Newsletter-May 2011

Welcome

Josh Inglis and his parents Bernie & Bruce, Matthew & Daniel McLachlan and their parents Este & Damon, Jade Tohill and her Mum Janina, Bradley Scott and his parents Rachel & Patrick and Lauchlan's younger brother Malakhai (Please remember to bring in your immunisation certificates).

Louna & Palemia (Knight) our Tongan couple are joining us again for another term. Thank you both. Our children really enjoy the company of these two very special people. We are grateful for their time they graciously share with us.

We also welcome Rebecca from Bethlehem Tertiary Institute. Rebecca is in her first year of teacher training. She will be here on Wednesday's and then in her final four weeks we will see her each day. Kim has the pleasure this term in assisting Rebecca with her studies and induction into our wonderful kindergarten.

Thank you

Thanks again to Jan (Kara's Mum) who always helps us each morning with our set up and often our end of day tidy up.

A big thanks to all the parents and families who constantly bring in boxes and bits and bobs for our children to use. We are very grateful.

A SPECIAL thanks to all our families who supported Jo, Dave, Eva and Tom through a very difficult time in their lives. Tom's accident affected many people and many prayers went Tom's way. While speaking with Jo and Dave they were and are overwhelmed with the support from the community and especially from our kindergarten.

What's going on at the Corner?

Our children's interests are spread far and wide. Face painting, fishing and babies are still the hot topics. We are doing everything to encourage these interests. WHY? I hear you asking..... Well here at kindy our learning is our play.....  Have you ever tried to make a usable fishing rod out of the things you find around your place? How long would it take you? When you do have one made do you need to alter it for it to work better, and then the next time you repeat this challenge do you then add more theory to it? Face painting is the same process as well. Your children are constantly putting themselves through these challenges when they undertake a project of learning. The production process is just as important as the finished product. Measuring, cutting, forward thinking, planning, evaluating, test trialing and problem solving are only a few learning strands which emerge from their play, and it is real good fun!!! PLEASE when your child brings home something they have worked on and created, support their learning by asking about the process, asking who worked with them and why they decided to spend their precious time creating it. It will fill you with pride to hear their reasons.

Baby Watching

We are still in the process of watching Tamara and Cathy bond stronger as mother and daughter. Our children also have developed a special bond with Tamara. They often can tell when she is tired, what her favourite games are, why she looks for Cathy, what she might be saying and what some of her needs are. It is always inspiring to watch our children repeat our baby watching in their own play. Their abililty to take responsibility for their own babies is beautiful. Some children find baby sitters within the kindy to watch their babies if they are going off to do something else. The baby sitter usually takes this responsibility seriously, often finding the parents of the babies or taking the baby from place to place with them until the mother comes back to collect it.

Profile Books

The profile books are yours to take home whenever you like. Your teachers work especially hard with your children to ensure their learning is documented beautifully, often there is a place for you to respond to the learning story as well.

Please add your own stories/photos to the profiles at your leisure, it is always a thrill for us to see, and for your child to show off....

Please remember to bring back the book so your teachers can place in any new learning stories for your children.

Healthy Food

Please remember to encourage healthy eating. We encourage healthy lunches and food here at kindy. As part of our healthy eating plan we will be making our own vege soup, bread, telling stories of foods that are good for different parts of our bodies. How many servings each day a person needs, sampling foods that are different and new, using vege's in our pizza's, making dips from fruit and veges, doing lots of healthy cooking and cooking foods from other countries using our veges in New Zealand. We already have parents who are willing to share their cooking expertise with us. There has also been talk about having adult cooking classes in which you could come and learn about cooking Japanesse food, Asian foods and basically having fun with healthy choices.

Our winter veges are planted as well. If you have any spare seedlings you can't use we would love them for our gardens.

As usual we encourage drinking water only.

Roll ups, sweets, lolllies, chockies and anything that resembles gummy bear mixture we ask you leave at home.

Some questions to ponder when preparing lunch boxes

Would I eat that?                                            Is most of this food healthy?

Is there too much food in here?                       Can I recycle the wrappings?

Will the food stay nice till lunch time?              Is it brain food?

Can they open the containers themselves?        Is there enough food in there?

As we have a couple of children with nut allergies we ask that you do not send any food containing nuts to kindy e.g. peanut butter, nutells, health bars or anything containing nuts. Thank you for your cooperation.

Caterpillar feet

Karen from the council shared a staff meeting with us recently. She introduced us to caterpillar feet. Caterpillar feet is a new program which encourages road safety. We will have Dan the Puppet Man come and put on a road safety show and have charts and posters which actively show how we are learning to be safe while walking. A walking school bus is also in action at the moment as well (you have probaby seen this in the morning). Karen and her team are sponsoring all the resourses and shows for our kindergarten. We feel very strongly about supporting this idea. If you would like to know more about this project and the walking school bus please see Jody as she is already actively involved.

Challenge Box

Grandpa Gary strikes again with another amazing resource for our children to learn with. He has invented a wooden box which can be taken apart. The handles, hinges and sides all come off. They need different types of screw drivers to get the job done. Grandpa has colour coded the inside of the box to make it easier to put back together.

Christchurch Raffle

We wanted to help support an early childhood center in Christchurch. So Grandpa Gary made a lawnmower to raffle off and Natalie (Jim's mum) made and donated a very beautiful blanket.The tickets are only $2.00. Please help support a good cause.

Pick up/Drop offs

We are a whole day kindergarten. Our sessions are 8.30 am to 2.45 pm. Please try and keep as close as possible to these times. We have noticed that some parents are consistantly dropping off late and picking up early.

Absent

If your child is going to be absent from kindy for the day, please ring and let us know as soon as you can.

If you are going to take an extended holiday with your child, can you please let Di in the office know or Gina.

You may from time to time be asked to sign a frequent absence form as part of the Ministry of Education requirements.

Please check that we have your correct updated contact numbers on our files as many times the teachers have tried to contact families and the contact numbers we had were out of date.

Graduation Day

Jody and Corina are about to embark on a course called 'Teacher Talk'. This course is extensively involved with encouraging language development, language leading the way to literacy and fostering peer interactions in our kindergarten. It is a very exciting opportunity for both Jody and Corina. They will come back buzzing with a wealth of new information to share with us all.

They will be away for the next three Mondays. However we're lucky enough to nab Stephanie Graham and Janet Horn to fill in.

Article of the Month

We are offering for parents/families who are interested an article of the month to read. The idea is to give you something to reflect upon, food for thought. The article each month may or may not be views that you agree with. These articles are meant to be informative and merely something for you to mull over. This months article is "Forty Assets Preschoolers Need To Succeed". This discusses forty building blocks to support children's growth.

Give us a Clue

 On the children's initiation we have started up a Clue Box, something we  introduced in the later part  of last year. The children really seemed to enjoy this and this term Louis approached us and asked if he could take the Clue Box home, and so it started again. The Clue Box gives connections between home and the kindergarten, with children finding something from their home environment and thinking of three clues to describe it. They get great delight out of reading out the clues and seeing if their peers can guess what they have put in the box. This game is a great connection between home and their kindergarten environment in conjunction with great opportunities to test out their cognitive skills.

Celebrations

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Malakhai 2 years old on 14 April

Samuel 4 years old on 15 April

Vanshika 4 years old on 17 April

Fletcher 3 years old on 24 April

James and Daniel turn 4 year old on 18 May

Kara is turning 4 years old on 19 May

Louis turns 5 years old on 19 May

If your child or a member of your family is celebrating something special please let Gina or Dianne Ward know and we can put it in here!