Extra Curricular Activities
Happy Feet Fitness
The program includes over 30 rotating class topics throughout the year. Because of the ongoing rotation, centres can plan future topics into their programming if they so wish. Additionally, the rotation makes sure that the children get to go on exciting new Happy Feet adventures each week, and the enjoyment of trying something new every week maintains a very high level of engagement.
Each class features a Class Activity Sheet for families and educators, as well as an Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) Link Sheet for educators. The Class Activity Sheets enable families to continue exploring the themes presented in class with their children when they get home, while the EYLF Link Sheet assists educators in linking our class content to the Early Years Learning Framework.
Fun Fit Kidz
FunFit Kidz by Active Beginnings is a movement established to get young children active to curb the global trend of childhood obesity and to accelerate gross motor skill development. Laying the foundations for healthy movement and an active lifestyle that they can take with them into later life.
The FunFit Kidz program is exclusive to childcare and integrated into the outdoor curriculum here at Little Troopers Childcare Centre.
A structured syllabus has been designed to teach essential movement and coordination-based skills. The sessions achieve this through enjoyable, thought provoking, team-based activities that not only develop individual health and fitness, but challenge the students on both an intellectual and cooperative level.
‘We’re more than just Sports’ [they say] as they use various sports as the vehicle to explore challenges through movement to instil self- belief, confidence, and resilience through play in a safe and positive environment.
Math Seeds
ABC Mathseeds is an online maths program for kids aged 3–9. Your child can enjoy fun, interactive and rewarding lessons that teach foundational maths and problem‑solving skills while nurturing an early love of maths. The program combines structured one‑on‑one lessons and highly motivational elements that keep children engaged and eager to keep learning and improving their skills. Your child can progress through the online ABC Mathseeds lessons at their own pace. The lessons and activities can be repeated as often as needed, so your child can master key skills before they feel comfortable to move on.
Mathematical knowledge and the ability to solve problems are essential skills that all children need to be successful at school.
Reading Eggs
Learning to read is one of the most important skills children can learn. ABC Reading Eggs makes the learning to read journey fun, interactive, and highly rewarding for ages 2–13 – and it’s based on solid scientific research. Using the five essential keys to reading success, the program unlocks all aspects of learning to read for your child, focusing on a core curriculum of phonics and phonemic awareness, sight words, vocabulary, comprehension, and reading for meaning. From the very first lesson, children are motivated and excited to learn. And the journey continues over hundreds of online reading lessons and thousands of wonderful e-books, guiding and motivating your child at every step of the way.
The five essential keys
to reading success
Phonemic Awareness
The ability to hear and manipulate
the different sounds in words.
Children develop phonemic awareness by learning about sounds (phonemes), syllables and words. ABC Reading Eggs teaches phonemic awareness using a sequential series of skill-building activities that increase sound awareness.
From the earliest lessons in ABC Reading Eggs, your child will learn to recognise rhyme, match letters and sounds, and listen to how sounds work to make words.
Phonics
Recognising the connection
between letters and the sounds
they make
Phonics is the process of mapping the sounds in words to written letters. This is a very important reading skill that all children need and features constantly throughout the ABC Reading Eggs program.
Your child will learn how to decode words into sounds and encode sounds into words when they write and spell. This all happens within a wide range of activities that feel like games, to keep your child interested and engaged as they practise. Each lesson ends with a book matched to your child’s current ability, which lets them enjoy the thrill of reading on their own.
Vocabulary
Understanding the meaning of
words, their definitions, and their
context.
Having an ever-increasing vocabulary is a fundamental part of academic success. The more words we know, the better we are at reading and understanding the texts that we read.
ABC Reading Eggs increases the number of words your child understands and uses as part of their working vocabulary. Your child will be introduced to new words throughout the ABC Reading Eggs lessons with visual support to provide context and boost retention levels.
Reading Comprehension
Understand the meaning of text – both
in story books and information books.
Great readers are involved in the stories they read. They imagine the characters and the adventures they have. They think about what is happening and they share the emotional journey of the book’s characters.
In nonfiction books, great readers gain new information, increase their vocabulary and link what they read with other sources of information to deepen their levels of understanding of new topics and concepts. This all shows that the reader has a full and rich comprehension of the texts they read. This is a complex skill that requires time and practice to develop fully.
To build active reading comprehension skills, the program uses activities that scaffold your child’s understanding with a wide range of pre-reading activities to ignite their thinking. They will progress from learning words and their meanings to reading for meaning, moving from learning to read to reading to learn.
Fluency
The ability to read aloud with speed,
understanding and accuracy
Many skills build reading fluency. These include good phonic decoding skills, an increasing bank of high frequency words recognised at sight, and the amount of time children spend reading books at an appropriate level. The more children read, the better they are at understanding and reading with speed and accuracy.
Fluency is crucial for children as they build their reading skills. By using instructional activities that build children’s reading stamina. Just like any exercise program where your fitness increases over time, reading is a skill that needs time, effort, and regular practice.