Our garden grows

Where to start for the vision of a sustainable and healthy eating lifestyle for the children and families of Nayland Kindergarten.

That is the big picture but we decided to start at a sustainable beginning - planting our new garden with edible herbs and vegetables. The garden has grown with the help of one of our gardening Mums who started the planting and children and teachers have sustained the growth and interest in the produce of our garden. Margie and the children prepared edible salads from our overflowing fruit basket and vegetable garden. The kai was shared at lunchtime and yes it was delicious!

Goodbye Emily

Emily is off to expand her horizons, to boldly go where no Emily has gone before - oh okay - Emily has gone to work at Futures in Richmond.
So, after working at Nayland kindergarten for a short but memorable time - how were the oldies going to farewell the 'young one?'
We thought about it for .... short term memory loss and we came up with saturation with water, a 'special' farewell cake, a pinata and some pressies. Emily was great - she put up with the antics of the children - encouraged by the teachers and when it came to Emily's last day - she got her pressies!
We will miss Emily's play, fun and sayings but I think the last words should go to Emily - "I splay and I valk away!"

A Digger Trip

Trips are part of Nayland Kindergarten's programme and all the children that came on the trip have had experiences in the sandpit with our diggers, trucks, trailers, graders and bulldozers and so it was time to see the real thing. We most certainly experienced a real digger, grader and bulldozer!
A group of 10 children went to Gough's on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 to see, listen, touch and sit on some of the heavy moving vehicles that are at Gough's.
We sat and watched the digger move it's bucket and caterpillar tracks and then what a fantastic surprise - one child was chosen to sit in the cab with the driver, as you can see on the video!

FISH! Philosophy

We have returned to our focus on FISH! philosophy. So what do we mean and why are we so passionate about FISH!

Children embrace this philosophy and here is how they interpreted the four practices above:

Join us and post your feelings about the FISH! philosophy. Tell us about FISH! moments for you and your child, given and received. Let's nurture our Nayland Kindergarten community which in turn nurtures our global community.

BEADS BEADS BEADS

Following the large interest in making necklaces last term, I thought it would be exciting to explore making our own beads, more exciting would be to use recycled materials following our sustainability focus. After researching the internet a number of the children decided we should make newspaper beads. Here's how we did it.

First rip up lots of newspaper into small pieces, cover with boiling water and leave to pulp. After this has cooled and processed, squeeze all the excess water out of the pulp.

Then PVA glue is added and kneaded in until you get a mixture that holds together. Then roll the beads or do what we tried and make flat pieces for pendants. A successful experiment! Leave to dry and harden. You can poke holes in them at this stage before drying for threading. We chose to drill holes into the hardened beads, Thanks Emily for helping the children here.

Then the creativity takes over - the painting. We discovered gold paint to add detail. Then the last step is to thread and create. I really liked this process and can see it being a faster and more tactile way of creating scenes such as landscapes and models opposed to the more traditional methods of papier mache. Here is one beautiful piece of newspaper bead jewellery.
Watch this space.....

Food Glorious Food!

This term children have been busy preparing food to share at lunchtime including making Sushi. I was amazed at the number of children who love salmon, avocado and salad. What an exciting experience to watch these experienced sushi makers. We even got to use Manuka smoked salmon fillets, and here I thought we would use tinned! Very sophisticated pallets.

The next week we used lettuce and rocket greens out of our own garden with lettuce and tomatoes from a child's garden to make a tasty tossed salad. We also made a fruit salad to ensure we did not waste fruit brought in from home. Both salads were prepared by the children and all enjoyed extra helpings!

Also prepared and tasting delicious this term has been Spaghetti Bolognaise, Blueberry and Apple Crumble, Pizza and Scones with homemade Batt current (aka blackcurrent) jam.

We welcome any favourite recipes from home to continue this learning of how we prepare food to eat, broadening the taste experiences for children, and making those all important links between home and kindergarten. Why not come and help prepare your recipe with the children. You are always welcome.

A tribute to Leece, lets see how it is done.

Meet the artist Leece Prince and her gorgeous daughters.


What an amazing lady your are Leece and thanks for your colourful outline of the process, it will help others appreciate that this was done in the last week before Christmas, and yes I can promise that I applied 2 more layers of polyurathane.

In Leece's words-

1. Meet the crew to discuss need and wants for the Mural and get a feel for what is needed....

2. put a few sketches down on paper real quick and give myself a feel for what I will be drawing....., show this to the team and hope to hell it is what they want or back to the drawing board...lol...In your case it was all good...

3. Decided on the board medium and paint, discussed form and function ....etc....

4. Undercoated the board with the Mud colour or Nuhaka ....

5. While the paint is still wet I free handed the overall pic and used the sketch as my base drawing...added and subtracted till the pic looked felt balance...

6. Added no more nails in a Pen (tube form) to highlight the things that needed to have a three D affect.......It is like a boarder that the paint would then fill!!!!!

7. Working very quickly used a 30min set plaster tub feels like thickened cream to apply to the board....add curves and depth with this....
Show the crew what is happening so far.....Move the Mural out of the lounge before hubbie has seen I had it in there!!!!!!LOL...

8. The plaster is dry....with a rag take off the rough bits and see what has stuck and what has not...either apply more plaster or take it off..

9. Apply the first layers of colour...was good to use the poster paint...as this went further and didn't seem to take to the plaster in full colour which was a good shading tool....

10. Fully add the base colours.... add the other elements....Tuis berries flax....

11. Change and rearrange things to enhance the balance an tone of the pic....try to spend time with hubbie!!! LOL...

12..More show and tell with the team...I have to have feedback when working with something like this , as it is in fluid motion and as you saw changed many times before the mountains and the dolphin and farewell spit finally made the cut!!..:)

13. Add shading to the base pic...

14. More colour

15. More shading

16. More of both...

17. Lucky last show to the staff....they were happy tear full and very generous with there praise....

18. Used a Marine heavy grade Polyurethane three coats of this and then out it went for the final resting place at your house Lynne where you should have applied one or two more coats....

19. Its up and looks really great and vibrant in the kindy like it has always been a part of your village.!!!!!!!

20. Very humbling to drive past and see it up, my daughters busily tell people mummy did this and still brings a little proud tear to my eye. Kia Kaha Nayland team, thank you for this opportunity...LeeceX

The 2009 blog explosion

The stage has been set for teachers to become active participants on the Nayland Kindergarten blog and for a number of the children and families blogs to be started as a life long record of their child's learning at kindergarten. We have the big picture in view as we have had discussions about the blog then transitioning over to school. Those decisions would then belong to each individual family and the school.

We have started the year off with an amazing piece of artwork up on display on the outside wall. Leece Prince made our thoughts, feelings and ideas real, along with her expertise as an artist it became a reality. We are so grateful for Leece taking on such a huge responsibility just before christmas and for keeping us connected as she worked with such passion and enthusiasm.

In the next blog I would love to show you our wonderful artist Leece and also the huge amount of work that went into this amazing piece of art. Must say that I am really keen to give it a go, and Leece has offered her expertise so that I can again be the learner.

We love it Leece, it gives Nayland Kindergarten a rich identity for who we are to our community, the wider community and beyond.

This year children and teachers at Nayland Kindergarten have been looking at art, talking about art and creating art.. To celebrate the creative journey of children and teachers as artists we decided to hold an art exhibition.

Nayland teachers value children's art as serious work. Children's art is a way for them to express how they feel, think and view the world. Research is showing that creativity is just as important as numeracy and literacy. Our 21st century learners should be given every opportunity to be innovative with both technology and the visual arts to prepare for a future and jobs that are yet to be invented.

Most children naturally engage in and enjoy some form of art as was evident in the variety of art mediums displayed in the exhibition. Teachers and children have learnt that visual art occurs in all areas of the kindergarten and not limited to an art table.

By giving children opportunities to revisit and reflect on their art work they develop the ability to self assess their work and plan what to do next, sometimes this is with teachers guidance . Throughout these processes children develop a sense of what counts as good work for themselves. They take control of the process and determine the end product. Teachers celebrate the way children have become the teachers throughout many of the art process activities. The teachers acknowledge the process of creating is what is most important and not what is actually created. However the end product is seen as a taonga, a treasure, that must be respected and valued.

This is an amazing celebration of the Nayland Kindergarten artists and with 200+ visitors on the day of the exhibition it was a day to remember for all.

To name just a few

This term has been no exception, we have been busy busy busy, with a number of trips out of the kindergarten and many visitors to view our ICT research in action with the children.
Lynne and Margie took a group of 20 children to Body in Motion to the Nelson Museum for an interactive hour exploring our bodies and how they work. We had wonderful parent involvement with about 10 adults on the trip with us. Nikki the clown demonstrated how our bodies work, and how we can keep them healthy and fit. Check out your child's profile for photos of the trip, we would love your feedback and write in what your child had to say.





You will have noticed the many gardeners outside doing some planting, that is when it hasn't been raining. The children are always keen to help out and a number of the children worked really hard digging, chopping up roots, and adding their own touches with the tree trunks. There is more planting to do this week, so watch the developments and share any ideas you have for our gardens. We will be building a sensory path in the next month, adding lots of herbs and scented plants to enhance the sensory experience.

Its time to get underway

We have been talking about getting our blog underway for sometime now, actually it is almost a year, so here goes. There have been many discussions about how the teachers would manage the blog, how we would address cybersafety with our families and be sensitive to each families values and beliefs. We have decided that this blog will be the teachers blog, to share the daily, weekly and termly happenings with parents/whanau and the wider community. There will be general photos of events and activities and it will be about the programme and our research project.

Here we go

We are underway thanks to the great presentation by Manaia Kindergarten at Ulearn 07. Thanks to Naketa and the teachers for making it look so achievable and manageable, I can't wait to start loading information for our community