Mini Moo Family Day Care

After 6 years I have made the difficult decision to close mini moo family day care. It has been an amazing 6 years and I have had the pleasure of watching so many beautiful children grow and develop over the years. I will miss the children and their families like crazy but will not let them be strangers.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me and helped me grow as an educator over the years.

Lest We Forget.

National Child Protection Week (5-11 September) is an important opportunity for all of us to affirm our commitment to reducing child abuse and neglect in Australia.

This year’s theme – ‘Every child, in every community, needs a fair go’ - is crucial because it highlights the bigger picture in addressing child abuse by ensuring that every family has access to the support that children need to thrive and be healthy.

More information, including details about how you can get involved, is available at: www.napcan.org.au/get-involved-2021/

Happy Mothers Day

What is Family Day Care?

Family day care is where a child is educated in a small group in a family style atmosphere at an educator’s home, seeing the same educator each day.
Early childhood educators invest years of training to gain their child care qualifications, and dedicate themselves to ongoing upskilling while improving their knowledge to provide the best possible service for children and their families.

The ratio in family day care is one educator for a maximum of seven children, and there can be no more than four children who are preschool age or under (per educator). The educator’s children must be counted in those seven children if they are under 13 years and not being cared for by another adult at the premises.

All family day care educators must hold or be “actively working towards” at least an approved certificate III level education and care qualification.

The approved provider of a family day care service ensure educators and all adults residing in family day care premises have working with children checks before the person is engaged or registered as a family day care educator as part of the service. In addition to this, Family Day Care educators must have completed training and received certificates such as Police check, First Aid qualifications, Food Handling, Child Protection etc.

The approved provider provides regular monitoring and support to educators to ensure health and safety of children. The approved provider offers ongoing professional development to family day care educators to create a more vibrant and supportive place for children.

There’s a clear focus on learning and development of children based on the principles, practices and learning outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework. The educators plan an educational program for each child, share it with families and invite family input.

Family day care services are assessed for quality of education and care under the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority’s National Quality Standard.
Seven quality areas are assessed and rated to determine a quality rating, including the educational program, childrens’ health and safety, the physical environment, staffing, relationships with children and families, governance and leadership.
State and territory regulatory authorities assess and rate family day care services as either “exceeding”, “meeting”, “working towards”, or “significant improvement required” using the National Quality Standard, also known as the NQS.

The children have planted and are taking care of our new vegie garden. They remind me everyday that they need to water the vegies and get so much joy when the fruit they have been taking care of is ready to be harvested. They squeal with delight when they find a red strawberry, help to pick the peas from the vine, are waiting patiently for the tomatoes to ripe and were rewarded this week by finally being able to eat their carrots.
When you provide children with the opportunity to help and care for gardens and plants you teach children about healthy eating as well as give the children an opportunity to work on their patience and learn about taking responsibility of their planet, all while building their confidence.

October is Halloween month at Mini Moo. Here are just some of the activities the children were able to experience for Halloween.

Wow what a wonderful surprise. Thank you so much for the nomination.

Our new mud pit and mud kitchen has been very busy lately. The children will ask for water to add to their creations and bring in different elements such as rocks, wood chips, leaves and even an apple core 🤔 I'm am currently looking into options to allow the children access to water without having to ask all the time. I'm thinking an old water pump of some sort.

Our outside activity walls add that extra element to the area and the children play with them daily. From squeezing the bike horn and drawing on the chalkboard to watching the water run down the pipes and counting the pool noodles. There is always something to do.

The last few weeks have seen some pretty big changes at Mini Moo. What began as a simple plan to lay new grass where the sandpit used to be quickly turned into a whole backyard revamp. The plan involved building up the grassed area to make it level by extending the retaining wall, creating a yarning circle, new sandpit area, mud pit area with mud kitchen and loose parts (photo to come), new water wall, tinkering wall, blackboard, ball wall, music wall (photo to come) and outdoor abacus (still to be completed) along with painting and staining a new garden bed for veggies. I'm proud to say along with the help of my wonderful husband, father and mother we have been able to pull it off and I'm very pleased with the end result. I can't wait for the children to return this week to enjoy it all.

Please help us and sign this petition. I 100% agree that families should be given free childcare in this hard time but not at the expense of my wages. My thriving business is now going to suffer due to having 50% of my wages cut. How is that fair?

Can you spare a minute to help Amanda Hall? Change the ECEC Relief Package to support Family Day Care