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In This Issue

March and April

Student Work

Placement

Team Building

Baby News

New Trainers

Regional In-services

Are you a Leader?

PD in Practice

Inspiration Spot

Sticky Fingers

CTAS Education (National Provider Code 51849) Issue 25: March-April 2017

Welcome

Interesting Happenings during March and April

International Women’s Day, 8 March: This day is used to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women because visibility and awareness help drive positive change for women. Did you know that the World Economic Forum predicts the gender gap wont close entirely until 2186!!! The campaign this year is focusing on #BeBoldforChange, for more information on how to be involved or what you can do at your centre, visit https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme

Harmony Day, 21 March: It’s a day to celebrate our cultural diversity. Its about inclusivenss , respect and a sense of belonging. The message of Harmony Day is EVERYONE BELONGS. How well does that fit into the EYLF theme of Belonging, Being and Becoming! Find out more information, resources, and how to register your event, at http://www.harmony.gov.au/

World Children’s Book Day, 2 April: This day is celebrated to inspire a love of reading. Ask families to bring in their favourite book to read together, or have educators bring in their favourite book from their childhood to read to the children. Try and have each educator read one-on-one with the children during this week. Ask children to “read” their favourite book to an educator. Celebrate reading!

Student Work Placement Hands-on work experience is an integral part of becoming an Early Childhood Educator. When students undertake a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care they are required to complete between 80 and 240 hours of workplace based experience in a registered child care centre. Therefore, we are looking for expressions of interests from early childhood education and care services who are interested in hosting CTAS students on work/practical placement.

At CTAS we ensure our students are work-placement ready by delivering well-rounded, high-quality training and education that encourages students to develop professional skills and essential knowledge as they learn. We ensure students are prepared and organised for all work placements and we ensure the CTAS team are available to provide on-going support and communication through each placement. If you are interested in mentoring students at your workplace, email admin@ctas.wa.edu.au.

Build a great team

Team Building Exercises

Team building activities are valuable for improving communication between staff

members and can be a bonding experience. They can be useful for improving

morale and motivation, finding the barriers in the team, identifying team and

individual strengths and weaknesses, and encouraging the development of

problem solving skills.

There are many types of team building exercises, from getting to know you

games to working as a team to achieve a common goal, to group outdoor

obstacle courses. These exercises can take 10 minutes to whole days.

For a childcare service, it may be useful to use different team building

exercises during staff meetings, one activity is called the Marshmallow

Spaghetti Tower.

Develops: Creative Problem Solving and Collaboration

Time needed: 10-20 minutes

What you will need: 200 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, 1 roll of masking

tape, 1m of string or wool and 1 marshmallow per team

Instructions: Using just the items given above, which team can build the highest

tower? The marshmallow must be at the top of the tower and the whole

structure has to stand by itself for

5 seconds.

For more information and ideas

on team building, book into the

CTAS Team Building and Stress

Management workshop 12 April.

Email the team at

pdtraining@ctas.wa.edu.au

Happy news Congratulations to:

Alice, CTAS Trainer, who had a

baby girl born 7 Jan 2017.

Jenna, CTAS Trainer, who had a

baby girl born 9 Feb 2017.

Brooke, CTAS Trainer, who is

expecting a baby in August.

Congratulations!

New Trainers Naomi joins CTAS as a Trainer, she has been working in the Child Care Industry since 2005 and has worked across all age groups. Within this time she gained her Certificate III and Diploma in Early Childhood, as well as her Diploma in School Aged Care. Her last role as an Educator before becoming a Trainer was in both a LDC and OSH setting where she was the assistant director, Room leader, ECT and Educational Leader. For the past 6 months Naomi has been in a Training role.

She is currently studying to become an Early Childhood Teacher, as she would like to help children develop their life long skills as well as their foundation skills such as learning to read and write. Naomi finds working with children to be “the most rewarding career path one can take, as there is nothing quite like the love of a child and the innocence they possess”.

Samantha has been in the childcare industry for 10 years now. She has worked as an educator, room leader, 2IC and educational leader in full time positions and also relief. Samantha joins the Professional Development team, and is very passionate about quality care for children especially in regards to behaviour guidance and children's emotional wellbeing (e.g. self regulation, sense of identity

and general happiness).

Shelley has joined us as a Professional Development Trainer. She has her Diploma in Children's Services, Certificate IV in OSHC & Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. She has 20 years experience in Children's Services including experience as a Qualified Educator and Centre Director and 6 years experience as a Trainer/Assessor in accredited Children's Services training and rural centre support.

CTAS is changing its name

Childcare Training and Accreditation

Solutions is changing its name, we

will now be known as CTAS

Education. This process will take

place over the next few months.

You may see our new logo and hear

our new name in the industry but,

you can still expect the same

professional and passionate training

that we are well known for.

Our vision is unchanged, we still aim

to raise the standard of childcare

training by sharing the knowledge,

skills and experience of our team of

highly qualified childcare

professionals with others through

high quality personal training.

Regional Training?

Professional Development Regional In-services Recently we have had Professional Development In-services in a few regional

areas including Hopetoun, Geraldton, Dongara, Kalgoorlie, and Broome.

If you are a service in a regional area, please contact us for a quote. We are

happy to conduct a training day with up to 3 sessions of your choice, or you

can organise to combine with other services in the area to host the day and

share the costs.

Email the Professional Development Team on: pdtraining@ctas.wa.edu.au

with the number of participants, your preferred dates and topics. A list of topics

is available from our website.

Remember you must use your LDCPDP funding by 30 June 2017. This funding

can be used for CTAS professional training.

Coming up at CTAS: Workplace Health and Safety

Wednesday 8 March 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm

Embedding Maths and Science into Everyday—Hands on session

Wednesday 22 March 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm

Reflective Practices

Wednesday 8 March 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm

Team Building and Stress Management

Wednesday 12 April 2017, 6.30pm–8.30pm

See our calendar for full descriptions on these sessions.

Thinking About A Childcare Traineeship? CTAS Education offer traineeships in

CHC30113 Certificate III in Early

Childhood Education and Care,

CHC40113 Certificate IV in School Aged

Education and Care, and CHC50113

Diploma of Early Childhood Education

and Care. If you are thinking of studying

a childcare qualification, CTAS prides

itself in providing high quality training

from passionate, experienced trainers.

Contact Mikayla on 9350 9222 for

further information.

Future Skills courses, subsidised by the

Department of Training and Workforce

Development

Are You a Leader?

By Debra Murphy, CTAS Trainer

In our industry of Early Childhood, I have noticed a lot of staff turnover

due to a many number of reasons. This brings about a constant need

for leaders- not just in management but leaders, mentors, role models,

and educators that staff can look up to and learn from. Every educator

should be leading from where they stand, seeking potential in their

colleagues and using each other’s strengths for best practice and the in

best interest of the children in their care.

Everyone in the team has a role and we want to encourage stepping up

and feeling inspired. How are we motivating our staff? How do we know

what our educators are comfortable doing and what aspects of the job

they truly enjoy? Not everyone likes sweeping/mopping/vacuuming

every day but there is definitely an educator on your team that enjoys

that few minutes off the floor to re-group or that educator that enjoys

having the environment so clean and organised and they are the ones

happy to do it. Find out the strengths of each team member, and then

use those strengths to build a better work environment.

In childcare, we often have a problem when the Educational Leader/

Room Leader is away or sick the whole centre operation standard falls,

the curriculum standards fall, why is that? Why is there no one else

there to step up, delegate the workload and lead? The only way for

staff to gain that leadership is to be given the opportunity all the time-

before this happens.

To be an effective team we need good communication. It is imperative

but so easily forgotten. We should all have a positive respect for each

other, we need to listen to each other and we should be responding to

each other’s needs. Feedback is key- many people shy away from

offering negative feedback but if it is affecting how the room/centre is

operating we should offer it. Negative feedback is often constructive

feedback if delivered in the right way- remaining silent and snapping at

your co-worker does not help the situation at all. Positive feedback is

also important and under-used. Well placed positive and ‘constructive’

feedback delivered on the ‘little and often’ principle drives individual

and team performance.

So some of the key aspects of being an effective leader are finding out

the strengths of each person in our team and using these strengths to

motivate them, supporting each person in the team to be a leader, so

that if the Room Leader or Educational Leader is not present standards

are still maintained, and communicating effectively and respectfully with

the team.

PD in Practice

Little People’s Place Spearwood recently attended

Professional Development training in Child

Protection. After attending this training they put into

practice some of the suggestions they had learnt.

The session discussed how talking to children about

their feelings, and naming feelings can be self

protective strategy for children. If children don’t have

the emotional language and the confidence to use it,

then they won’t be able to talk about feeling unsafe.

They need to be able to recognise how each feeling

look and feels.

The toddler room drew pictures of different feelings

and asked the children to stand behind which one

they were feeling.

Little People’s Place Spearwood

Inspiration Spot Here are some photos from centres, hopefully sharing them will give you inspiration:

Join in

Be a part of our

newsletter, and you could

earn your center a $100

voucher for resources.

Just send in some photos

of your centre’s

makeover, an amazing

experience you have set-

up or your inspiring

environment with a

detailed description

explaining the photos.

Send the photos to

pdtraining@ctas.wa.edu.

au

Visit us on the web at

www.ctas.wa.edu.au

Childcare Training & Accreditation Solutions

Sticky Fingers

This idea can work in OSHC services

to support children learning about

adding and subtracting. Draw an

outline of their hand, cut it out and

glue down the palm area.

Then write sums, or have the

children write sums, and use the

moveable ‘digits’ to add and

subtract.

Ali received flowers from

Ashlee Lawton from

Gowrie Karawara for all of

her support during

Ashlee’s training

Broome Daycare Centre have a wall with numbers and

common animals written in English and the two Aboriginal

languages of the surrounding area.

Jellybeans Carine are

looking at recycling with

the children, the sorting

containers are on the

floor so children can

assist with the process

Jellybeans Charlottes Vineyard, toddler room set

up (above photo) and “Going on a bear hunt” table

with pictures from the book and instruments to

make the noises e.g. oozy mud, swishy grass

(photo below)