Sheridan Meadows Toddler Room
Our Toddler Staff Members
Group Leader
Kim holds her Certificate 3 in Community Services and is Currently Studying her Diploma in Community Services. Kim also holds a current “Positive Notice” (Police Check), and a Senior First Aid Certificate.
Assistant
Alana is a fully Qualified Assistant and holds her Certificate 3 in Community Services, and is Currently Studying her Diploma in Community Services. Alana also holds a current “Positive Notice” (Police Check), and a Senior First Aid Certificate.
About our Toddler Room
In the Toddler room, we help the children to develop basic self help skills such as washing and drying hands, feeding self and using utensils, putting hat on and off, toilet training, dressing themselves and packing up.
Each day the children are given the opportunity and encouraged to exercise their fine motor skills. This is usually through a variety of creative mediums such as painting, collage, gluing, touch and feel exercises, collages, drawing and play dough.
Staff also encourage the children to develop their gross motor skills in activities such as digging in the sand pit, building sand castles and riding bikes etc.
In our great outdoor areas staff set up new experiences daily for the children to cater for physical development. Obstacle courses and different activities are set up to challenge the children, and their physical abilities such as running, climbing, crawling, balancing, lifting, throwing, catching and kicking balls, and learning to play simple physical games.
Staff work very hard to develop children’s cognitive skills by providing children with experiences, activities, songs and games to learn; colours, numbers, alphabet and shapes. We also have different topics the children learn about within the room such as animals, recognition of animals, the noises they make, size of the animal (big or small), colour of the animal etc.
On our weekly program we also provide children with a variety of activities to stimulate their imagination and encourage thinking. Children play in home corner with the dress ups, tea cups etc, (this also encourages role play), challenging puzzles, creations built out of Lego, mobilo, building and pattern shapes, roller coasters, abacus, ,elefun etc.
In the Toddler Room, the children are just starting to interact with the other children. The staff cater for all children’s social and emotional skills. Staff endeavour to provide a happy, upbeat atmosphere where the children can learn and grow through dance, self expression, and play. Like every area of development, children develop differently and may take different lengths of time to develop skills. The staff always take the time to get to know the children, and give the children time to become familiar with each staff member and the other children. A regular but flexible routine is carried out in the Toddler room, to ensure children are comfortable, and know what is going on throughout the day. Transition times and warnings are given to the children at different times of the day.
Children are introduced to each other and group activities and group play is carried out daily to encourage interaction and the beginning of friendships between all children. Children begin to interact and play with other children in the Toddler room, but real friendships with particular children are not common in this age group.
As Sheridan Meadows is a very multicultural centre, the Toddler room includes multicultural activities, exercise or experience into the weekly program. This can be done through artwork, such as Chinese Lanterns, flag making and dress ups. We also have multicultural music such as Latin, Indonesian and African.
