shellybr

Cool, but word of advice stay top of the north island for awhile. It is bloody freezing down south in the Winter especially in a camper van. I loved living in Wellington! Hubbie has promised a trip back when we validate our PR visa.

We used her in September for our short term rental, she is lovely. She had the house all set up for us had arranged for the car hire place to leave our car in the garage. She also gave us a reference for our long term accommodation. She goes out of her way to help people when they have just arrived.

I have done the immigration process to NZ and it is just a hard as here. You need to have a Permanent Residence Visa for 5years before you can apply for Citizenship, they have the same restrictions on what jobs etc you apply for. You also have to be a regisitered teacher to teach and I doubt you can teach on a WHV. Once you have citizenship you can move across the ditch but you are not eligible to become a citizen you have to apply for pr like everyone else, as a NZ passport holder you are entitled to live and work here but are not entitled to the dole etc.

my 5 yr old is in preprimary and it is exachtly as Bob says they are more interested in getting the kids interested in reading and giving them the tools to read and understand what they are reading as apposed to sounding out words but having no idea to what they are reading. He is bringing home readers this term and he is really getting the sight words and sounding out words. He knows what full stops and questions marks are and what they are for. The parents are encouraged to get involved with changing over the readers every morning and reading with some of the kids. I think it is a good way to do it as the kids are learning to love the books and it is never a struggle to get him to sit down to do his readers every night.

It is around the same as kindy at the school, you pay parental contribution.

If your eldest is 5 before June 30th they would of started preprimary in Feb so will be going in to year 1 next feb. With Kindy you could try some of the community kindys they don't have catchment areas so you can apply from anywhere. My son went to Hillarys Community Kindy - http://www.hillaryscommunitykindergarten.wa.edu.au/ They were great we arrived in time for the last term and made us so welcome. We are going to send the younger one there too even though it would be easier to send him to the school one.

I don't believe in helicoptering my kids but at the same time they are always in eye and ear shot. What has been driving me insane here is people don't seem to teach their kids to take turns, the amount of times I have had to intervene cause some 8yr old wants to push past my 4 or 2 yr old on the slide. Oh and then there are the parents that actually stand and watch their child behave horribly towards the other children and do nothing, then notice the dirty looks from the other parents and just half heartedly say Darling don't do that a little voice. take the little bugger home if he can't behave.

Our school is branded polo's and sweatshirt. You can buy the shorts etc from the school or get them from BigW or Target. I got my fellas ones in BigW half price before school started. In our school they have fraction shirts that they wear for sports but they are just generic polos and once the oldest is in a fraction then all younger kids will be in it. I have a friend with her little boy in Private and the uniform costs are horrendous they have summer, winter uniforms even the socks cost $8 a pair.

We use Coles brand suncream and none of us got burnt. The kids are 4 and just turned 2 and they didn't even go a pink in the Perth summer. I got the Invisible Zinc for your face and hate it, going to go back to my Oil of Olay with 30 block used it here and in NZ for years and never burnt

Perth Modern is selective so not catchment. Duncraig HS seems to be very popular with the academics at UWA despite it being quite a hike from the campus. Woodvale has a really good name aswell.

Don't count on your boys been finished with jet lag, it took awhile with my 2. The youngest went down perfect at 7pm unfortunatly that is nap time back home so he woke bright as a button a couple of hours later ready for play, then he woke the older one. I was soo tired.

I buy the coles branded stuff, no burns all summer. The kids at my sons school leave their hat in school so there is no danger of forgetting.

the schools in WA are closed till the 26th.

People in general here go to the park as a family and meet other families. We often walk down to our local one in the evening and usually bump into someone my son knows. You do see older kid going around on their skateboards and bikes. I find in general here that things are very family orientated. People with young families socials as the whole family. Kings park is in the city. it has a huge playground

Depends which state you are going to, they are all different. WA's cutoff is 30th June. My ds is 4 will be 5 in May so he is in Preprimary this year, he will go into Year 1 in Feb. WA is quite strict on the year the kids go into.

I heard somewhere that they think it could be the same shark that is attacking off Perth. Have you noticed that all the shark attacks have been men?

No problem. The classes can work out quite expensive. My 4year old goes to swimming and it costs around $90 a month and we are looking at Karate class and that works out at $120 amonth for unlimited classes. But I go to Kindy gym that is run through the council and that is 97 a term for the 2 year old. My fella was happy enough with the Kindy 2 days a week cause it is full days they are usually tired and then there is alot of meet ups at different parks and beaches that don't cost anything

There is a 4year old kindy programme that is 2 days a week that is private.Check out http://www.whitfordfamilycentre.com.au for info about it. It is for kids like your daughter who just miss the cut off for kindy and need some kind of stimulation. There isn't playschool like Ireland. Everything is parent involved till Kindy so there are lots of playgroups and preschool classes and lots of mums to meet up at all the parks, playgrounds and beaches. I do Playgroup and kindygym with my 2 year old and then just meet up with friends etc on other days. I have also started going to a free Irish playgroup on a monday.

It depends on the school if the kindy is full or not. Our schools kindy was full when we arrived but they had kindy places avaliable at a school in the neighbouring suburb. You don't pay for Kindy except for Parent contribution at the beginning of the year. They expect you to donate your time and there is usually a parent doing parent help every day but it ususally works out at once or twice a term. Its good to see what they get up to during the day. There are 3 year old pre kindy programmes that are one day a week for a couple of hours. These are private and work out at an average of 200 a term. I recently looked into the Montessori playgroup in Kingsley and it is $100 a term. As far as I know you will pay for Montessori preschool as its private here.

We love Hillarys, the community kindy follows the same curriculum but also seemed to do a bit extra from what I have heard from other mums. The kids that my oldest went to kindy with younger brothers and sisters are all going to be going to the community kindy even though it would be easier to send them to the one at the school. Hillarys is very expensive if you want one of the new builds. We are renting an older house but it has everything we need and has a garden which a lot of the older houses don't. The houses down by the boat $1000 a week. I perfer Hillarys to some of the other suburbs that are further North as there is something a bit soleless about all the new builds but that is just my opinion also there are alot more aussies around here then if you go further North.

The birthday cut off in WA is June 30th. States schools won't talk to you till you are in area. I would look at putting the younger one on the waiting list for the daycares, alot of them have waiting lists

You pay a parental contribution for the Community Kindy the same as at the regular kindy. Kindy at the moment is only 2 full days a week so 8:45am - 2:45pm they are supposed to be bringing in extra hours. When they are five it is Preprimary at the school and it is full time mon - friday 8:45 - 2:45 they finish them 10 mins earlier then the rest of the school so that there is less cars and if you have older kids you can get the younger ones first. Our school has a completely self contained Preprimary with a gate to the school for assembly, the library and the computer room otherwise they are kept in their own little bubble.

We arrived in September and got my 4yr old in to a Community Kindy. They still had some spaces at some of the other kindys in the areas too. Iluka and Burns Beach don't have any schools so you would be looking at the neighbouring suburbs. Community Kindys aren't like the schools in that they are not tied to catchment, you could try some of those. There was kids from Ocean Reef and Connelly in our One down here in HIllarys.

My little fella went to Hillary's Community Kindy. We only did the last term as we only arrived in Sep. They were lovely and really made sure he settled in. They did lots of things, they even hatched their own chicks. I was so sorry that he didn't get the full year there and I am planning on sending the younger one there even though it will be a giant pain when he could go to the kindy up at my sons school but I really liked the feel of the Community kindy. You also don't have to be in the catchment area for it as it isnt attached to the school,

Anytime I have shopped in the IGA it was more expensive. Cheaper and easier for me to shop at the coles up the road. We buy lots of own brand and specials.