Vera Lacaze Memorial Community Kindergarten

This week we welcomed Michelle from Bugs Ed to kindy to learn some fascinating facts about insects. She brought her amazing collection of pinned insects, plus a praying mantis, leaf insect and stick insect. The children even got to hold one if they wanted to. Such an interesting experience!

Did you know we offer a Free Kindy program in Toowoomba, for children aged 4 (in the year before school), for 15 hours per week with a qualified early childhood teachers?
If you're looking at kindy for 2027 (or beyond), call us or email [email protected] for a tour!

A real shop with real money......this what our Cassia B group created last week! After weeks of playing "jelly shop" with loose parts at kindy, they planned out and created their own jelly shop, and brought real money to buy it. The children used their emerging literacy and numeracy skills to create a cash register, and signs for the shop and the menu. Then we made our jelly. They each used a coin to pay for their jelly (probably a rarity in many families to use coins these days). The coins we collected will be put towards our Pyjama Day donation later in the term.

Former Vera Lacaze parent Jodie from came to do first of three inclusion and multicultural workshops with our kindy groups this week.
This first one focused on thinking about the natural environment and how Indigenous Australians have cared for country, by looking at things of different colours that are Australian, such as wattle, Uluru, and butterflies.
We look forward to the next one learning about Australia and the World.

During Reconciliation Week at kindy, between the groups, we talked about the Acknowledgement of Country, discussed the meanings behind the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Flags, looked at the map of Indigenous languages in Australia (there's a lot!), and discussed how we could care for country.

National Simultaneous Storytime is held each year in May, and children all around Australia are invited to read the same book at the same time. This year the story was "Luna Roo", about a soccer-playing kangaroo who is trusted to play in a team even though she is inexperienced. At the start and the end of the week, our groups joined together to read the book. It's always a treat for the children to visit each other's rooms at kindy!

What is magnetic? This is the question that some of the Cassia B children were investigating last week. After observing how the Tap Tap nails were attracted to a magnet, they tried the magnet on a variety of other materials. They were fascinated to see the magnet pick up multiple items at once, often in a chain. We will continue these investigations to find out more about magnets!

Last Friday, the Cassia B and Callistemon groups hopped on the bus to visit , and it certainly lived up to it's name!
Alicia had a display of interesting things to look at about bees, then talked to the children about the different kinds of bees, how they collect pollen and nectar, and the role of the queen. The children were able to taste some of Windy Acres' honey (delicious!), and take home a "seed bomb" to grow more flowers for bees.
We were especially excited to see our Vera Lacaze hive, ready for some bees to move in!

Now Mother's day is over, we can reveal the surprise. Our Junior Kindy group gifted their mums with a suncatcher and a portrait this year. The portraits are beautiful, colourful and unique, just like our JK Mums!

On Tuesday our Cassia A group was visited by Alicia from Windy Acres Farm (as it was too wet for us to visit her). She talked to the children about the different jobs of bees, how they collect pollen, and the children made a seed 'bomb' to grow more bee-attracting flowers in their own gardens.