Doris Blackburn Preschool

24/03/2024

To Our fantastic Social Committee. The Easter Picnic was a great success. Feedback from families has been truly positive. Thankyou for all of your efforts and hard work.🐰🐣

17/09/2023

To all of the Educators and Committee for your combined efforts to put on a fantastic 80th Anniversary celebration - THANKYOU!

31/07/2023

Congratulations to the social team and parent helpers for organising and managing the Bunnings BBQ. Fantastic effort for a great result. 👏👏👏👏

16/06/2023

A great big THANK YOU to our Social Committee for all of your efforts and hard work in organising our Kinder Disco. Thank you also to all of the families and staff that attended. A great time was had by all!

17/04/2023

Valuable information supporting children's pencil grip.

PENCIL GRIP ✏️

Research shows that children's hands aren't developmentally ready to hold a pencil in a correct pincer grip position at kindergarten age (ages 3 years to 5 years).

Some children's hands aren't ready to hold a pencil in this pincer grip position until they're 7 years of age. However, I know that you may be feeling worried if your child isn't writing their name or using a pencil correctly before they begin school.

Pencil grip is a crucial skill that young children need to develop in order to write legibly and comfortably - however, if we rush children into holding a pencil before their hand is developmentally ready, then we may be encouraging awkward pencil grip styles, and habits of the fingers and hands that may be frustrating for children to change as they start school.

Instead of worrying about being able to write letters and numbers in kindergarten, help children to develop the fine motor skills of their hands, which lay the foundation for handwriting, before using a pencil.

The 3 key pillars for fine motor skill development include:

1️⃣ Sensory Play

Adding sensory play into activities gives young children opportunities to discover various textures and positions using their hands.

2️⃣ Shoulder Stabilisation

Climbing and crawling activities can be heaps of fun while also contributing to the development of shoulder stabilisation. Shoulder stabilisation is important because if we can't keep our shoulders stable when moving our hands, our shoulder muscles make our movements awkward.

3️⃣ Bilateral Coordination

Bilateral coordination is the skill of using both sides of the body at the same time. A large number of children who struggle with handwriting, often struggle with this skill as well.

Activities that involve lacing beads or pasta, tearing paper, and pouring water/sand/rice promote bilateral coordination which helps the hands to function collaboratively as a team so that one hand can coordinate the pencil while the other hand keeps the paper still on the table.

Completing one of these activities above once or twice a week can significantly improve a child's fine motor skills and pencil grip as they develop!

01/04/2023

A great big Thankyou to our Social Committee for all of your efforts to organise the Easter picnic. It was great to see so many families come along to support the event in such difficult weather conditions.

21/05/2022

A BIG THANK YOU to our hardworking Social Committee for organising the disco last night. It was once again great to be able to enjoy the Doris Blackburn disco with children and families.

08/05/2022

Wishing all of our Mums, Grandmas and Special people a Happy Mother's Day 2022🌷🌹🌺🌸💐

01/01/2022

Happy New Year to all of our past and current families.
Looking forward to a successful 2022!

24/12/2021

To all of our families, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and and safe and enjoyable holiday season.

23/10/2021

Hi Everyone,

This may be of interest to some of our families.