QA5 Relationships with Children

Strengths

Year 6 Farewell

Each year we lose our year 6s. To make sure their time and contribution to our OSHC is acknowledged adequately we like to finish with a year 6 celebration.

During this time, we order boost juices and pizzas and share stories of the year 6's time in OSHC.

It actually provides a wonderful time to reflect on their experiences and gain insight/ capture feedback about what they enjoyed and thought of OSHC.

Behaviour Management - Values

Our OSHC does not operate under a rules system. Instead, we began a journey 2 years ago asking the children what they wanted their OSHC to be like. We recorded their answers and came up with a value system from their responses. We felt most of their feedback really fit under 2 vales - Respect and Responsibility. Since then, we have introduced a nomination and acknowledgment system whereby students earn OSHC bucks every time they display these values.

Student/Educator Nomination System

Once we established the 2 R's curriculum, we then needed to develop a system to encourage and acknowledge these values. The OSHC pebble system was set up initially. This system involved children nominating each other when they believe they saw examples of respect or responsibility being displayed. This soon developed into educators being able to nominate and further into a pebble jar so that children and educators could nominate educators.

New Staff/Children Acknowledgements

New staff and children are introduced into our OSHC predominately during our staff meetings. Each child (depending their level of confidence) is invited to the front to share something about themselves. The Educators are required to answer 3 questions about themselves. Each child starting OSHC is also given a tour of the OSHC prior to their start and an introduction to the staff.

Staff uniform is important to give the new educators a sense of belonging.

Introducing new staff member Grace to the team.

Behaviour Shared with School/Sentral Profile

Having practice that we know is sustainable and embedded is crucial to growth.

When it comes to having positive relationships with the children the foundation for that is understanding the children, their families, likes and interests. A big part of that is being consistent when it comes to their behaviour. We have the ability at OSHC to share student profiles with the school through Sentral. Sentral allows us to see the profile that the child's teacher has built for them. It also allows us to see their behaviour in class.

Around the World Vacation Care

A fabulous way to acknowledge students who have a background outside of Australia is to incorporate it into the PFD or Vac care program. Here, we recognise these backgrounds with a regular 'Around the World' day.

During these days students depart on a pretend plane and visit countries around the world. If a child has an experience of that country or comes from that country they are asked to share.

We then celebrate customs and food of that country.

Cultural Celebrations

Along with our around the world days, another way we celebrate children from different cultures is to have a cultural day. During this particular cultural day pictured on the left we celebrated the aboriginal culture. We have 2 students here from an aboriginal background. As you can see from the feedback the family was grateful for the recognition of their culture.