Merry Christmas!

Kia ora all. Just a note to remind you all that Kindergarten closes after session tomorrow for the year. We hope you all have a safe, restful and fun break. We'll look forward to catching up with you all when we come back on the 23rd of January!

Our end of year celebration show.....

our brave learners....

Here's a page from the newsletter emailing to you on Monday and already on the current newsletter tab of this blog to show how snippets of our project on the go is progressing......

Thanks to the children and teachers of Northland school for coming along to visit us on Friday. Our Friday friends did a wonderful job of being tangata whenua and welcoming our manuhiri onto the kindergarten tūrangawaewae ( the place we stand) we sang our usual welcomes- 'tihei mauriora' and the Northland kindergarten origin song..... and as a challenge we pulled them onto our mat time space using 'toia mai - te waka' as a welcome haka. We'd love to share more images of how this went as we did so well, but we have a lot of Friday friends whose families have not completed or returned facebook or blogger

blogger permission forms. If you want to see how this went ..... check out the clips at kindergarten. if you can't see them - just ask a team member to help you locate them on our corner computer.

Kindergarten kaitiaki....part 2!

It seems that it isn't only our Ruru on our entranceway that is thinking about the idea of being a kaitiaki.... has your child mentioned this idea of late? Anne has spent a bit of time over the last few weeks unpacking this notion for our children - kaitiaki as a protector of the place and people. We had lots of ideas to investigate and tell her about our experiences with recycling, rubbish collection, looking after Tane's children ( the plants and insects and birds) and what we could do here at kindergarten to be Kaitiaki. It's an idea that resonated with lots of children. Heres's some pics of children taking it upon themselves to sort out the kindergarten grounds. Ka pai tō mahi tamariki! They look lots better! we've been looking after some new seedlings too. So much fun to see how fast they grow! It's been great to hear their stories f gardening at home.If you have anything to share about this let us know!

Some of the children's interest of late is no doubt influenced by seeing Lilibeth's Dad working in the grounds in our building project.... and certainly by  seeing Brendan Millar spend two whole days in this excruciating heat working on the overtaking fauna by the entranceway. They were very interested in the idea of taking on a big project such as this. The teaching team were merely extremely grateful - it's much easier to see the structure now and we'll re do the entrance garden soon to complement the entranceway. watch this space. Huge thanks to Brendan and to Craig Keen for helping him with the final afternoon of the removal.  Kindergarten never happens without parent support!

It seems a great time to mention the support of the committees of the last year or two, and parents who invested  fundraising time and  energy and  those who donated targeted funds to the entranceway project. It wouldn't be off the ground without you!

Ruru the Kaitiaki

 I know those of you who are part of our Kindergarten whānau will be monitoring the progress in our entranceway area. We are so excited ! We want the entrance way to be warm and welcoming. We want people to be able to find us easily, and to be out of the rain and wind as they negotiate our uppermost gates.  As you can see the upper artwork has been affixed to both sides of the roof. Are Karati- our artist came along and got the 'feel' and mana of our tūrangawaewae before going away and designing his work for us.  When he brought it back Thanked us for the 'opportunity and trust you have given me to illuminate the feeling of being here." He describes us as being "nestled, tucked away and embraced - brought to life by the many children/ mokopuna, and nurtured, guided, cared for by the parents, caregivers, brothers, sisters, mums and dads, uncles, aunties, grandparents......Yes a nest - no doubt".  He hopes  that the artwork will be enjoyed and shares that he worked on it with his sons... Onyx, Areroa and Dony.... and that it was fun to make!
Are describes the gateway as the Whaia/Mum.  He created the carvings to represent and celebrate  our place here at kindergarten in the 'nest of life' - what is precious to us and why we love what we do.
He says " As we exit the nest the design and placement of shapes and colours is weaving". We connect with this as teachers as our curriculum"Te Whāriki" is about weaving curriculum.
He describes the centre peice as Ruru - Manu Kaitiaki..... a guardian bird. How appropriate!