Budding Gardners

Gardening has been a keen interest lately with our tamariki and each day we enjoy gardening opportunities in one way or another. With a very kind donation from New World Howick ,Iris and Ari went down with Haley and Iris' Mum to the Supermarket to collect two big boxes of the 'Little Garden' seeds. Many of the children were very familiar with these seed pots and shared stories from what they have been growing at home. The tamariki have been learning about the different stages of growing plants from sowing the seeds, watering the plants and re potting the plants into the garden. It is great to see so many keen helpers taking the initiative to fill the watering cans from the water pump on their own to care for our plants. With the excitement of the broad beans at harvest stage, it has been neat to taste some of our produce. We have a variety of plants for the garden including herbs, vegetable and flowers. This variety allows the tamariki to learn that some plants provide us with nutritious fruits and vegetables, herb plants have strong flavours and  we enjoy smelling the different herbs and of course flowers give us so many different beautiful colours and fragrances to enjoy too. The tamariki often enjoy picking some of the flowers to make mini bouquets for their friends and whanau too. Lots of new language is forming from our gardening opportunity as we learn words associated with gardening and learn the names of the flowers and plants. We are learning that plants needs water and sun to grow and that the bees help to pollinate and grow the plants too.   This is a wonderful ongoing experience that we can enjoy all year. 

Witches whizzing past!!

Hand Alive Puppet Show!!

Today at Uxbridge we had Hands Alive Puppet theatre come to us.  The children had been super excited in the build up and we were not disappointed.  There was fun and laughter as the puppets made a cake with some funny ingredients.  Who ate the cake?  It was the monster!! Grandpa also had us laughing with his different hats.   With all story telling there is usually an underlying message and this was never give up and that our hands are really useful and can do good things.

Christine also showed us all the useful things we can do with our hands, wave hello, make a turtle and a butterfly.  How cool is that!

With such an interest in books and literacy in the centre at the moment it was great for the children to experience a different form of storytelling and certainly inspired the children to put on their own puppet shows with the range of puppets we have here. We found it really interesting that we can become different characters just by using our voice and changing the sound.  Teacher Haley gave us a great demonstration.

What a fantastic afternoon of entertainment, thank you Christine from Hands Alive Puppets.

When we asked the children what happened in the show, this is what they said

"Made a cake", everyone shouted "with Cheese, "and worms" said Deanne "and carrots" said Louie.

Grace said "the funniest thing was Grandpa’s hat!".

Benjamin said "It was funny because it had bells"

"What about the mouse" said Jack "And the frog" said Declan "And the cake" said Jack.

Halloween Festivities!!