It is official - We have changed roles permanently

As of the beginning of term four I am pleased to announce that I have been appointed Head Teacher and Lynne has been appointed as Teacher for Nayland Kindergarten.  There maybe little  noticeable change as we have been acting in these roles for the past two terms however it is now a permanent thing. I look forward to leading the Nayland team to continue to provide an exciting education for your children embracing and working alongside you and your whanau.


Lynne has been an inspirational head teacher who has taken the team, the children and the community on an amazing transformation over the past eight years and we are so lucky that she remains at Nayland to continue on this path.
Lynne on behalf of the children, their whanau, our community, teachers past and present especially myself congratulate you in your decision to change roles and thank you for all the support and inspiration you haven given and continue to give us.
 

"The task of the leader is to get people from where they are to where they have not been."         — Henry Kissinger   


 I think this quote sums up the amazing journey we have been on and will continue to build upon.
Fa'afetai Lava ( Thank you very much) Lynne from us all. 

Super Hero Plank

"Grab hold of your superhero business teams, friends and family and build this sneaky piece of inspirational community wall art for the wildly creative kids’ superhero wall.

Paint, glue, nail, screw, laser and kryptonite your favourite super hero figurines to the planks provided. Add some artistic tension by adding the arch nemesis of your superhero or heroine.!

Write the names of your favourite people superheroes on the plank, like family or friends or special people in the community or add some funky props or wild background colour/effects.Bring it along to the Play House on Sunday September 25th. A fun family day out with all donations being given to Starship Children's Hospital.

This was the brief we were given , along with a plank of wood. Rather than let commercial images of super heroes set the tone I talked with children about what a hero is and the things heroes do.Here are some of the comments of the heroes they drew "A girl hero called Mummy, she helps people". "My hero eats yellow rice bubbles and he can be anything he wants to be" " My hero helps people who are stuck in the mud" ."Heroes are strong and they help." My hero saves girl people. "Heroes can fly".

Some children drew pictures on to the plank and chose not to leave a comment at all.I thoroughly enjoyed working with small groups of children on this project, and delighted in their views about the roles of super heroes. This was also in conjunction with a fundraiser that The Playhouse was organising for Starship Children's Hospital. A container for donations will be available for the rest of term, all donations being gratefully received of behalf of this worthy cause.

Tui Garden Competition

As the garden and growing things is such a source of interest to the children, we have entered the Tui Gardening competition. After a few glitches and false starts we have finally managed to send in our first pages showing the garden so far and out lining our plans. The plan is to send in updates during September and a final update before the competition closes on October 28th.
Double click on the pages on this blog to get a better veiw of the story so far or go to www.tuigarden.co.nz to veiw our entry and others.

A visit to Nayland primary playground

This morning while half of the kindergarten were away on an excursion, the rest of us took the opportunity to visit the Nayland primary school playground. For some children this was their first visit to school and for others it was one of many opportunities they have had to become familiar with the school environment. The school play equipment offers new challenges for our children and I love to see their eagerness to give it all a go. Today we were joined by some of the junior school who had been on an excursion and returned for a late morning tea and play before heading back to the classroom.

Broadgreen students Creating challenges

We value our proximity to Broadgreen Intermediate and the opportunites our children have to be part of the older students learning. Today the Broadgreen students task was to create challenge courses appropriate for our 4 year olds.
What a great job they did. Jumping in a sack into hoops, tossing dice into a bucket, weaving through cones, jumping hurdles, crawling through tunnels and running under the parachute. It was an opportunity for our children to show off their skills. Challenges like these are important for developing listening, co operative skills, the ability to follow instructions and work as a team. The continued development of agility, coordination, body and spatial awareness, creating pathways in the brain is important for learning.

It was very special for some of our children to have their older sisters and brothers leading the session.
Lucky us we have one more session with the Intermediate students before the end of the term.

We visit Nayland Dental Clinic.

This week the Kakapo and Penguin groups went for a visit to the new dental clinic at Nayland Primary.We were given a tour by Helen and Glenys , two of the dental nurses who are based there. All children in the Stoke/Tahunanui area will come here for dental check ups and dental care.We were able to see the examination rooms , some people got to sit in the chair as well. The dental nurses talked to us about the importance of brushing your teeth every day , two times a day.They encouraged us to brush our teeth, tongue and gums too. Each child was given a tooth timer to use to help them remember to stay brushing for two minutes each time.These have been a big hit and I have heard that some children have enjoyed using their timers so much they have brushed their teeth several times a day since Tuesday. Kapai.The new clinic looks fantastic and the staff were friendly and welcoming.The children came back full of their adventure and readily shared their experience with their friends at kindergarten and with whanau.

A request that we as teachers often hear is "Can we do face painting?"Sometimes as adult will be the painter but invariably children will take over the task themselves. I love being the observer on these occasions listening to the conversations, watching the concentration on their faces as children look into the mirror, plan their work and begin to create. Sometimes they choose to paint themselves and other times negotiate with a friend to paint each other.The buzz of a group of busy creators is inspiring, and so I grabbed a few shots for you to enjoy as well.
Exploration and curiosity are valuable and very important tools for learning . By being given the opportunity to paint their own faces children continue to learn about themselves as a capable, confident explorers and learners, who are able to ask questions and make interesting discoveries. When children are given the tools and materials for the job and the freedom to make their own choices and decisions , they will also be developing the skills of problem solving. Having the freedom to play with materials with no fixed outcome in mind also helps them discover that learning is a creative and enjoyable experience.
Here at Nayland Kindergarten this is the type of learning we value and promote. We want children to be free to explore, to learn at their own pace and build the idea in their heads of themselves as capable and confident explorers and learners. Our job is to make sure the tools are available for them to use, the environment is set up for them to explore safely and that we as teacher are co - explorers with them.

Sandpit Fun

With the warmer spring weather the sandpit is proving to be a popular place with both the morning and afternoon children as they have fun with mixing water and sand and exploring the properties of both these substances. Children are busy making cakes, soups and other wonderful concoctions, digging holes and ditches and creating rivers, lakes and what ever else captures their imaginations. And this afternoon was no exception and the sandpit was again a hive of industry. A large group of expectant children helped me to create a volcano and the excitement when the blue lava flowed was ear shattering!


Then there was also the group of children who got busy digging holes and ditches to make a "water volcano", as one little guy explained to me. It was great to see the cooperation between these children as they all worked together, and I had no doubt that no adult help was required when I got told, "This is very dirty work for adults but it's okay for kids".

Spring is Here!

There was great excitement yesterday when Deidre brought in Sean, a very cute little lamb, to visit the children at Kindergarten. He was here for the whole day which allowed both morning and afternoon children to spend time with him and getting to know him. Some children were braver than others and wanted cuddles with him and helped to give him his bottle and bath him. Others preferred to watch on. Meanwhile Sean enjoyed exploring the gardens around kindergarten, finding flowers and bark to nibble on. What a picture of spring with a lamb, happy children, garden flowers and the sun shining! Thank you to Shirley and Sharon from Brightwater for letting us adopt Sean for the day and thanks to Deidre for organising his visit and bringing him in. Maybe he will be able to visit us again before he gets too much bigger.

Ephimeral Art is underway again.

Ephemeral art is something that is  to be transient and short lasting – only existing for a little amount of time.

The warmer weather has encouraged us all outdoors and the sandpit area has come alive with ephimeral art materials.  The children have been curious about the number of children busily engaged in making art from the materials available in the sandpit.

To protect children's work we have now sectioned off a side of the sandpit so that children's work can last for the session, at which point it is photographed and put away.

With a selection of plant life, shells,
bones, bark, small logs and stones on hand their ideas soon came to life.

Art in the outdoors certainly attracts the boys and it wasn't long before the bones had come alive as they soon became dinosaurs and the storytelling began.  
The fascination with dinosaurs and the discussions that arise out of this are never ending as children explore the concepts of extinction and a time long ago.  

Back to the ephimeral art produced over this week, check out some of the 

amazing designs that children created.

Children's work is all quite unique.

A trip to Lucy's paradise

The term is speeding along and although we have not had many blog entries this term, I can assure you that we have been very busy both at kindergarten and exploring our wonderful community with our families.
Last term we were noticing the birds in our playground, and then a number of children were keen to count the birds they saw around their houses, and in Nelson as they travelled around.  So we decided that those children would explore the wider community for different birds, in a totally different setting at Lucy's house.

Time for karakia and kai together then off for a walk.


We didn't see many birds but the chatter could be heard as the children explored the Ngawhatu area, walking and talking at great length.  

Enjoy these photos, I am sure you will get a sense of wonderment and awe as you see our surroundings, and celebrate the the diversity of our Nelson environment.

We saw a pukeko running for his life over the hill ( I think he heard us coming) , 2 rather large well fed kereru (wood pigeon), a fantail, some yellow hammer heads and a hawk.

It is always exciting to see children and adults developing new friendships, and strengthening their bonds together as a group. 

Research shows that children who have opportunities to explore and care for their environment continue to do this throughout their lives.

Our morning finished all too soon, but we still managed to fit in a stop over at a local cafe for a coffee and fluffy to cap the morning off.  Great parents, fantastic children, great hosts and a great time out.


We will watch with interest as the warmer weather encourages more birdlife back to kindergarten. We had better get on with making more bird feeders before winter is over and refueling our existing ones.

Music Fun!

Last week we had two wonderful sessions with Kath Bee, a local singer who has recorded several children's CD's and whose music is well-known to our children, particularly a current favourite, "Dragons Under My Bed". She came and sang at both a morning and afternoon session, ensuring all children had the opportunity to participate in one of her very entertaining and interactive sessions. And of course "Dragons Under My Bed" was a must at both sessions, the children singing along with her. All the songs encouraged active participation from the audience, so providing the children with opportunity to experiment with pitch, keeping a steady beat, changing beat, moving to simple rhythmic patterns and just having lots of fun. Thank you, Kath! And we can continue to enjoy her music as we now have 4 of her CD's at kindergarten which include all the songs that she did with us.

Broadgreen Intermediate Ukelele Group.

What an awesome community we live in , with several other schools right on our doorstep.We love the way we can all work together in ways that benefit us all, especially the students we teach. A fine example of this was when two students from Broadgreen Intermediate came over to ask us if they could come with the Ukulele group to play for us.Of course we did not turn them away.On Wednesday morning a group of six students came to mat time. Five of these were originally Nayland Kindergarten children and the other one I have known since he was a kindergarten boy along with one of my sons.
They performed some of our favourites for us like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Row Row , and You are my Sunshine.Our children were a brilliant audience singing along and clapping, thoroughly enjoying the experience.It was also a wonderful opportunity for these older students to share the things they have been learning. Watching the performers faces showed me they were enjoying performing to such an appreciative audience. What a bonus having students like this right on our doorstep, encouraging our children. All of us teachers have been learning the ukulele so the children are well used to the instrument and often children will pick up a ukulele and have a play too. The opportunity to see a group play and sing together was so valuable.
Thanks Broadgreen Intermediate Ukulele group for sharing your skills with us.

Football skills.

Because some of the children are interested in football(soccer) we asked if Ian ( an ex parent)and Midgets football coach would kindly come along and do a session with us.So in small groups of ten we headed over to Broadgreen Intermediate Hall and met Ian there.
What was interesting was to watch how carefully the children listened to Ian and took on board the things he taught them.He is an awesome coach, and made sure we all worked out, leaned some new skills, practice some we already have and had a good time.Giving children these types of experiences provides them the opportunity to gain confidence in and control of their bodies, learn ways of keeping themselves physically healthy.
For some children this was a completely new experience trying something they had never done before. For others the challenge was feeling comfortable leaving Kindergarten to go soemwhere new but once they got there and relaxed it they discovered it was OK, and actually fun.Thanks Ian for giving up your time once again, we all benefited.

Nayland College students make children's lunchboxes

Check out this link - http://www.nayland.school.nz/?p=777.

The child studies classes from Nayland College were involved in preparing healthy foods and waste free lunch boxes for the morning children. 

Each child received their own lunchbox with their name and a design on the lid which was a great hit, and they continue to be used for lunches weeks later.  Inside there was a range of delicious everyday foods which proved very popular with the children. 


This a one of the many ways we share learning, resources and ideas with our surrounding partners in education. 

Thanks Nayland College we look forward working in partnership with further projects in the future.