Our new puppets

On my return from Australia this week I had an hour to browse the duty free shop and to my surprise found these amazing puppets on sale. At a very affordable price too, which just happened to match the amount of money that I had left over from my holiday.
I was wondering what the animals would look like stuffed in my bags, as they went through the x-ray machines, but that was fine, until the sniffer dog decided to check me out and I was asked what was in my bags. Spot the kindergarten teacher!
I would say by the amount of interest and delight created by my new puppet friends today at kindergarten they will be well used by children and teachers in their play.

Happy Birthday Jimmy

If your child came home telling you all about Jimmy's 5th birthday at kindergarten, you were probably wondering who in the earth Jimmy is. 3 Nayland college boys and their media teacher had asked if they could video a mock birthday for their friend Jimmy at kindergarten, because he was born on a leap year he was actually only turning 5 this birthday.
Jimmy had a wonderful birthday at kindergarten, he sat on the birthday chair at mat time, he blew out the 5 candles on his cake and the children sang him happy birthday and he chose fairy claps, because he really likes fairies. The children then sang him twinkle twinkle little star and he told us what he liked doing at kindergarten with his friends. Then it was time for us to say the goodbye poem, so Jimmy invited his friends up to stand with him. During the morning, Jimmy played with the playdough, he painted a special picture for his friend and then the children took him outside to play on the monkey bars and slide.
Then it was time for Jimmy to go off to school, he was really sad to leave all his friends and his wonderful teachers, but all his friends gathered at the gate to wave him goodbye.
We are looking forward to seeing the video which will not be released for viewing until we are happy that no children's faces are visible, unless parents give us permission first.

The clay mini art exhibition

A mini art exhibition happened at kindergarten today.

It was time celebrate our wonderful clay artists at kindergarten and to show our families the amazing clay masterpieces the children have been making over the term. Each week as Fiona arrived to set up her clay work many of the same children returned to practice the skills and knowledge they learned from previous weeks, and they were very enthusiastic about trying something new. I had also made a point of joining Fiona's group and I was just as excited and enthusiastic as the children to design, mould, shape and paint my clay canvas and cup.

The clay works were at different stages, with some pieces air drying, others painted, some lacquered and others had already been fired in the kiln.

A number of parents turned up to see the exhibition and lots of "Wows" and positive comments could be heard as they looked over the clay masterpieces on display.

Small Planet

Small Planet is a trial programme organised by the Nelson City Council, to promote sustainable living concepts to the under 5's and their families. Along with Enner Glynn Playcentre and Bridge St Early Learning centre, we are involved in the pilot programme.
Hence the promotion of our existing sustainable practices as well as other ideas we are learning about.
Sustainability - reduce, reuse and recycle is visible at Nayland Kindergarten through our:
compost and worm farms, our growing garden that we share with our children and families, waste free lunchboxes[less packaging =less rubbish], all waste from children's lunchboxes stays and goes home, recycle bins with paper collection of un-named artwork and white photocopying paper, bird feeders out of milk bottles[didn't work that well], and trash fashion.
We will keep you updated on some other projects that we have in mind - pinecone bird feeders and water saving options with water play.

Food, kai, food

Food at Nayland kindergarten has been plentiful this term. We started by harvesting our yummy carrots and eating every single one of them -straight from the garden after a little rinse from the hose.
Other food we have made with the children: hummus, sandwiches, stir-fry, pita bread and tomato and pumpkin soups.
Some food has been celebrated with our families in the form of shared lunches and other food has just been eaten by all of us during the session.
The focus of eating everyday food such as your 5+ fruit and vege colours every morning tea and at lunchtime has resulted in raising children's awareness of the different food available and present in their lunchboxes - thank you families.
The lunchbox focus with reusable bags and reusable containers is supporting our focus on sustainability as well - so thank you families again.
But talk about back-firing - glad wrap balls were being collected everyday - i.e. glad wrap from children's lunchbox being wrapped in a ball shape - and our thinking was about reducing the glad wrap in children's lunchboxes. However, the children were great at offering glad wrap to see how big the ball could be made! So, we have stopped the gladwrap balls as it takes up to a thousand years for gladwrap to waste away and the message of sustainability - reduce, reuse and recycle continues!

Our Worm farm grows

Children in afternoon and morning sessions continue to show a keen interest in our worm farm. We gather around the worm farm and check the food supply, odour and moisture level in the worm farm. If there is a problem, then our Environment Folder[on the shelf by the kitchen] has an easy to understand pamphlet on fixing those problems!
Our worm farm was full of great compost and as we had a new garden - the dirt went into the garden. The worms were carefully sorted from their compost into their new home - however, we did seem to have less worms in the bin.
So as we are in this fantastic education community - we contacted Nayland College's worm teacher - Mr Bryant. Off we went on a sunny Friday morning and we collected a bucket of worms from them and now our worm farm is full of worms!
Sustainability is about reducing, reusing and recycling and so to sustain our worm farm - please keep on bringing your food scraps from home.

Challenge Course

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A challenge course was set up for both the morning and afternoon children with particular emphasis on 'over', 'under' and 'through' as well as climbing, balancing and jumping. This encourages active exploration and supports the development of body and spatial awareness.

This is an example of teachers responding to the challenges children are setting for themselves. This also engages other children in social groups, learning about turn-taking, waiting for others and participating with and alongside others.

Our Abseilers

Thanks to Mike, a keen caver, the children have had an opportunity to learn how to abseil on the climbing wall. Mike had set up climbing ropes and was there to help the children belt up into the harness. It was fantastic to see so many of the children give it a go. And since then they have had the chance to practice their abseiling skills under the watchful eye of Lynne and another of our dads.

GATE SAFETY AND BEYOND

There has been a growing concern at kindergarten with children leaving through the gate and not holding hands with an adult and being allowed to go unaided over the driveway and into the Broadgreen car park. Time to discuss this issue with the children! There was new realization that it is a drive way for cars out the gate not a foot path. Children came up with safety management rules for leaving kindergarten and crossing driveways and roads in general, even when riding their bikes. Ka Pai!

The Kiwi Group came up with the Gate Safety Rap and taught this to the group along with the actions. The words go:

It is the rule
To be safe and cool
So before you leave
Make sure you wait
Hold an adults hand
To get out the gate

Make sure you look
Left and right
Use walking feet
And you'll be right

Then it was time to call in reinforcements, otherwise known as Constable Keith. He was impressed with our rules and asked to remember to;
STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, HOLD HANDS AND WALKING FEET!
He then helped us all practice crossing the driveway in both the morning and afternoon session.



Of course it would not the same if we did not get a turn to look in his car and see the lights and listen to the siren!
Thank you Constable Keith and thank you to all the children who support their parents to learn and practice the safety rules ever day when coming and going to kindergarten.

A leap of courage

You may have noticed those brave children standing on the edge of the plank plucking up the courage to give it a go. It takes a true leap of courage to give it a go, ask the two teachers who had a turn too, it is alot higher than it looks. The morning children are now mastering it and there are certainly a number of courageous afternoon children and some pretty awesome action shots as evidence.




The jumping challenge with a designer plank and tractor tyre is a favourite place to set up challenges and the line of children practicing turn taking and acknowledging each others efforts is great to see.

Meet Tracey our Storyteller

You will have noticed Tracey visiting in both morning and afternoon sessions to read to the children during session time. Her passion for reading is evident as she comes along each week with a different theme and is often dressed up to act out that theme.
Tracey always has an eager audience and she has done a fantastic job of responding to children's interests with pirates, vehicles and potato people. So do rock on up and say hello I am sure that it won't be long and you too will be sitting in on her enticing stories.

How fortunate we are to be part of the Nayland Community

Thank you Broadgreen Intermediate for including us in your programme again.
Being part of the 4 school cluster in Nayland does create a little bit of chaos at the end of the day, but the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.
Broadgreen Intermediate allow us parking space by the kindergarten, they support us with the use of their hall and resources and at trikathon time they kindly let us use their top courts for the course.




Our visual arts journey has been further enhanced by an invitation to view their stage challenge rehearsal, and watch the big kids dancing and singing about the wonderful place we live in "New Zealand". We are sure that there will be a number of our very talented singers and dancers from Nayland Kindergarten up on that stage one day.

A visit to the museum

Dinosaurs are always a topic of great interest, so when we saw the fossil and dinosaur exhibition at the Nelson Museum a small group of children and adults set off to investigate. The exhibition has prompted lots of discussion about fossils, millions of years ago, moa's, caves, the size of dinosaurs and that some creatures do not look the same today. The proof is in the pudding I say, as they discussions continue and with the support of a resource box of fossils kindly loaned to us by the museum, we are continuing to discuss fossils and have some hands on experience.



The wonder of children - a child explained fossils to the group - "when plants or animal bones go into the ground, sand goes around them and that makes mud, which turns into concrete and that is how you get a fossil". Our philosophy is created alongside children and so is our learning as teachers - I will save that explanation for another day.

The dancing troupe

The visual arts journey continues at Nayland Kindergarten, as the children and teachers, have an opportunity to experience dance, music and drama sessions with Sherie, a local dance teacher. The dance sessions happened over 6 weeks every Wednesday morning for 30 minutes.
The dance sessions always start with a "start picture" and a "finishing picture", to encourage creativity and freedom of expression. During the sessions children had an opportunity to explore movement, rhythm, beat, tempo, and dance with controlled movements which valued children's individuality. The elements of enjoyment, creativity, being part of a group, turn taking, stickability, listening to instructions and following instructions, being original and sharing ideas were all part of session. The teachers were just as visible as the children and so the role of participating and taking on roles of responsibility, such as being a leader, dancing on the stage and holding the bridge where all shared.
The visual arts journey continues as we explore dance, drama, song and music in Term 2 2009.

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.....