Term 4 Week 6

Our little gardens are growing!!

With the sun heating up outside our 'little gardens' have been getting thirsty!! Thankfully, we have amazing gardeners at kindy who are always eager to help!  We can see our broccoli, courgette, corn and kale growing bigger on a daily basis.  We're urging the tomato plant to grow just like we did with the magic beans, fingers crossed we'll have tomatoes growing soon!  Being busy in the garden is strengthening our children's ecological identities by nurturing and caring for our plants.

Check out Jack's avocado plant!!

Propagation continues with Jack Howard's famous avocado plant.  It has got sooooo BIG ... what can we do Jack?  Anna (Jack's mum) kindly brought in a something BIGGER for Jack to replant.  Check out the end result, we think it looks tumeke!  

Ka te pehea koe? How do you feel?
Following on with our Amazing Me Programme this week we have focused on 'Communication' - empowering nga tamariki to develop appropriate language to use to keep themselves safe.
Over the week, we have really challenged nga tamariki to recognise what emotions they are feeling in certain situations such as - feeling scared or frustrated and how to voice those feelings. Reinforcing the idea to "STOP" - what you are doing,  "THINK" - about how you are feeling and 'ACT" what you can do to resolve the problem and/or keep yourself & others safe.

Judy introduces 'Kei te pehea koe' story that explores a range of emotions.

Toby and Gus having a team talk.

After listening to how each other felt, yes it was a good idea
to take turns with the cricket bat! Fantastic!

Forest Kindy
A very warm welcome to; Sam, Toby, and Frank, who are new to our  forest kindy whanau. Rachel and Antonia were out in the forest with the nga tamariki this week and what a wonderful morning of orientation & exploration!  Gus and Charlotte were our leaders ... what adventures will you share with us today?  We stopped at our favourite spots -  Dragon's Den and the Kindy Castle, even leaving behind special taonga (treasures) for the dragon thanks to Ryan.  The monster track was also a big hit too! However, after a lot of running and monster jumps on the track we were ready to cool off in the creek. A big thank you to the families for taking (or making) the time to join us!

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Coming up next week we have our last area of focus 'Exploration' for our Amazing Me Programme.  We will be covering; promoting positive play, identifying trusted adults, the importance of sharing secrets, and reinforcing feelings.

Have an AMAZING weekend and we will see you Monday.

Your teaching team; Judy, Christina, Antonia, Linda and Rachel.

Term 4 Week 5

"Who are the people that you live with? 1 or 2 or 3 or more..." Can be heard throughout the Kindy as the children revisit the learning from this week's Amazing Me Programme focus "Contribution". We have been contributing via our Facebook page and through The Arts, sharing with the group who makes up our AMAZING family, where we live and our contact details. Annabelle shared with us that she has been learning her Dad's phone number - yet another important piece of information to share in an emergency! Ka pai to mahi! Utilising our ICT forums within our programme reiterates our conscious efforts to reduce our environment footprint - less photocopying and more trees - yes please!! Learning to keep our self safe, others safe, and our planet safe - Our Ecological-Self! Thank you to our families for contributing to our Facebook questions posed each week - this week we have shared many family photos with the group.

Our contributions can now be enjoyed with our re-vamped entrance way. A welcoming and inviting way to arrive at Kindy in the morning - seeing our beautiful, unique and creative Self Portraits and "I am AMAZING because..." statements, greet us!

This week we have also continued our learning about Keeping Ourselves safe in an emergency ... Where Do I Live?  Tks to Toby Langford, George Collie & Sam Carins for their personalised pics of THEIR house ... including their addresses.

Thanks for all the family pics - keep them coming - nga tamariki LOVE seeing themselves, their family and their friends families - further strengthening the connections between home and Kindy!


And our Thur/Fri group have been sketching THEIR families today ...

Who are the people that you live with Skylar?

Ecological Investigations and Keeping Our self safe at Ivy Russell Reserve...On Tuesday Annabelle and Ashar took us off the beaten track andto the heart of the forest where we rediscovered The Three Little Pigs House made of Sticks. Off to the Dragon's Nest, Sophie and Georgia were eager to deliver their special toanga - handmade gemstones for the Dragon, following along from our Dragon research. Kirk (Annablee's Dad) shared with us what Dragons sound like using YouTube - we now know what to listen out for when we visit this special place! We now wait in anticipation for the Dragon to discover our gifts...


Have a great weekend ... commiserations to the All Whites v Peru (on Wed) & a GO the All Blacks against Scotland this weekend.  Tks for a GREAT week ... see you all next week!

Judy, Christina, Antonia, Linda & Rachel - The Teaching Team.