Bright Minds Academy in South Nowra | Childcare service

Bright Minds Academy

Locality: South Nowra

Phone: +61 2 4424 0975

Address: 35 Hillcrest Avenue 2541 South Nowra, NSW, Australia

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24.01.2022 Over the last few weeks, the Curious Creators at our Cranebrook service have been looking at all of the wonderful things we can find in the garden! This project started when we noticed a ladybug in the garden, which the children loved! The staff went on to use this as a learning opportunity and have been embedding the project into their daily routine by looking at different bugs, creating artworks, reading stories and planting flowers! The children are now able to identify the colours you will find on common garden insects like bees, dragonflies, butterflies and crickets. The children have loved exploring the gardens and investigating their findings! Through this, the children have developed an appreciation for the environment and the living things we find outdoors!

20.01.2022 Red and yellow and pink and green Purple and orange and blue I can sing a rainbow Sing a rainbow Sing a rainbow too.... The Cranebrook Discoverers have made their very own rainbow decorating the room in an abundance of colours. Colour is one of the first ways your child makes distinctions among the things he or she sees. Throughout the year we are learning about our colours through many different mediums; gluing, painting, books, songs, matching games and everyday discussions. Through different teaching strategies the Discoverers are learning to match, identify and name colours throughout their routine.

20.01.2022 Over the last two months, the Discoverers at Cranebrook have been learning to recognise their names through a variety of songs and craft activities. One of the best places to start when it comes to teaching young children how to read is to begin with their name. Young children are highly interested in their own name as it has meaning and value to them!

20.01.2022 During our recent closure at our Cranebrook service we have had so much support from community members and also some of the other childcare centres around us. The children have been working together to make thank you cards to show our gratitude and support. We would like to make a special mention to Cranebrook Community Preschool and also Greys Lane Childrens Centre. Thank you for your beautiful poster and works of art.

19.01.2022 The Menai Explorers had a fantastic morning with our cooking experience today. Families were invited to come and join in on the experience too. The children wanted to make yellow cupcakes and helped out, showing off their skills to their families; pouring, mixing and stirring the ingredients in the bowls. It was wonderful to be able to welcome our families to join in our day to create some delicious treats! Thank you to those who contributed!

18.01.2022 The Nowra Little Learners love to play with bubbles both inside and outside! Bubbles are great to stimulate the sensory development in young children! They are also developing their gross motor skills and to extend on hand eye coordination as they reach and jump for the bubbles.

18.01.2022 The Nowra Little Learners are showing a great interest in the book corner and reading stories as a group and also individually. Reading stories helps foster the development of social and language development skills. Small group and one on one experiences are important; this helps the children build trusting bonds with their educators ensuring they feel safe secure and supported while at Bright Minds Academy.

18.01.2022 The South Nowra Dazzling Discoverers were lucky enough to have one of our families bring us in an incubator and some fertilized chicken eggs recently. Over the 21 days we learnt many things as we focused on chickens and their lifecycle. Each day we would check the water level, the temperature and the humidity of the incubator and watched as the incubator turned the eggs to stop the chick from sticking to the shell. At day 18 the incubator stopped turning the eggs and our exci...tement increased as we knew that it would not be long before we would be able to see our chicks starting to hatch. Over the next 3 days we would check the eggs to see if there were any cracks starting to appear until day 20 we started to see small cracks in 2 of the eggs! We knew the time was close and we were all watching in anticipation of our eggs hatching. On day 21 we arrived to find the 2 eggs had hatched. We were all in awe of these 2 little chicks that had hatched sometime during the night. During the day we were lucky enough to watch another 4 chicks hatch! The whole process of watching an egg hatch took quite a few hours but was an amazing experience that we were incredibly grateful to have been able to experience. See more

17.01.2022 Yesterday was an exciting day at our Belconnen service as we celebrated for Melbourne cup! Our Curious Creators enjoyed decorating their paper plates as a first step to making fascinators and hats. These will then become future recycled accessories for our dress up area. The educators provided a range of resources and materials to the children enabling the children to use their fine motor skills when selecting from the variety of materials. This also provided the opportunity for the children to engage independently making their own decisions

17.01.2022 The Cranebrook Eager Explorers have been working very hard on their School Readiness lately! Here they can be seen working on both their numeracy skills and recognizing patterns while using their fine motor skills to complete the task at hand. Since the beginning of the year the Explorers have come along in leaps and bounds and we, as their educators, are so proud of how far theyve all come!

16.01.2022 To spread joy and cheer to all of the children and families to all of those essential worker families still attending, BMA Cranebrook have hung a rainbow of balloons up at our service. This rainbow represents the rainbow at the end of the storm we are currently experiencing. Recently in the local community there have also been bear hunts happening in peoples front windows. To celebrate this community event we have also hidden teddies around the service which the children have been able to find during their very own bear hunts!

16.01.2022 To ensure we stay connected to our Cranebrook Iconic Inventor families while they are off due to socially distancing, we have created a skype account! This week we had 2 special skype calls from Finn and his mum Michelle and Maddison and her mum Samantha. This week, in preparation for Easter, on Wednesday we used our observation skills to complete an Easter egg hunt worksheet and then used our skills to search the room for all the hidden Eggs Miss Ash had hidden within our environment. We decided to take photos and send them in our journal so our friends could play with us at home. How many eggs can you find?

15.01.2022 BMA South Nowra had a special visitor which was bought in by Lillie and Harrisons dad. He had been fishing and caught a mud crab. The Amazing Adventurers have been very interested in finding and learning about insects and lizards and all things crawling within the outdoor environment and were very intrigued to ask Lillie and Harrisons dad all the how, why and what questions surrounding the mud crab.

15.01.2022 In the early hours of Monday the 7th September one of our Bright Minds families devastatingly lost their home due to a fire. They have lost everything. There has been a go fund me page set up for them if you would like to donate to assist them in rebuilding their house and memories. https://gf.me/u/yw5jtc Also our Cranebrook and Waterside services will be collecting donations for the family. We will be doing a gift card tree for the family to assist them in replacing everything they have lost in this devastating event including essential items such as clothing and household items. Any donation will be greatly appreciated by the centre and no doubt the family. Our thoughts are with the family during this extremely difficult time.

12.01.2022 This month the educators in the Cranebrook Iconic Inventors room have been working hard to create a fun learning environment where the children can relax through play and leisure while gaining important life skills. One of the areas that has been set up was a doctors surgery which has now become a huge interest of theirs! Educators have been extending on this with first aid lessons, exploring what our bodies can do through movement and learning about a variety of body parts and their functions.

12.01.2022 In the Amazing Adventurers room at our Cranebrook service we have been preparing the children for their transition to Kindergarten next year. This month Educators have been focusing on fostering the childrens numeracy and literacy development through our planned preschool program. We have been learning about the letters of the alphabet and the sounds that they make, what order numbers occur, counting experiences and practising our drawing and writing skills.

11.01.2022 PIF would like to say a BIG thank you to the wonderful staff and families at Bright Minds Academy Cranebrook for their kind donation of pantry items. This so generous and will be greatly appreciated by everyone. Once again, thank you

11.01.2022 The Waterside Curious Creators have begun their exploration of animals from many different environments! So far they've explored animals found at the zoo and in the jungle, as well as farm animals. They've read some of their favourite stories (Dear Zoo and Noisy Farm), engaged in small world sensory experiences, crafted some animals with paint and other materials, and watched a video of real live animals at the zoo! The Curious Creators have been having a blast exploring animals and cannot wait to venture Under the Sea, Aussie Animals, and Pets.

10.01.2022 Over the last couple of weeks the Curious Creators at Cranebrook have been learning about colours through our I can sing a rainbow project. Through this project we have been focusing on labelling colours, matching colours and sorting objects according to their colour. The children have also been learning how to sign the Rainbow song using Auslan, and enjoyed doing a science experiment using skittles to make a rainbow.

08.01.2022 As part of our vacation care program the children in the Iconic Inventors Vacation Care celebrated NAIDOC week as we explored the history, culture and achievements of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Although the date has been changed to November, we thought it was still important to include experiences to enrich the children's cultural competence and connection between the Indigenous culture as well as the Traditional Custodians of our land- The Durag people.... The children were given opportunities to make a basket using a weaving technique, do paintings of Australian animals and even practise their boomerang throwing. Outside we made our own campsite with tents and made a yarning circle where we said our acknowledgement to country and discussed sacred sites around Australia, particularly focusing on the Devils Marbles in the Northern Territory as it is believed that they are the eggs of the rainbow serpent. We extended on this by reading the dreamtime story- The rainbow serpent and afterwards the children went back to their tents to discuss the story and draw their own interpretation of the dreamtime story. See more

08.01.2022 The Menai Explorers and Adventurers played a game of recycling Bingo that teaches us what we do with particular waste items. The aim of the game is to collect only those items that are shown on the players bingo card. The children joined in on a discussion with their Educators beforehand to help them to grasp the concept of recycling and what items might belong to each category. Everyone played so well helping out their friends when they knew they had it on their cards.

07.01.2022 Bright Minds Academy Menai, Cranebrook and Waterside have all made it into the finals of the local business awards for our areas! Well done teams!

07.01.2022 Throughout the year in the Cranebrook Amazing Adventurers room we have been learning about the environment. This project started with the childrens interest in the local bush fires that were happening within our community throughout January. We then started to look at other Natural disasters that had been occurring (flood and drought) and the effects that these have on our environment. From here we then began to research pollution and how we can help take care of our environ...ment. We looked at air, land and water pollution. We moved onto learn about sustainable living and how our practises can help sustain the planet. The children helped to grow a garden with lots of vegetables that we can then use in our meals at the service when they grow. We made a compost so that we can re-use our scraps and then use them on our garden and finally we made a worm farm where we will use the worm juice that we collect to make our garden grow. The children have been really excited to contribute to all these experiences and have learnt a lot about the world around them through this project. (This learning assists the children in achieving Outcome 2 from the Early Years Learning Framework Children are connected with and contribute to the world around them.) See more

06.01.2022 At Bright Minds Academy Waterside the Adventurers and the Explorers children had a Science incursion for National Science week. We had Science for Preschoolers come and visit us and Wow! Was it great! The children showed great enthusiasm as they took part in some scientific discovery! We listened to the science teacher while she spoke about living things, gas, liquid and solids and the children even had the chance to get their hands messy and become little scientists thems...elves. The children watched the screen as the science teacher spoke about living things and how we need food, water and air to grow big and strong. We placed some seedlings in a bag with water. We placed these on our window for some sunlight and to watch them sprout. We continued our discussion about the elements and participated in a bubble blowing activity, which of course had us all giggling. The Explorers watched as the bubbles filled with the smoke, which was very cool! We watched as a small volcano came to life, which our Science teacher filled with dry ice so the volcanoes bubbled. This was such a great hands on learning experience that all the children really enjoyed. It was amazing watching their curiosity for science! See more

06.01.2022 A wonderful tribute to BMA Cranebrook today from one of our amazing neighbouring centres! Thank you Cranebrook Community Preschool! What an amazing community we have around us!

06.01.2022 Our Belconnen service will be reopening Monday 13 July 2020! Feel free to call us to book in a centre tour!

05.01.2022 This week the Waterside Nurturing Navigators are learning about being safe and healthy! We engaged in some experiences learning about how to wash our hands, where we find our tissues and how to use them, encouraging our self help skills. We engaged in a video about staying healthy and reducing the spread of germs; We practised sneezing and coughing into our elbow if needed and washing our hands straight away. The Navigators really enjoyed this experience and were very eager to show us through out the day how they stay safe and healthy here at the service.

04.01.2022 Our Nowra Explorers have been experimenting with painting using different objects. The children have discussed and provided ideas as to what we can use to paint with next. This experimentation started with painting with different objects we found in the yard, we then moved onto painting with our feet, our hands and also our toy dinosaurs. This has provided the children with the opportunity to experiment with different objects and to hypothesis what will happen when we use different things to paint with.

04.01.2022 This week as an extension of book week our Belconnen centre Little Learners and Curious Creators have been busy engaging in a literacy filled environment! The children were able to access a variety of books some of which included home languages such as Spanish. The children visibly shared enjoyment of the books through language and texts in a range of ways either individually turning the pages at their own pace or participating in a group story time with our educators. Our educators consistently support children’s positive interactions by creating these predictable literacy enriched environments to promote children’s engagement in learning.

03.01.2022 This month the Menai Little Learners have begun an under the sea exploration. The children explored some of our natural sea materials and enjoyed exploring the wooden sea animals. Educators have incorporated recyclable materials to the area for the children to explore.

03.01.2022 Wishing all Mums a wonderful Mothers Day!

02.01.2022 The children in the Nowra Adventurers room are enjoying building their numeracy skills in preparation for their transition to big school. In order to support the children in developing a deep understanding of the value of numbers, the children have been invited to participate in lots of hands on activities both in our indoor and outdoor environments. One of our experiences included making numbers to ten using pieces we found in our outdoor area! The children worked together to collect items to represent the value of the numbers and use their one to one counting to ensure they had the right amount.

02.01.2022 Yesterday the children and educators at Cranebrook were lucky enough to have some special Grandparents come in to help us commemorate Remembrance Day. Riley and Charlie’s Grandparents, Derek and Yvonne, conducted a beautiful service for us at 11am. We read The Ode and then listened to The Last Post be played in front of us on the Bugle before all taking part in a minutes silence. Finishing off the service we then listened to The Reveille. It was so special to be able to acknowledge and share this day with our families and we are all so grateful for this wonderful families contribution! Thank you so much to Derek and Yvonne for joining us.

01.01.2022 At Bright Minds Academy Nowra, it has been so wonderful to see everyone showing off their pyjamas to help support the wonderful foster carers of both our local and wider community. Foster carers play a vital role in the lives of children and young people who, through no fault of their own, may have endured traumatic or difficult experiences. National Pyjama Day is also an annual event that aims to raise awareness and funds for The Pyjama Foundations Love of Learning Program which empowers children in care to reach their full potential. Some educators also included Pyjamas as the theme in our programs this week such as reading the story The Llama who lost his Pyjamas by Jedda Robbard. In relation to the change of weather, this also initiated discussions about the different pyjamas we were wearing during different seasons.