Christmas Party 2017!!

A fabulous day shared with all our tamariki and whanau, thank you all for making it so special, we hope you had a wonderful time.  Here are a few pics from the day!

 

Merry Christmas Uxbridge families, wishing you safe and happy holidays, we look forward to your return in 2018.

 

A bit of Christmas Art!!

Many of our pieces this Christmas involved not only a bit of individuality but collaborative efforts as well.  Together we made our snowman and Christmas tree.  Oops! The snowman doesn't have a nose, the children observed and giggled and so the piece of art kept evolving, until the snowman had all his parts, including hat and scarf.  Our snowflakes were just like the one's in Frozen, so beautiful.  We have enjoyed making many decorations and love love love the sparkles and shiny glitter!

Farewell Lizzy!!

What a beautiful afternoon tea to say goodbye to our Teacher Lizzy.  We are so blessed to have had her on our team and inspire us with her creative idea's.  Such a warm, caring, supportive, loving  and dedicated teacher, we will miss her very dearly!!  The very best wishes for your future endeavours, we hope you lovcd your gift.  We will treasure our books forever, thank you.  Lots and lots of hugs and kisses xxxxx ooooooo

Ice Ice Baby!!

Last month we were exploring ice in the small trough. We had set some small shaped cubes with colour, glitter and sticks inside. The tamariki loved watching it melt and feeling the cold substance in their hands. We spoke about what ice is, how we make it and how it melts. we also spoke about what we use ice for and the children shared their knowledge on how it can keep our drinks and food cold. We also spoke about where we can find natural ice without having pre made it such as when snow melts and turns to ice when its cold and how we can have it on our car window in the winter. This month we made some more ice. This time we set a large bowl of ice with plastic insects inside. When I put this big dome of ice on the concrete the tamariki were very eager to get the insects out as quick as they could. We used our problem solving skills to come up with different ways to free the insects. We tried to pull the insects out but the ice was too hard. We tried to smash the ice with a spoon but again the ice was too hard. We spoke about how the sun will melt the ice and turn it back to water. Charlie.S then suggested we could put water on the ice to make it melt faster.The children laughed but were were very intrigued by this idea and questioned weather it would work. Many children rushed to give it a go. 

The children gathered, bowls, cups, water cans and anything they could find to transfer water over to the ice and found that it started to melt very quickly. This was a very exciting process filled with learning and team work. Ka Pai tamariki and Ka pai Charlie for sharing your clever idea with us.

Jaxon's mum takes us for a special christmas class!!

A big thank you to Lauren, Jaxon's mummy for coming and taking us for a special Christmas dance class today.  It is always exciting to have someone visit and today's class involved a little dance which included learning some yoga moves.  So much fun xx

 

Our new swing!!

All our fundraising enables us to purchase some really cool equipment for the children to use.  Check out our latest purchase.  This swing is quite tricky as it involves a little collaboration, working together to get the swing moving.  We certainly had fun working that out!!

 

Christmas Floral arrangements!!

Today we made xmas flower arrangements.  We used fresh flowers in greens, reds and yellows.  Doing this not only gave the children an opportunity to engage with a beautiful natural resource but let them practice their fine motor skills as they cut, picked and arranged their flowers.  There was also a chance to have great conversations about the colours, fragrance and type of flowers and leaves.  One of the favourite parts of this experience was choosing containers, pouring the water and deciding just how the flowers would sit in them, a great opportunity to be self reliant and independant.  We ended up with lots of beautiful flower arrangements.