Educate

The Hills Montessori School has been operating in the Adelaide Hills for over forty years, fostering the curiosity of children in their educational programs. Located in a bush setting with two campuses – the primary campus in Aldgate and middle school campus in Stirling. The Hills Montessori School offers an education based on the Montessori philosophy of respect for self, others and the environment by fostering a love of learning and commitment to community.

The Things That Matter 3 is the latest report to be released by SA Commissioner for Children and Young People, Helen Connolly. It is the third in the series and examines the findings from the Commissioner’s ‘Tell Helen’ Student Voice Postcard initiative, which surveys South Australian children aged 8 to 12 years on an annual basis.

Get your backpacks ready and your lunchboxes packed, enrolment for mid year intake for preschool is now open!

Significant investment has been committed to continually improve learning environments in schools across SA. Take a look at some of the major school upgrades completed, underway or scheduled for commencement this year.

When our children are young, exposing them to a variety of opportunities helps them learn what interests and inspires them.

The process of creating and making art is natural to children, as they engage all their senses to explore the world around them. The arts enable children to use their whole bodies for learning and create endless opportunities for imagining and creating.

Over the past few decades, we have been asking about the most influential factors that make a difference in your child’s learning. The greatest in-school factor is the expertise of the teacher – their passion, their ways of evaluative thinking, their expectations, and their understanding of what it means to learn.

Welcome to Educate issue #3 by KIDDO. The team behind KIDDO has created EDUCATE to put some of the best and brightest opportunities in SA education in the spotlight. So that families have access to a comprehensive look at what options there are to choose from when making the big decisions around schooling for our important little (and not so little) people!

Choosing an early learning centre (ELC) or school for your child is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make as a parent. So, how do you find the ‘right’ one?

Research and experience has shown us nature play is essential to a child’s physical health. The naturally uneven and textural materials found in nature can’t be replicated (although we may try). Outside, children tune into their senses; nature provides opportunities to explore, to notice, to wonder. Climbing Tree Creations have been creating nature play spaces for kids for over a decade now, we find out more about their philosophies.

How transformational would it be to learn under the shade of a tree? As our children move back into the world after the past few years learning from home, a connection to nature, play and learning has become a central theme in educational design for schools. Nature-play and the concept of biophilia, both aim to create opportunities to connect with nature more often in our daily lives through the spaces we spend our time in.

If you’re anything like the majority of Australian adults you were probably taught that money wasn’t something that ‘polite’ people talked about. But we do need to talk about it and, more importantly, we need to teach our kids about it while they’re at school, before bad habits have the chance to take root. But what, exactly, should you be teaching them?

Covid has accelerated the pace of change and altered the way our children engage with the online world in ways we may not have expected. Children in South Australian schools are saying that they are connected online more than ever before.

Mud a source of childhood joy but research has demonstrated that exposure to friendly bacteria in soil can assist the brain to release serotonin, the endorphin used to regulate mood. The more serotonin we have – the happier we are. Mud literally makes us happy. Jason from Nature Play SA takes us through the many benefits of mud play for our children, and some ideas for getting messy with mud!

South Australia is in the midst of a horror start to the flu season, with confirmed cases of influenza numbers soaring within the state. If you’ve been hesitating on getting a vaccination for yourself or your children, now’s the time take your medicine!