Wonderful works of art

  Our tamariki have been hard at work creating spectacular art works - here's a few examples from the last week or so using so many different mediums, clay, palette and acrylic paints, collage, construction, tile and screen printing......... ka pai tō mahi!

Fun with puppets!

You might have noticed lots of our tamariki very busy  using puppets as a way to tell a story of late, our puppet theatre has a busy schedule! To support this work we invited the Stringbean puppet company to come along and show us all about how a marionette puppet might work. It was so much fun! Keep on story telling ngā tamariki? I wonder if you might make your own puppets to try out?

Our hard work of the last week or so has included finding out a lot about force and motion, the movement of water and the way vacuums help us to suck water to a place we can use it. It's great to see our sandpit development project moving along - largely to the input of a donation from the Busby family. We're still working on maximising this playspace and our tamariki are showing us a lot about their understandings, their ability to plan and think, and to use their large muscle groups towards a spcific plan. Great work all. It's so much fun and we'll keep on investigating ways to make the concepts we learn in this space more complex.....

Māui the learner takes on a dramatic role.....

 You might have noticed lots of friends making themselves some special hooks while at Kindergarten.... so as to do great things with them just as our Mentor Māui does. Here we see Cerys and Ray who are keen Māui experts leading the play in dramatic reenactment if Māui stories... and have spent lots of time helping friends who like to sketch their own special hooks and making sure they know the tikanga and storylines.... It's great to have experts just handy don't you think?

Writing our own Māui Legends

 A wet week is a great time to explore an interest in detail.  We've been having a lot of discussions about the notion of Māui ( who we know well here at Northland Kindergarten) and how he can be seen  in a movie lots of friends have enjoyed ( Moana). We've been noticing that the tattoos on the Māui in the movie shows pictures of  Māui stories we know  in action ( and a few stories we don't as yet). We've been in a flurry of drawing and writing and re reading the legends, researching and book making as we revisit the legends, Some of us are sharing our work at mat time!

Kudos to our Thinkers and Researchers.......

We're having a butterfly week....

 We are so enjoying being proud parents of a brood of Monarch Butterflies..... we've waited as all our caterpillars turned to chrysalis's....  and at last they are coming out. We have lots of friends spending long periods of  time this week observing and so many of us have been checking in lots!
Here's one of today's releases into the wild......

Welcome Back!

How nice to have a fine day as we reconnect with friends! Welcome back one and all!

Articulating what we know

Kudos to Eleanor for sketching our mountain Te Ahumairangi today....
Those of you who have been joining us for mat time might recognise it! It's  a fab replica ( actually it's better) of the one we use when we got busy talking about our mountain and it's features.

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Our place to stand... the history

You might have heard if you've been at our mat time hui, or if your children have come home singing a song ( as some of you have reported as happening)..... we've been exploring a new song the team has devised as part of our project work about our geographical, peopled and historical area.  We've included signposts of the geography and the way the kindergarten began in Northland. If you don't know it yet from your child or children, here are the words. The team will record it soon as an accompanying soundtrack. We intend to use it as part of ceremony welcoming visitors to a mat time hui - or new people to our kindergarten community alongside 'tihei mauriora' which we use currently to say 'hi'!

The bushwalking adventurers

Here's some info about a regular feature of investigation. Thanks to Leo Mishkin ( 4 years) for taking these photos for us to share while he was walking with us....

Thanks to the Lion Foundation!

 We've been enjoying giving our physical skills a bit workout, and  honing our thinking skills too as we make decisions to tackle known challenge! We've been fortunate enough to get a community grant for some fab new equipment.... which is always fun!

Welcome to Moerangi!

Freeze frame on the programme in action!

Huge thanks to Gilly and Evie for bringing in their great friend Moerangi to Kindergarten to share her memories of Northland and Northland Kindergarten in the 70’s. We’ve talked a lot about history of late and her stories and video clips of Hawea’s

Adventures in Northland were very interesting. We had questions about how it was and we enjoyed sharing the ‘pigeon house ‘ song she remembered singing when she was a kindergarten girl. She talked about the differences in how it was to be a kindergarten aged person then as opposed to now, highlighted for us that the tunnels were a big feature then just as they are now,  and also talked about hangi as a way to celebrate milestones….Thank you for sharing … we were so pleased to welcome you. we are so very interested in finding out about our kindergarten 'place to stand'. 

Working with physics at Kindergarten.

Here's  a note that shows how the current project begun along the lines of planning, exploring and evaluating our ideas might look.... we'll have evidence on a new project planning wall in the  indoor environs.  A great 'hook' to get children involved in this idea is the way balls or other items work when used in a range of physics based scenarios.......

Thinking about 'our place to stand'

We are so enjoying exploring our local geography, history and people that makes up our community! One aspect of the notion of  tūrangawaewae is the idea of looking after our local environs....recycling and being respectful of our plantlife.... we welcomed a visitor this week- Zam the Gardening Man who had a chat to the group about worm farming, growing, making great use of 'rubbish', and planting....

more learning pathways after the olympics....

Leading the way.

Here's some of our Mountain enthusiasts popping off for a spot of research about our local awa..... the stream and flora over the fence.  We are keen for some other of our older  friends to take a turn at satisfying our curiosity about our local geography too.... We had such rich conversation and wonderful observations and sketches abounded. Great investigation e hoa! We have certainly added more info to our developing working theories in this area today!

The Northland Octathalon

The entrants for the 2016 Northland Olympics octathalon event have been announced!  Isaac, Gabby and Leo took part in 8 events.  The rings, the parallel bars, the beam, 100 m race, the 100 m relay, the long jump, the high jump and the shot put.  It was great to see the children bringing in so much knowledge from home.  What other events could we have?. Posted by Doug.

What else lives on our Mountain?

It's been great when our learners grab a moment or two to draw what they are thinking, discussing and wondering about..... We've had lots of friends of late drawing trees and plant life that they observe from the Kindergarten..... so many interesting works! Keep on compiling lists of  features for us to include in our shared Mountain work my friends!

Constructing on a Wet day

Thanks to all those families who responded to our plea  for collage boxes - we had completely run out! Now we are really busy constructing in the glue gun and art table spaces! Great work to be involved in on a series of wet days! :) thank for your support!