Mrs Lana Schwigtenberg - OSHC Coordinator
All OSHC Services are regulated by the Department of Education’s Early Childhood Education Directorate. Services are approved to operate under the Children (Education and Care Services National Law Application) ACT 2010, the Education and Care Services National Regulations and the National Quality Framework. OSHC Services are also required to provide an educational programme in accordance with the My Time Our Place, the framework for school age care in Australia.
Here at St. Peter’s OSHC we are a Service of high quality ensuring we meet all of regulatory requirements. We have always been and continue to be a relaxed and fun environment for our students. The OSHC team prepare and design our programme to create such a fun and relaxed atmosphere, as we know how important environments are for the children to feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging.
Belonging is a word the OSHC team use a lot, as this is what we aim for you and your children to feel at our Service. Feeling a sense of belonging is knowing you have a genuine connection with the people around you, where you feel safe and secure to just be yourself. This in turn will provide the children with confidence allowing them to express themselves, try new things, challenge themselves and take risks. When your children attend OSHC we get to know them as individuals, we also observe how they socialise in group situations and we plan activities to build on and extend their needs and interests. One of the best parts of socialising at OSHC is that it provides the children with the opportunity to develop friendships with other children of varying ages, not just their same age peers in their immediate circle.
When we are developing and preparing our programme, all staff review their observations of the children and discuss how we can help support and extend the children’s interests. Educators observations are only one step of our programming, the children are the voice and are the centre of our programme. The children are always actively involved in the programming process, they share their ideas with educators as well as adding their ideas in the suggestion box. Most importantly as you would be aware children’s interests change daily, this why it is so important that our programme is flexible. Having a flexible programme enables the children to follow and extend on their ideas.
Our upcoming Vacation Care Programme demonstrates how well the educators know and listen to the children. For example, as the children love clay work and making characters from clay, blocks and paper, we have planned a Claymation day. This provides the children with another medium to express themselves and utilise technology to make, tell and share their stories. Board games have been a huge hit, so much so that we are creating a life-sized game of Candy Land so the children can immerse themselves into the game. Then we have back by popular demand from the children our exciting Hogwarts day, this a day loved by everyone. All the OSHC staff go above and beyond for all these activities and are currently working very hard to prepare these amazing days for the children.
As you know we love to share our programme with you, what the children have been participating in. We also know many of you are missing looking through our photo displays and the journals. We have been adding some photos in the newsletters for you all, we have added some more this week and we hope you are continuing to enjoy these.
