There's something heartening about voting for policies funding our children's learning further.....

Oral Language.....

Language for Literacy – The Importance of Building Vocabulary in Preschool

This article is worth a read...... check it out!

http://notjustcute.com/2017/06/13/language-for-literacy-the-importance-of-building-vocabulary-in-preschool/

Tamariki caretakers of the environment

 Thanks to the Wellington Council for donating us lots of small native shrubs for planing on our bank....  Anne and Doug got busy helping a team of small and willing workers to spend the week getting them all planted.  the children were very interested and we'll  enjoy watching them grow and especially help them make the wooded area on the bank  look interesting.  Great work my friends... pai tō manaaki!

What do the teachers get up to in the term break? Here's one thing we do!

http://www.maoritelevision.com/news/education/whanau-manaaki-incorporate-maori-worldview-kindergartens

Part of being trained and registered teachers is undergoing a planned programme of continual professional development to ensure we know current professional research in the area of teaching young children. This term break was our conference for all the Whānāu Manaaki Kindergartens and associated services. Above is a link to the theme and association direction for this conference. Titiro atū!

Communicating... some thoughts.

Here's some info from a useful publication ( you can download this on the web) called "Much more than words" that the Ministry of Education/ Special education division put out a little way back. It's a user friendly look at key ideas of communication development, when there is a problem, and ideas to promote skills. If you want a copy of this you can download it or ask the team to email you a copy. We've had some families talk to us about  speech sounds and the content of their child's language skills. Below here's a diagram from the text that looks at when the accepted range of 'normal' happens for particular sounds, and some ideas about language.

Speech sound production.....

 Here's some ideas about language development...

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?