Other Events

We also had a busy social calendar with celebration luncheons happening around Leanne achieving her Bachelor of Education and  celebrating the special event of the Queen's Birthday. Both these luncheons were very well attended showing what a fantastic community we have here at Glamorgan Kindergarten.

We also celebrated the end of our fantastic term with a Funky Friday where everyone could come to kindergarten in some unusual attire and lo and behold there were also strange things happening. The puzzle table was upside down, shoes, handbags and rakes were hanging from different places inside and the teachers were acting rather strangely sending little bursts of water at the children now and again. Barney and his friends were hanging nonchantly from the swing beam and boxes were upturned and in different places.

The fantastic potters of Glamorgan

Term two 2012
Another busy term which passed very quickly and once again I am behing in the blogging department but will try and catch you all up on what happened for us.
At the end of term one Chrissy and I attended a very exciting workshop around working with clay and as we have wanted to provide more opportunities for children to work with this marvellous natural material we discussed with the other teachers ways in which this could be facilitated and in the end it was decided to set up a table in the art space along with displaying intersting pieces of pottery to provoke conversations with the children who visited the space.
Some children of course discovered the clay immediately while others took the whole term to find it and by this time we,the teachers, had noticed that we had some very exciting creations being made.We continued to only provide clay with little sponges as we wanted the children to experience and explore ways to work with clay and we also wanted to introduce what we called clay speak. Terms such as rolling, coiling, pushing, squeezing, pancake making as for us this wis what working with clay is all about. When one introduces more tools etc into the mix some children never really touch the clay.
The interest continued until nearly the end of the term with children returning time and time again and bringing their ideas, their current interest such as making dinosaurs, birds, dragons just to name a few.
We were delighted with the extension of skills that we noted and the dispostions of persistence, resilence and  and resourcefulness that the children showed. Certainly links were noticed to  Guy Claxton's  dispositions identified in his book 'Building Learing Power". Yeah. Fantastic.

Happenings in Term One 2012

A little late getting into the blogging thing again but here is a update of what happened at Glamorgan Kindergarten during the first term of 2012. As usual the term got off to a real bang with everyone celebrating Waitangi Day in our own special way. The children were encouraged to participate in conversation around why we do celebrate Waitangi Day and we made little kites - Manu iti - to fly and also wove some fantastic paper tipare which led into our main focus for the whole term.
Weaving that is. What can we say about this except that with the exception of five children, participated in some form on weaving that permeated the kindergarten curriculum. The children and the teachers wove headbands, used little weaving frames of a variety of types, delved into flax weaving, wove God's eyes using sticks and even tried our hands at weaving hair ([plaits in fact).
The learning and development was marvellous as children extended their skills, developed resilience and persistance in completing their weaving and also worked together on group weavings thus developing collaboration skills.
The teachers were certainly challenged at times by the sheer number of children who wanted to take part but quickly realised that learning to wait was also important and literacy opportunities such as writing one's name on a list could be used. Lots of opportunities were taken up around maths concepts such as over and under, counting threads and numbers of colours used, length of threads etc to name just a few.
We were very fortunate in being able to provide the children with the opportunity to see woven mats and bags from a different county - Tonga by courtesy of Olivia's dad and grandmother. Sef shared some insight into the Tongan culture with us all which was lovely.
We now wonder where this interest will go next term. Will there be some children who want to revisit it or perhaps have noticed different forms of weaving while on holiday. Certainly some of the teachers will have been very aware of different woven bits and pieces while on break.

The Rugby World Cup

We started off the Rugby World Cup by decorating the kindergarten with rugby bunting and flags and celebrating the beginning of this great time in New Zealand with a special day and a community luncheon. the children and their families certainly got into the spirit of things with the children dressing up to represent their country, many of course in All Black colours but a smattering of South Africans, a Scot, an Italian and a few Tongans. It was a lovely day and naturally there has been a considerable amount of rugby taking place on the kindergarten grounds.
A few of us have read the instructions to try and kick like Dan Carter but in the end decided to do our own thing. Yeah. Roll on the winning team. Lets hope it is the All Blacks but if not a good time to discuss how things do not always go the way we want them to and promote resilience within our children and adults.

Our Amazing Town and City

September 2011 -It has been a really busy and fun time at kindergarten with a real buzz of excitement in the air. From an interest in our families and where we all live the focus moved to constructing buildings to make 'Our amazing town'. Most of the children have been involved in some way or another in constructing buildings which have ranged from pre-schools through to farms allowing us to put all these together as a small town. One which could be found any where in New Zealand.


An influx of big packing boxes encouraged the making of a city outside with tall buildings, city streets and parks. We have put to good use our newly purchased data projector and this has proved to be a valuable teaching tool allowing us (teachers) to revisit ideas and view buildings all over the world. We quickly discovered that the children were very interested in tall buildings, such as our very own Sky Tower in Auckland so we arranged an excursion as an extension of their interest and what a fantastic visit we had.The 16th September saw us all get on a bus which took us into the city via Westhaven Marina where we got off to look at the Harbour Bridge from the underneath. The children very impressed by the fantastic structure of the bridge and also curious in regard to the walkway they could see. After a quick morning tea at St Patricks square it was up the lift to the viewing area. A bit scary for some of the adults in our group - a brave bunch as some of them are a little nervous of heights, but once there all thought it was marvellous. Helpers and children poured over the sheets showing landmarks and other items to find and then many of the children settled down to draw what interested them most. At 12.00 a very excited group headed back to kindergarten full of ideas.


The next week or so the children were involved in extensions of the interest such as opportunities for special art work and more construction using boxes and believe it or not sand, which provided a great medium for remaking the city viewed from a height.


All in all a marvellous, busy, exciting, interesting learning experience for all.

Welcome to term three

Goodness. The holidays really flew this time and we are now into the second week of a fairly short term. The children seem very happy to be back and have been busy revisiting areas that are special to them such as the repaired swings. The family area has been really well used with the bits of fabric and different scarves making dressing up fun and a little challenging as they wrap themselves up in a variety of ways. At present we are all involved in making a kindergarten book around the focus of "We are all alike. We are all different'. The children have been drawing self portraits, pictures of them and their families, and will then move on to their friends, and where they live, - their houses, farms, pets etc.

The teachers have been busy providing feedback to the MOE ECE taskforce document as well as indulging in a little professional development.
Sadly at the end of the week we will say goodbye to the student teacher we have had here for her seven week practicum. It has been great to be able to support her in this her last student experience before she graduates and enters the world of teaching.
Kia kaha - Be strong.

Celebrating Maori culture

As part of our committment to our Bi-cultural strategic plan which we formulated at the beginning of the year we have continued to take up and make opportunities to extend the children's knowledge of Te Reo and Tikanga Maori as well as our own (the teachers).
The kindergarten celebrated the coming of the Maori New Year - Matariki with waiata (song), reintroduced a haka that we had learnt last year, provided art activities with a Maori focus and we were fortunate to be able to visit Long Bay College to watch a performance by their Kapa Haka Group. The children who went (20 of the 6 hour group) were enthralled by the performance which they all felt was not long enough and they would have liked to see more.

The end of the week saw us all head off to the Auckland Museum to see the Maori Cultural Performance and the Maori Galleries. Travelling over the harbour bridge on the bus was great fun for the children but the real highlight was the performance and being able to meet the performers after the show. We were also able to sing our special Pungawerewere song which we had learnt the previous week for them. What a marvellous way to end the term.