Term 3 Week 5

It has indeed been a week of successes ... on Friday night @ the Polyfest Art awards our Polyfest Art - He Taonga, No Te Whenua.  Me Hoki Ano, Ki Te Whenua.  What is given by the Land, should return to the Land -  Received 1st place in the Early Childhood Painting & Print category.

 


Then onto our Polyfest Kapahaka performance on Tue @ ILT Stadium Southland.

 

This year we introduced our first Filipino song, in honour of all our fabulous Filipino families and our multicultural setting at Winton Kindergarten. “Tong Tong Tong” tells the story of the crab…so delicious to eat – but hard to catch – because he bites!

Our second waiata, “Purerehua” a soothing song about the Butterfly, continuing with our Life Cycle of the Butterfly Project at the beginning of the year and our ever growing Ecological Identity – watching and anticipating as the caterpillar changed before our eyes into the most beautiful butterfly.

We finish our on-stage debut with Tu Tirimai nga iwi – coming together – standing as one – as we learn to care for, protect, and uphold the Natural World around us.                                                          
The Performing Arts provides such an array of learning opportunites ... cultural awareness along with movement, gestures, memory, singing, emotion & expression supported within such a cohesive group.

Gosh we ALL felt soo proud. If you haven't already ... check out the live performance video on our Winton Kindergarten Closed Group Facebook page & also on the Winton Southland Facebook page.

We even managed to fit in a photo shoot with Robyn Edie from the Southland Times after our performance.  Check out this weeks 'The Eye'!!!!

After all our sustained multicultural 'Performing Arts' performance it was off to Queens Park to enjoy the sun & share some much needed 'fuel' before heading to the museum to show & share our prize winning artwork with EVERYONE.  Pop into the museum if you are in Invercargill - all Polyfest artwork will continue to be displayed in the museum until Nov 2017.  A HUGE thanks to ALL our Parents who came along - those that took time off work, took time off from calving & lambing - those that made the time to come along &  join us - THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU from The Teaching Team.

A BIG tks to Jess our official Polyfest photography

  Nek minute  ... What's this?  We needed to celebrate & what better way than sharing some celebratory cupcakes ... kindly made by Karen (our gorgeous Admin Support person).  They were DELICIOUS!!!

Wow ... how significant all our Polyfest contributions have been.  This quote comes to mind ...

                    And we do.

We plan to invite EVERYONE along to a Celebration of Learning evening, @ Kindy,  before the end of term - to share ALL the significance of ALL our Polyfest contributions.  Watch this space ...

Winton Library storyteller 'Luke from the Library' popped in today (Thur 24 Aug).  Luke even shared a Lion story with us - something Gus Tisdall could relate to sooo well after his visit to the Auckland Zoo last week .... ROAR!!!!!!  What an awesome story!!!  Tks Luke.

The Bean House continues on from last week.  We've noticed something ... there's been NO rain for the beans to grow.  Why do plants need water to grow?  Hmmm ... what a provoking question. Share your thoughts with us in the comments!  This resource below may help with answering our water problem & it even shares a scientific experiment to do @ home!

And just before the end of the day we got an opporutnity to create a 'special' Kindy All Black card - for Zara Mitchell's BIG brothers Cooper & Henry to share @ the All Blacks rugby breakfast in Dunedin tomorrow before the 2nd Bledisloe Cup game on Saturday.

Go the Mighty All Blacks !!!

Daffodil Day tomorrow & Monday ... a wonderful way for the children to gain empathetic awareness!!!  

Ka kite ano ....

Term 3 Week 4

Polyfest Art Awards tonight @ Southland Museum & Art Gallery...
We checked out last year's entry in the empty shop window along our main street on Wednesday as we meandered to St Thomas School...Have you seen our Kindy Waka?
We look forward to seeing our Celebrate the Environment naturalistic art piece at the Awards Ceremony and Opening Exhibition this evening!


Polyfest rehearsal @ St Thomas School on Wednesday
Ka pai to mahi! Our Kapahaka performers did a fabulous job on Wednesday, sharing our performance with St Thomas School - a warm up in preparation for our main event - our On-Stage debut at Stadium Southland on Tuesday! Please do pop along and support us - we'd love to see lots of Winton Kindy supporters in the crowd!




The Magic Bean House!
The hard work has been put in...designing, constructing, problem solving, pondering, and working together on our Magic Bean House. Seats are in place...A space to wait, watch, and wonder...Eco-Warriors in Action!

Clik on this link for tips on making your own garden hut!




Jack's Happy Drum from Bali
At Kindy we love to have our eyes, minds AND ears opened to the World around us! Jack brought in his family's "Happy Drum" a special treasure from Bali! We enjoyed exploring the sounds and rhythms, the vibrations and the magic of making our own music!


Forest Kindy
The joys of experiencing all the seasons throughout the year at our special local Reserve..."Celebrating the Environment" through our weekly explorations, discoveries, and unhurried time in nature!


Cancer Society's Daffodil Day- Friday the 25th of August!
Come along dressed in Daffodil Day themed attire, bring along a "Yellow" Morning Tea to share with the group, and if you like, a Yellow/Gold coin donation!
Please Click on this link!

Term 3, Week 3

Eco-Literacy: Energy

This week the children have continued their inquiry "How do you make light bulbs glow?" through discussions over the past few weeks instigated by a light bulb Penina brought in.  From looking at the light bulb, to some hands-on investigations with Annabelle's idea of static electricity, to now experimenting with 'Brain Box'.

'Brain box' provokes more hands-on inquiry based learning as the children have connected and tested different ways to create movement, sound and light. Circuits has become part of their everyday vocubalary ... fantastic! This learning has supported our children's literacy and numeracy knowledge as they followed the instruction booklet and connected the numbered pieces.

Some fabulous learning has been happening here!!!

Say Cheese!!

A big thank you to Megan Graham for the beautiful photo's she took on Wednesday and Thursday morning!! Megan has done an awesome job as she captured the children at play and had some great conversations with them as she made them feel at ease with the camera. Come in and check out your child's photo on display at Kindy.

Order forms are also available and must be completed before the 28th August 2017.

Where Do Stories Live?

As we continue to build on our understanding and investigations of stories the children have continued to have a closer look at leaves. To support this learning this week they have been constructing their own leaves using cooper wire on the light box. It has been great observing and supporting this learning as the children have closely examined the leaves and manipulated the wire to create their very own. This experience has also built our Eco-Literacy as the children have continued to use language such as 'the bones of leaves', and 'the veins of leaves'.

From a continuation of last weeks Hobbit Home creations and inspiration from Sophie Mitchell, she had created a book telling her Hobbit Home creation story. This may inspire you, and your child to create their own story of their Hobbit Home. Tino Pai Sophie!!!

Experimenting With H2O

This week Elle has had a wonderful H2O experience outside to explore! 

We have been lucky enough to receive a kind gift of syringes and pipes from Grasmere Kindy. This created an awesome opportunity for the children to get involved in water play!! This sensory experience provided the perfect environment for a wee competition as the children teamed up and raced to see who could fill their bucket first. Problem solving, working as a team, exploring their senses and strengthen their communication - all included in such a playful context.

Ka mau te wehe!!

Eco Warriors

On Wednesday afternoon the children were alerted to a "tweet, tweet, tweet". "There's a bird on the road, come quick!!" Sophie alerted. Judy went out of Kindy and carefully walked onto the road to collect the bird just before another car came past!! The children were then invited to have a closer look at the bird. They all thought Bradley's bird cage would make a nice home for it while it recovered, aren't they kind!! 

But once the bird was in the cage it got a fright and tried to fly away. Unfortunately the bird could not fly as well as it had hoped and it landed on the ground under a tree across the road. Some of our Kindy children kept a close eye on the bird until Judy brought it back over on her bike ride back to Kindy. We then all gathered and discussed what we could do to help the bird. There were some fabulous ideas and one of them was to feed it. Judy had kindly collected some worms from home for it; we also gave it some bird seed and water. During our discussions we wondered why the bird can't fly. This got us all thinking and posed a new question...."How do birds know how to fly?" 

- We can't wait for you all to share your ideas with us next week!!

Luckily at the end of the day a familiar resident vet came to our aid ..... Pennia's Mum - Skye!!

Skye kindly gave our bird a check up and came to the prognosis - a sore head. No broken wings or legs, which was great to hear!!

On Thursday there was no bird to be found at Kindy, so lets hope it has found it's way back home :) 

Forest Kindy

A big warm welcome to Kaydin White who's joined the Forest Kindy Team!!

This week at Ivy Russell Reserve while our Forest Kindy children were exploring they spotted some moss! "Lets get some for our Hobbit Home!" Thank you Forest Kindy friends!!

As they searched for more they also came across other creatures which grow in the forest like beetles. 

As the explorations continued they came across some trees which had recently been cut down, this provided a great opportunity for the tamariki to explore the veins of the trees. The children also kindly collected some saw dust for our pal Rupert.

What a fabulous explorers we have here at Winton Kindy!!

Whenua ki uta, Whenua Ki tai
Celebrate The Environment

We are so proud and honoured to announce that our art display has been selected as a finalist in this years Polyfest Art competition. Thank you to all of our contributing families and tamariki. 

This is awesome!!!!

The awards ceremony is held at the Southland Museum on Friday 18th August @ 6pm if you are keen to come along and take part of this special occasion please let us know and write your name down at Kindy.

Well done team!!

Don't forget about our Polyfest Dress rehearsal next Wednesday 16th @ 10.30am, at St Thomas School!!

Have a great week!!!

From your Winton Kindy Teaching Team :)