A storytelling end to the year!

A fab two days of sharing stories and kai.....we really enjoyed welcoming our friend Dick Weir as manuhiri to a special mat time hui.We loved hearing his engaging style of storying, and being involved in stories....Rata and the totara tree, Māui and the sun, the Lion and the Mouse, and The Frog Prince of Northland!

We were like a kebab making machine as we made lots of yummy treats to share, and the novelty of having a shared picnic lunch on the soft fall and on the deck was so much fun!

Waiata Tamariki - Motoka iti rawa e

Waiata Tamariki - Whatiwhati To Hope

You might have noticed your young learner/s singing a lot of waiata of late... lots of our tamariki are very focussed on mastering words and moves of a range of kapahaka experiences. We greatly enjoyed  our visit on Wednesday from room 8 of Northland school as they shared some of their well practiced items.......and also taught the children one we don't do that often at Kindergarten. They did a fab job of trying it out. Here are the words of two of then..

The Taniwha of Northland

Kia ora to Louise and Zoe as they discussed the notion of Taniwha behaviours and physiology.... 

Lots of friends joined in too and we unpacked ideas about 'made up characters' as we sketched together. These Taniwha's looked quite different from each other....but all the friends knew what they were!

How playing an instrument benefits your brain - Anita Collins

I knew it was a good idea to have a daily planned music and movement session at Kindergarten!!!:)

A sunny day practicing the art of risk taking........ Māui - toa!

Ka taea e koe te aha… what can you do?

 Ka taea e au te peke… I can jump!

This from Bill Gates Sr, Co - chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Parliament Protest...

Parliament protest on World Teachers Day over cuts to early childhood education 

29 October 2015

Teachers, children and concerned parents will be gathering outside Parliament early on Friday 30 October to protest ongoing funding cuts that are starting to bite in early childhood services.

Concerned parents and teachers want to send a message to Education Minister Hekia Parata and the Government on World Teacher’s Day that every child needs a great teacher.

However, the only additional ECE funding in the past five years has been for increased participation, with no extra to cover inflation or other growing costs.

The lost funding means that many ECE services are struggling. For example, Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens (previously Wellington Kindergarten Association) recently announced a range of cost-cutting measures. Teachers will have less planning and assessment time and are being asked to volunteer to reduce hours. Forced redundancies may be required as a last resort.

NZEI Te Riu Roa President Louise Green said kindergartens were a bastion of quality teaching in the sector but a reduction in qualified teachers could lead to a cut in quality education for children.

“The amount of learning that goes on at this young age is extraordinary and we need to stand up for quality teaching for our youngest learners,” she said.

“The government used to fund centres up to 100% of qualified teachers, but reduced that to 80% five years ago. Since then, centres committed to 100% quality teaching have been scrambling to meet the shortfall, but it’s just not sustainable without proper funding.

“World Teachers Day is a chance to remind Minister Parata that all kids deserve quality teaching, and it is the government’s job to fund it.”

How Brains are Built: The Core Story of Brain Development

Drawing Māui's exploits....

Kindergarten photos..... an update

Hello parents,

We would like to invite you all to view your pictures at Inspire Photography's online ordering site.

This gallery and ordering system is live and working as of now. 

To order your photographs:

1. Go to our website at http://www.inspirephotography.co.nz/ and click on Client Galleries in the menu bar.

2. Click the link to your kindergarten and enter in the access code: norkin12

3. Create an account or log in to an existing account to place your order via our online process. Add your selected photos to cart, specifying size, quantity, colour and border preferences.

4. The photos are in black and white and can be ordered in colour, but are not viewable online in colour. All the images have been colour corrected and can be viewed at the studio if you wish. Please contact us for more information.

5. Please check that your child's name is spelled correctly and is present on the group photograph and leave a note on your order if any changes need to be made.

Orders placed within the earlybird period will be dropped off at your kindergarten on or before the week ending Friday the 13th of November.

This gallery will be taken offline and the Earlybird prices will expire at midnight on Thursday the 29th of October - ordering or clearing payments after this date will be charged at our Standard pricing instead, with prints to be collected from the studio, or plus $6 postage if you would prefer for prints to be sent out to you by standard post.  

If you require an alternative method of ordering to our online system please feel free to call or email us and we can organise to send you a paper order form.

If you have any questions please let us know, as the more questions we receive the better we become at informing parents about this process.

Kind regards,

The Inspire Team.

orders@inspirephotography.co.nz

043848009

Inspire Photography

Level 6, Outwide House, 61-63 Taranaki Street

PO Box 19-006, Wellington 6140

A Letter from the association to families......Important!

9 October 2015

Tēnā koe

Message for Parents and Whānau - What’s happening at kindergarten?

At Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens we are having to cuts costs because of ongoing funding shortfalls.  Recently, we have been working with our staff on a change management process to help us cut costs.

We want to assure parents that we will continue to offer a quality service for your children.  We are very proud of the quality education we provide across our 85 kindergartens and our homebased services, but we have to make changes to ensure we stay viable. 

In 2010, the government cut our funding by 14% as it did not believe that kindergartens needed to be fully staffed by trained, registered teachers.

We know that quality teaching makes the difference, and we are determined to ensure that all kindergarten children are taught by fully trained and registered teachers.  All the research, both from New Zealand and internationally, supports the need for qualified teachers to work with our young children.

Since the government cuts in 2010, the government has not adjusted its funding for inflation, another effective cut we have had to absorb.   During this time, we have continued to provide a quality service which is affordable to families as we believe every child is entitled to a high quality education.

Now, unfortunately the time has come for us to make some difficult decisions to preserve our kindergartens.  Salaries are our greatest cost, accounting for almost 90 per cent of our budget.  In some of our kindergartens, we are proposing opening for longer hours – moving to five six hour days – which will increase our income, as well as providing more options for families.  In other kindergartens, we are proposing to reduce the non-contact time teachers have.   We have given teachers more generous non-contact time than most other services, but we can no longer afford this.  We are planning on asking teachers to volunteer for a part-time role, and we hope some teachers may be attracted to this option.  We are endeavouring to avoid any forced redundancies of teachers, although it is possible that this may be a last resort.

As an employer, we know that our teachers are the great strength of our kindergartens and we know that you also recognise this.  We are consulting staff at the current time.  We have always prided ourselves on our record of being a good employer and we are continuing to honour that commitment.

This is a difficult time for everyone but you can be confident that we will continue to provide the same great service to your children.  If you have any concerns we are very happy to hear from you at any time.  You can email me, at amanda.coulston@wmkindergartens.org.nz or phone  029 2626322.

Mauri ora

Amanda Coulston

Chief Executive    

Breaking news... this from 'stuff'

Capital kindergartens may lose teachers to cuts

OLIVIA WANNAN AND TOMMY LIVINGSTON

Last updated 17:19, October 14 2015

CAMERON BURNELL

Parent Niels Waij is concerned about the staff cuts Khandallah Kindergarten, which 3-year-old son Luca attends, and its sister kindies are making due to government funding shortfalls.

Kindergarten teachers across Wellington face job cuts as early childhood education centres are squeezed by government funding drops.
Whanau Manaaki Kindergartens, the non-profit behind 85 kindies in the region, announced last week that "ongoing funding shortfalls" meant they had to cut staff time to remain afloat.
It is believed each kindy will have to lose about 1.6 teachers in a move would reduce the teacher-to-child ratio at each centre.
Chief executive Amanda Coulston said while in 2008 her kindergartens were funded $12.26 per child per hour by the government, today it was $11.77 for the 20 free subsidised hours.
"I defy any organisation to be able to make ends meet with this sort of underfunding."
The scrapping of the government Provisionally Registered Teacher Grant in 2010 to centres with more than 80 per cent qualified teachers was one factor impacting Whanau Manaaki's budgets, Coulston said. They were committed to ensuring all their teachers were qualified, for the benefit of children.
"We wouldn't put 80 per cent professional rugby players out in the World Cup and have the other 20 per cent as big fans and think we're going to get the same result as if we had 100 per cent professional players," she said. "Since ... 2010, the government has not adjusted its funding for inflation, another effective cut we have had to absorb."
Whanau Manaaki sent out a letter to parents on Friday saying it was asking its teachers to volunteer for part-time work and reducing the non-contact time teachers had, to cut costs.
"We're hoping there won't be forced redundancies but we're still at the early stages," she said. "It's been a difficult time for our teachers."
Since 2011 the organisation has asked parents using their free 20 hours of childcare for donations towards the training and registration of teachers. Increasing this and extending kindy opening hours were two options being considered to boost revenue, Coulston said.

Teachers would be told if forced redundancies would be necessary at the start of December, she said.

"It's not unique to us. It's across the board and different services are doing different things to address that."
The possibility of cuts was met with shock by parents at Khandallah Kindergarten.
Dad Niels Waij sends his son Luca, 3, there and said it would have a "huge" impact.
"As it is, there are not a lot of teachers, so that one-on-one time gets lost. They have good systems and with one gone that will be a link out of the chain.
"The kids are little, so it is important. They are taking a lot into their little brains."
Jenny Henderson has Ella, 4, and George, 3, at the kindergarten and said it was "absolutely shocking".
"The teachers here are so awesome. The thought of losing any of them is awful."
Paul Goulter, New Zealand Educational Institute union national secretary, agreed all early childhood education centres were feeling a similar financial squeeze. "Like many others [they] have done their utmost to keep up the quality against this relentless impact of government real funding cuts."
Ministry of Education spokeswoman Katrina Casey said annual inflation adjustments were not made to early childhood education funding rates.
Kindergartens were more generously funded than other childcare centres, which received $11.43 an hour.
The cost to parents had remained constant since 2007, she said.
Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said investing in the highest quality pre-school education, with fully qualified teachers, would pay off. "Kids who have been involved in quality early childhood education before they start school tend to do better when they get to school."
Education Minister Hekia Parata refused to answer questions on early childhood education funding.

 - Stuff

Breaking the process into manageable steps

Hi all.... We've had lots of discussions with families of late about ways that toilet training can be supported. here's a handy pic that sometimes help children learn the process involved in successful toileting. we have it in the toilet at kindergarten and talk toileting learners about what each image means so they might use if if they want to to help them remember.  Hope it helps!

welcome back all!

Kia ora koutou, we hope you have all had an enjoyable term break .... We are gearing up to our summer terms which means each tamariki will need to have a pōtae (sun hat) with them. We would appreciate it if you could please sunscreen your tamariki before session, we do however, have a pump bottle available at kindergarten for use if you forget before you get to kindergarten!. We will be applying sunscreen to all children at around midday to top it up. You'll notice our sunshades have been reinstalled to help us all be sunsafe and our programme included a mat time hui discussion about this to reinforce the idea with the group of learners.

A note to the wise... PLEASE name all belongings. Hats, lunchboxes, drink bottles and any warm clothing  or footwear very likely to be discarded during the day. We are keen to help our learners be independently in charge of themselves and take responsibility for their belongings, but it can't be done if we don't know whose they are!!!!

funding from the government continues to threaten ece quality funding....

Media Release

Significant change in ECE requires significant investment

2/10/15

A report released today recommending significant changes to early childhood education will require significant investment to make real gains for the youngest New Zealanders, says NZEI Te Riu Roa.

The Advisory Group on Early Learning report contains a series of recommendations that could represent a major overhaul of early childhood education  but which will require a major funding boost, said NZEI Te Riu Roa National Executive member Virginia Oakly.
“We welcome many of the recommendations of this report,  which are focused on ensuring quality ECE and improving transitions for our youngest learners, “ said Virginia Oakly.

“Whether these recommendations come to life from this report in a market-driven early childhood education system remains to be seen.”
 “Our kindergartens and ECE centres are facing a funding crisis due to a government driving up participation at the expense of quality. Per-child funding is inadequate and quality community centres and kindergartens are feeling a severe pinch.”
 “Good initiatives such as increased non-contact hours and a greater focus on special educational needs will have to be backed up not only with dollars but also with a move away from market-driven provision.”
 Virginia Oakly said that NZEI Te Riu Roa will be working with services and government to ensure the best aspects of this report are implemented and resourced.  She also thanked the NZEI members who contributed to this major report

Learning how to learn...

You might remember that we spent lots of time earlier in the year supporting children's knowledge about how they learned something. It focused primarily in the physical challenge area as the children could recognise their achievements easily.  Our NZ early childhood curriculum has such a emphasis on thinking skills- of  taking an interest, finding ways to get involved, tackling difficulty and persevering. Qualified teaching interactions are always provoking and challenging children to feel successful and confident as they tryout new things and challenge themselves to complete what they start. Our session is designed to allow these interactions to happen.
Here's a well respected and oft cited  researcher and writer in the field of Education talking about 'the power of believing that you can improve' based on her work in the states. It resonates for us as it shows the basic philosophy of early childhood education at work when done well - teaching children to be flexible thinkers and problem solvers....

A message for ECE services from the Heart Foundation.

We know Northland families are great at exercise... look how much we need to do to get up and down the driveway and street!!! Especially in the wind!! :)
Here's a message the Heart foundation wants us to share....

setting limits with respect....

Here's some ideas for managing children's behaviours with dignity and calm.....
follow this link....http://www.janetlansbury.com/2014/04/setting-limits-with-respect-what-it-sounds-like-podcast/

Māui here at Kindergarten and further afield...

The force is strong with this one....:)

Millie gives Maui a puzzle to work on....:)

Learners in a Bicultural Nation

The world of Māui!

Children need trained teachers at every stage...

In its 17 August edition, the Dominion Post newspaper featured a major opinion piece by actor and journalist Dave Armstrong. In it he talks about the importance of high quality ECE – in particular focusing on the importance of qualified staff:

“…But if you want our ECE centres to educate our very young, it helps if the staff now about how children develop and learn. To do that, specialist training is needed.

Yet despite the Government saying it is committed to quality education, ECE centres are allowed to have up to half their staff untrained…”

Read the full version of Dave Armstrong's article through the following link:

http://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-dominion-post/20150817/281762742991672/TextView

The Value of Social Learning. Another reason for quality curriculum and teaching......and a similar study was done in NZ a while back......

This work sourced from :
http://www.upworthy.com/researchers-studied-kindergarteners-behavior-and-followed-up-19-years-later-here-are-the-findings

Researchers studied kindergarteners' behavior and followed up 19 years later. Here are the findings

"Every parent wants to see their kid get good grades in school. But now we know social success is just as important.
From an early age, we're led to believe our grades and test scores are the key to everything — namely, going to college, getting a job, and finding that glittery path to lifelong happiness and prosperity.
It can be a little stressful.
But a new study shows that when children learn to interact effectively with their peers and control their emotions, it can have an enormous impact on how their adult lives take shape. And according to the study, kids should be spending more time on these skills in school.
Nope, it's not hippie nonsense. It's science.

Researchers measured the social skills of 800 kindergarteners in 1991. Two decades later, they looked them up to see how things turned out.

Kindergarten teachers evaluated the kids with a portion of something called the Social Competence Scale by rating statements like "The child is good at understanding other's feelings" on a handy "Not at all/A little/Moderately well/Well/Very well" scale. The research team used these responses to give each kid a "social competency score," which they then stored in what I assume was a manila folder somewhere for 19 years, or until each kid was 25. At that point, they gathered some basic information about the now-grown-ups and did some fancy statistical stuff to see whether their early social skills held any predictive value.
Here's what they found

1. Those good test scores we covet? They still matter, but maybe not for the reasons we thought.

Traditional thinking says that if a kid gets good grades and test scores, he or she must be really smart, right? After all, there is a proven correlation between having a better GPA in high school and making more money later in life.
But what that test score doesn't tell you is how many times a kid worked with a study partner to crack a tough problem, or went to the teacher for extra help, or resisted the urge to watch TV instead of preparing for a test.
The researchers behind this project wrote, "Success in school involves both social-emotional and cognitive skills, because social interactions, attention, and self-control affect readiness for learning."
That's a fancy way of saying that while some kids may just be flat-out brilliant, most of them need more than just smarts to succeed. Maybe it wouldn't hurt spending a little more time in school teaching kids about the social half of the equation

2. Skills like sharing and cooperating pay off later in life.

We know we need to look beyond GPA and state-mandated testing to figure out which kids are on the right path. That's why the researchers zeroed in so heavily on that social competency score.
What they found probably isn't too surprising: Kids who related well to their peers, handled their emotions better, and were good at resolving problems went on to have more successful lives.
What's surprising is just how strong the correlation was.
An increase of a single point in social competency score showed a child would be 54% more likely to earn a high school diploma, twice as likely to graduate with a college degree, and 46% more likely to have a stable, full-time job at age 25.
The kids who were always stealing toys, breaking things, and having meltdowns? More likely to have run-ins with the law and substance abuse problems.
The study couldn't say for sure that strong or poor social skills directly cause any of these things. But we can say for sure that eating too much glue during arts and crafts definitely doesn't help.

3. Social behaviors can be learned and unlearned — meaning it's never too late to change

The researchers called some of these pro-social behaviors like sharing and cooperating "malleable," or changeable.
Let's face it: Some kids are just never going to be rocket scientists. Turns out there are physical differences in our brains that make learning easier for some people than others. But settling disputes with peers? That's something kids (and adults) can always continue to improve on.
And guess what? For a lot of kids, these behaviors come from their parents. The more you're able to demonstrate positive social traits like warmth and empathy, the better off your kids will be.
So can we all agree to stop yelling at people when they take the parking spot we wanted?

But what does it all mean?

This study has definite limitations, which its researchers happily admit. While it did its best to control for as many environmental factors as possible, it ultimately leans pretty heavily on whether a teacher thought a kid was just "good" or "very good" at a given trait Still, the 19-year study paints a pretty clear picture: Pro-social behavior matters, even at a young age. And because it can be learned, it's a great "target for prevention or intervention efforts."
The bottom line? We need to do more than just teach kids information. We need to invest in teaching them how to relate to others and how to handle the things they're feeling inside.
Ignoring social skills in our curricula could have huge ramifications for our kids down the road

For full details on the study, you can read it in its entirety in the American Journal of Public Health.

Unpacking the brain.....

Lots of team pd has been provided from the brainwave trust... here's a chance for families to access a workshop in this area if they have an interest in brains a little more aged than ours......

learning using ICT.... how does it work?

Tell me a story!

What a lot of ways we are finding to create or retell  a story! Lets keep on finding more ways and a wider range of knowledge to draw from as we practice the idea of taking charge of the story.....
Here's a digital version of most of our wall display in the kindergarten  about our storying work..

welcome back.. and our learners are arriving ready for action!

speech sound development

We've had lots of families asking about speech sound development in children. Here's a chart that shows a range of 'normal' development in this area. If you have concerns or would like ideas about how to promote development of a particular sound ... just ask the team!

Fishy Thursday!

 A wet day is a great day for artists to hone their crafts! some investigations in two areas of the curriculum were expressed very eloquently by a group of artists around the idea of sketching fish. for some it was around representing what they knew... and looking at some reference material in teh ICT suite led to recreating the info they'd been discussing. For others it was about using art provocations on the drawing table.. a book where patterning was very evident in the fishy  illustrations. Tthis type of patchwork patterning engaged  these artists for long periods of time today.. .some framed them. A Lot of hard work and careful control of the art media was evident. All the players  were very proud! We were too my friends!

Indigo's storying

We are great at creating stories based on visual prompts... as well as making them up ourselves. The team generated prompts in our every day programme are showing as we work in every day learning.......

aidan - Jibidi 2010.MPG

We've had a lot of families ask us about our dance repertoire..as the keen dancers are bringing the language and moves home with them! We explore this idea of social dance moves in our daily Kūpapa group experience... where a kaiako member facilitates a group of group games and/or music so we find a whole range of ways to develop  social understandings and musical concepts. Here's a clip of a french folk dance from You tube ( not us obviously) that we sometimes use to help teach the moves and the way we should respond to instrumental musical cues. We have a lot of keen Jibidi dancers at present!  We're sure you will all be folk dancing at home too......:) should we apologise in advance?

Maddy the Author and Illustrator

Well done to Maddy... making a book and being brave enough to share it at our mat time hui. You might have noticed that lots of friends are very keen to explore the notion of the mechanics and content of books... we've had lots of fun with the character and plots!

Association invitation to a meeting......

a philosophy for life.... :)

Finding lots of ways to document our thoughts......

Huge thanks to Seren for sharing her book with our blogging community. We love the book she made building on her keen interest in stories, and also drawing spirals or koru. Here, after drawing the images and dictating the text to the kaiako scribe,  she gives us a voice over so all her friends who can't yet read can enjoy her story too. Tumeke! Ka pai tō mahi!

Looking at one of our current projects....

So many of our friends are using the physical challenge apparatus to think about how you learn a new skill, and to assess and evaluate and plan for their own learning. It's been so interesting to tease out their thinking in this area. Don't forget our planning story is up on the wall above the ICT space.
Huge thanks to our committee for spending some funds to purchase a new parallel bar set for the challenge course space. We've used it in many ways with our big blue boxes so far! Here's Marcus on Day one, finding out how his body can be used on them when they are on a slope....

Tangata whenua welcoming manuhiri.... greeting new friends at mat time!

Some of our families have commented on our welcome haka we use at out group mat time hui to greet new members of the community or visitors... the children are becoming experts. They asked us to post the song so we could all remember it or learn it.... Here's our association Kaitiaki o kupapa Maori singing it for us.

term dates.

Hi all.. we've had a request for dates for the upcoming break. the term finishes on the 2nd of April and we're back on the 20th of April.

Play as a way to unpack life events....

It's much excitement for us all when there is a new member of a household! Dramatic play helps us all to make sense of the change. We've got quite a few children discussing their ideas about what a new baby in the family means! Here Hugo and Campbell show us how we might look after a baby in the ICT suite - where we popped in a digital clip and play props as a provocation to explore our wonderings some more....

Researching and thinking and discussing....

It's great to see our friends take charge of documenting aspects of what they are wondering about.... here Niamh has methodically taken lots of digital microscope shots of lots of kindergarten sourced natural objects. Ka pai tō mahi!

Bryn the Thinker

Lots of friends are working hard investigating what happens when various media combine- here's Bryn thinking hard about colour mixing in the water space... ka pai tō mahi!

Sharing learning experiences between Kindergarten and Home.

Thanks to Zac's family for sharing his interests and  experiences- enabling us to get on board and use them in our planned programme for him. Here's his learning story and a digital voiced version of his story about his holiday that enables him to assess his own work and plan new adventures....

Planning Strategically

You might have been with us part way through last year when the Wellington Kindergarten Association merged with the Rimutaka Kindergarten association- forming a new Association 'He Whānau Manaaki o Tararua Free Kindergarten Assn Inc'. You might more commonly see it as He Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens.The name was gifted to the association  by Sir Tamati and Lady Reedy- highly respected educationalists and important participants in the writing of our national early childhood curriculum "Te Whāriki" which is world renowned.  The name  means 'The caring family of Tararua'  and is  relevant to both associations.

Induction brochure...the nitty gritty!

Our  Induction brochure......  click on a page to magnify!

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