Spreading Joy through Story telling at Gulf Views Rest home

 

At Uxbridge we are enjoying planned and spontaneous interactions with the older residents  at Gulf views.  These visits allow both generations to enjoy each others contributions within our community and  spread joy.  With our current interest around story telling we shared one of our favourite stories "Brown Bear".  Our tamariki stood confidently and recited the story in front of the crowd who loved their expressions and story telling.  Some of our children have been multiple times to visit Gulf views and seeing their relationships grow and the easiness of the interactions is just lovely.  

The String Faeries!

The String Faeries came to visit today, what a wonderful musical experience!!  Hannah Beer & Sacha Mcleish are a dancing fiddle duo based in Southland, New Zealand, and have both been playing the fiddle for 9 years. They play a mix of lively Irish, Country, Scottish and English fiddle tunes, and are very passionate about sharing our fiddle music with others. Their hope is to inspire others to also learn a musical instrument, and to bring joy to the audiences they play to!"

Joy they definitely did bring as we enjoyed the musical talent and danced as they played.  Afterwards we were fortunate enough for Hannah and Sacha to let us all have a turn holding and playing the violin, we felt very privileged.  We also learnt some interesting information along the way and that was that the Bow is made of horse hair from it's tail.

A big thank you to Hannah and Sacha xx 

Our afternoon was then inspired to make our very own string faerie band, using our own Uxbridge musical instruments, we were just wished we had such beautiful dresses, socks and shoes to wear the children said, we did admire there outfits!

Literacy Hunt

We have become very familiar with some of our favourite stories here at Uxbridge. Today I decided to be interactive with the books and go on a literacy hunt. I hid characters or pictures  from the books around kindy along with the cover pages. Tamariki set off to find the pieces and match the picture to the story. 

We then followed this up at mat time with a “what book am I?” Game using the headbanz game idea…

Using the same books we used today, we played a guessing game…

“ Is there a tiger in my story.”

“ Is there a deep, dark wood in my book?” 

Children learnt what a clue was, it wasn’t just telling…they had to be mysterious about it. 

“ you talk with a mouse.”

• The Gruffalo

Keelan had a tricky one The Giant Jam Sandwich, luckily Ralph gave her a clue about “ lots of wasps come to town.” 

“Ohh it’s Itchingdown! “- Keelan knew the name of the town in the book! The setting! Great memory

 

Making our stories come to life in interesting ways can help us with working memory recall, 

Create a fun hands on game to adapt to our different learning styles, worth together and problem solve, discuss each other’s ideas and listen to others suggestions and develop vocabulary . - Communication Strand

 

We will continue to explore these books in a variety of ways.  

Our Chickens!

 Our gorgeous girls are getting bigger and today we made a little play pen for them to go outside, peck around, bath in dust and enjoy te ra ( the sun)! 

It seems they are loving life today. We will still put them inside overnight as it is still too chilly for them to stay overnight outside.

Here is a sneak peek!

Puppet making

Extending on our puppet play we made our own puppets.  Using the hot glue gun the children created faces and costumes using a variety of materials including pompoms, eyes, ribbons, pipe cleaners and fur.  We then got to learn about a new technology and sewed our puppets together using the sewing machine.  Creating our own puppets was a great opportunity for the children to explore different characters and watch as their own puppets characters stories unfold.

Puppets can be used to support learning across all strands of Te Whāriki. In particular, they support the communication strand, where children discover and develop different ways to be creative and expressive.