Who or what are we celebrating now?
Whether you refer to this time of year as Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas, Kids Cottage would love to wish all our wonderful community a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. Let this New Year, 2016 be filled with happiness, joy and prosperity for you and all your loved ones. We appreciate and thank you for your support and involvement over the past year and look forward to the new year.
Kids Matter Mentally-Healthy Resouces
Although it’s an exciting time of year, the holidays aren’t always stress-free. So we thought it may be useful to provide a link to the Kids Matter website where they have pulled together their favourite resources for you to have on standby if your trying to have a mentally-healthy holiday season.
A testing time for family relationships
Australia Day 2016
How will you be celebrating Australia Day on Tuesday 26th January 2016. Kids Cottage will be acknowledging Australia Day by planning various activities and provocations to further explore What does it means for some of us to be Australian? In addition, on the basis of this playful and joyful child centred activities and provocations as the children explore with their senses facilitated by the educators and as the experiences emerges the program will consider and foster cultural awareness, respects and honours diversity and how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are valued?
To find out whats happening on Australia Day in NSW or in and around Sydney and would like to join in the celebration click on the following link
Enjoy!!! Drive Safely and drink responsibly
NAIDOC Week 2016: 3-10 July
NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. Its origins can be traced to the emergence of Aboriginal groups in the 1920′s which sought to increase awareness in the wider community of the status and treatment of Indigenous Australians.
NAIDOC Week is held in the first full week of July. It is a time to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and an opportunity to recognise the contributions that Indigenous Australians make to our country and our society.
We encourage all Australians to participate in the celebrations and activities that take place across the nation during NAIDOC Week. For more information please visit the NAIDOC website.
Other useful links
Kids Cottage provides a physical environment and encourages practice in ways that acknowledges and respects the Indigenous Australians unique relationship they have with the land and their rights and obligations as custodians
We are always excited about our calender year because it includes a celebrating our diverse cultures within and outside our community.
At Kids Cottage, the core or essence of celebrations is interactions and relationships built on trust and honouring difference. Furthermore, in the context of our early childhood service we are very grateful to have such a diverse culture and emphasises the importance of cultural competency to support the development of every child’s sense of ‘belonging, being and becoming’. Celebrations at Kids Cottage is a process that acknowledges children’s learning and development in all its languages and symbols and this process includes other important dimensions such as special events that is important to the individual family and child’s life like Christmas, Easter, Chinese New Year and so on… and we are very fortunate to have a long list of diverse events. We need to respect the diversity of families and communities and the aspirations they hold for their children. We need to uphold all children’s rights to have their culture, identities, abilities and strengths acknowledged and valued. We also include our educators and staff in this celebration process and their own rights culture, identities, abilities and strengths. We honour, respect and enjoy the moment for being.
‘Educators who are culturally competent respect multiple cultural ways of knowing, seeing and living, celebrate the benefits of diversity and have an ability to understand and honour differences’ (EYLF: p.16)