌲
This morning after Hey Dee Ho, the children participated in a hand painting activity that will go on our friendship wall. Recently, educators have observed the children thoroughly enjoying each others company. At times, the children will collaborate and play together and during other times they will engage in parallel play, playing side by side and happily sharing the same resources.

Last week, educators begun creating a visual friendship wall at the children's height that highlight's times where they have shared happy experiences together. Since being added onto the wall, the children have loved to come along throughout the day and look at the photos of themselves and their peers together, some who have developed their language skills even naming a few of their friends. A part of this wall created was a friendship tree. The tree was bare until this morning when the children engaged in hand print painting. They first picked a colour and educators painted this colour onto their hands. The children were then encouraged to give a piece of paper a big high five. After creating their own handprint, educators then encouraged the children to give one of their friends next to them a high five with their painted hands, mixing the two colours together. After this they were encouraged to do another hand print which now shared the colour of one of their friends.💙❤️💜💛

After all the children had a turn, educators rolled out big butcher paper across the table and very excitedly the children tapped their painted hands onto the paper, creating lots and lots of handprints. Once dry these handprints are dry, they will create the beautiful leaves on our friendship tree. 👋

🌸 Happy Mother’s Day to all our wonderful Mums! 🌸

Dear families,

The Leadership team is beyond excited to share some incredible news with everyone! Our wonderful Nicola has officially been named Educator of the year 2025!

This award is a well-deserved recognition of everything we already know about her. She pours her heart into everything she does, often going above and beyond to make sure every detail is perfect.

Whether it is the children she teaches, the families she supports, or the colleagues she inspires, Nicola builds deep, meaningful connections with everyone she meets. She makes anyone feel instantly valued the moment any children or families walked into the room.

Nicola, we are all so incredibly proud of you. Your passion makes Kool Kidz Rowville a brighter place for so many little ones and their families.

Please join me in showering her with some love in the comments!

Food For Families

Each year we pick a charity or organisation to support our community over the Christmas/holiday period.

This year we have chosen the Uniting, Food For Families collection to help all families in our community have full bellies and plates on their tables for Christmas.

We would like to say a big THANK YOU to our families and educators for their generosity and kindness.
Together we donated three full, heavy shopping bags of food for families in need in our community.

We appreciate each and every one of you :)

Spreading Kindness

Thank you to Educator Nicola and the Dragonfly children for sharing the love this week for World Kindness Day!

'Today many of the dragonfly children helped to spread some kindness to our wonderful educators by handing them one of the rainbows created throughout the week. Each rainbow had a different positive affirmation at the back of it, voiced by the dragonfly children to brighten the educators day, bringing them joy and positivity. Thank you to all our incredible educators for everything that you do!! Happy World Kindness Day!🩷💛❤️💚🧡💜💙🩵'

Diwali

This week, we have been celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights!
To all of our families, may your days be as colourful and vibrant as the lights of Diwali.

Our Trip to the Melbourne Zoo

Yesterday our Butterflies and Dragonflies children went on exciting adventure to the Melbourne Zoo!

After many, many headcounts and roll calls, we excitedly boarded a charted bus with our lovely driver Matt, (or Pat, as some of the children liked to call him) and made our way to Parkville where we would explore and encounter wildlife.

After a quick toilet break and morning tea, we first met with Marsupial Keeper, Rachel, who read us a true story about a bandicoot named Hope who was raised at Melbourne Zoo by keeper Amy and released into the wild.
Exploring the marsupial habitat, we each used a pair of binoculars to spy Kangaroos and Emus out and about in the beautiful sunshine.

We then headed off to the Lion Gorge where we were lucky enough to see the lions awake! (I don't know about you, but every time I have visited in the past, they are always sleeping! We did learn that they sleep about 17hrs a day, so that's probably why!)
Keeper Robin talked about the lions, sharing interesting facts about their diet, their routines, their training, their habitat, as well as their life in the wild.
As he opened the floor to questions, many of our children's hands shot up with inquisitive energy, with the children waiting patiently for their answers.
"When it's the lions birthday, do they get a cake?"
"Why do lions eat meat?"
"Are they the same age?"
"Do the gorillas get a birthday cake?"
"Why do the lions live here?"
"Why do tigers have a mane?"

After the lions, we headed off for our picnic on the grass where we enjoyed the sunshine and chatted about our captivating morning as we ate our lunch before heading over to the reptile cave where we saw so many kinds of lizards, turtles, a crocodile, an eel, and snakes!

Last but not least, the children had a boogie in the dance room before we headed back to the bus for our trip home to KKR.

Thank you to our parents and student helpers who joined us for our Zoo adventure. We appreciate you for helping make our day so special.

We look forward to our next adventure in 2026!

Thank you