This information is designed to help parents understand their role when participating in the program on their kinder duty days.
Thank you for joining us as a parent helper. Your help is greatly appreciated. In fact, we can offer the children more opportunities for learning and fun, because you have donated your time. We are a parent-run preschool and we need parents to help with the everyday running of our preschool.
During Play time
We will need you to spend time supervising and interacting with the children and also spending time helping us to manage the chores that we need to do each day.
- Try to sit and be at the children’s eye level.
- Please use positive language with them and be aware of their safety.
- Please spend some time with the children at play. This may be at an organised activity like library borrowing, playing a board game, reading stories on the couch or perhaps with the children participating in a “pretend” game, wherever they are playing.
Transition times
We may need your help at transition times (that’s when we are changing our routine within the day).
- At pack up time, please encourage/help the children to find a pack-up job.
- Wipe down all the tables. Cleaning supplies are located on the kitchen bench and are labelled for your convenience.
During mat-times
Please:
- Wash paint brushes in the art sink (locker room)
- Rinse out in warm water (with no detergent) the art smocks. Hang them out on the line along the fence outside the locker room door.
- After the morning session, please sweep the floor in the playroom and the toilet floor.
- Wipe the paint off the easels.
- Ask if there are any material preparation jobs e.g. refill name tag boxes/pockets, cutting out shapes, displaying art work.
- Check to see if the dishwasher is full and needs to be put on. Directions for use of the dishwasher are affixed to the front of the dishwasher.
During outdoor play times
You will likely be asked to supervise an area of our outdoor space. Please ask our educators for directions. Please also sweep under the verandah, around doorways and around the sandpit. We need to be mindful of sand/leaves being a slipping hazard for children when they build up.
During snack time
Green group families:
- Please ask staff how many children are present.
- Please set the tables with the children’s fruit boxes and a glass in front of each chair. Please have boxes/fruit with the names right way up to make it easier for the children to recognize their name or box.
- Half fill jugs with water and place in the centre of the table.
- Children will pour their own drinks.
- Children return their own glasses to the trolley, pouring unwanted water into the bucket and putting scraps in the small compost bucket. They wait at their table until an adult tells them it is time to go outside.
- Please clear the table and put dishes in the dishwasher.
- Please wipe down the tables.
Blue & Red group families:
We would like you to sit with the children whilst they are eating.
- During this time please encourage the children’s independence especially with their food boxes and their drink bottles. Some may still need help but try to encourage the children to do as much as possible for themselves. This helps to build a “have a go” attitude and helps children to feel satisfaction with themselves and their efforts. They want to be self-sufficient; our job is to promote it.
- Encourage children to dispose of their rubbish in either the compost bin or the white bin for plastics.
- Encourage the children to eat their food. It is important for children to learn to eat a substantial amount of what is packed for them. Please let us know if particular children are struggling with this before you allow them to pack up and leave the table.
- Encourage children to drink their water.
- Whilst the children are eating, please encourage good table manners and courtesy towards others.
- This is a time for chatting. Encourage the children to talk of their family, pets, what is their favourite food, what jobs they do at home to help, what they did on the weekend or whatever is currently topical. Children need to practice listening to each other as well as contributing their ideas or information. These informal chats are very beneficial in building children’s skill sets in language and social development.
Other duties
We need families to volunteer to take the laundry home. Please try to return it within the week of taking it. Please ask Merryn or Priscilla.
Parents will have a role to play in the event of an accident or an evacuation. Please be responsive to staff requests of you. You may be asked to call 000. We will most likely need your help with general supervision of the children ensuring that they are safe.
On special occasions there will be extra duties and we would really appreciate your offers of help. These are days like Mother’s day, dress up days, night-time kinder sessions, photo day, and Christmas party day.
Siblings
We welcome our younger siblings who may accompany their parent on kinder duty. Younger siblings are welcome to participate in the program activities; however, we ask that parents supervise their younger children at all times, inside and outside. We would also ask that they respect our kinder rules at group time and do not interrupt the delivery of our program.