Wednesday 22 March 2017

yay!

Chris Hipkins MP was live.
5 hrs
"At lunchtime today I signed up to the "Have a heart pledge" committing Labour to restoring the funding the National government has cut from early childhood education over the last 6 years, reducing teacher:child ratios and restoring the goal of 100% qualified teachers."

Tuesday 14 March 2017

Plunket workshop

 Hi all -
Just a note to say that this Thursday's workshop facilitated by Plunket is going ahead as planned.... 6.30pm at Kindergarten  ... we'll see you there hopefully!

Why movement skills are really important...

The below is a quote from Gill Connell, - the team know her as  a wonderfully gifted Professional development provider. She has also written books on children's movement patterning and skills.......

How does playing hopscotch help a child with handwriting?

We sometimes see children sitting in strange positions when they haven't yet mastered their ability to move one part of their body independently from another. We call this homo-lateral development. Handwriting requires children to hold one side of their body still (to hold the paper) while the other side moves and forms the letters on the paper. If this has not yet been developed, children (and adults) will sometimes sit themselves in contorted positions in order to control the other side of the body. Doing activities that help develop this skill (we call it midline development), by moving using opposition movements - crawling, climbing, marching, monkey walking etc will help. As well, practicing movements where one side remains still while the other moves - like hopping, waving, scissor cutting, hammering to name a few can help this develop. 

For more info on this here's a link to her blog.

http://movingsmartblog.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/why-hopscotch-matters.html