The Piano Performance

 Excitement whizzed through Uxbridge today as the children got to explore music using a keyboard- Thank you Devin and Jo!

First, our pianist Cecelia played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star nd let me tell you, the audience was wowed by her performance! First we listened and then we even sang along.
She had such a great presence on the stage and then decided to share so all of our friends could have a turn.
The audience was pretty impressed about that. 

One by one, our audience members took turn to make their own composition and press the keys of the piano. Some pressed the keys softly, some harder. The tempo changed, we had fast and slow. We heard high notes and low notes.

The opening act in action.

Look at how wonderful our audience was!

                                                Sid held his head high as he used two hands.

    

                                    

                            Michael had the audience laughing with a fast beat. He called his song

                                                                             " Crazy!" 

                                                        Ted showed confidence as a performer.

                    Taylor made a lot of eye contact with the audience throughout her performance.

 Leyla was up next with a great song! Her song went from a low sound to a high sound as she walked her fingers along the keyboard.

Cohen found out that the keys on the keyboard were not the only thing to make a sound, so did the buttons that changed the sound of the keyboard!

Chloe had fantastic stage presence and sometimes even closed her eyes as she pushed the keys.

Look at Maddy's smile, she had a long and fun composition.

Austin enjoyed being upfront on the stage and also tried to do a similar performance to Michael as that's what had made him laugh so much!

  Scottie started out feeling a bit worried about how the keyboard worked but with a bit of a boost she was off like a rocket enjoying her song!

        

            Hazel's turn next as she used one finger up and down the keyboard! Go Hazel 

Eliza showed such focus as she took the stage! She was really watching which keys she was pushing and thinking about which keys she would push next.

                                            

This provided such a great environment for using some specific music terminology which some of our tamariki may not have heard before.

We practised being patient on the mat and clapping, showing respectful listening and audience behaviour. We also got to feel comfortable in front of an audience and we even talked about how we can bow after a performance.
 
Something tells me that this won't be the last keyboard concert here and that's music to my ears!

ROARsome action

Here at Uxbridge, dinosaurs have been a current interest.
We have had Dinosaur Stomp books, dinosaur puzzles out, dinosaur painting and even have been exploring clay using our dinosaurs as inspiration! So if you hear some dinotastic noises coming from your child at home, they might have been involved in some super dino play here!
Check out these photos of our tamariki in action!

Wow look at the dinosaur world in action!

Dinosaurs and Dragons were the topic at the clay table.

Maddy enjoying the dinosaur area!

A book about dinosaurs " WOW!" Ivy was pretty impressed

Raphael enjoyed the dinosaur art!

Red Day and Valentines Day

                                         

February the 14^th marked two special days for us here at Uxbridge, Valentine’s day and Red Heart Day.

Red heart day was a fundraising run for healthy hearts and we managed to raise money towards a great cause to help increase awareness of cardiovascular disease. Thank you! 

At mat time we remembered where our heart is found! Right in our chest. We all felt our own hearts and we noticed that it was a bit hard to feel so we decided to do some exercise. Aerobics had our hearts pumping and us puffing in no time! We then all lay down on the mat and could really feel the difference it made to get moving. Boom, boom, boom.  We talked about how our heart pumps the blood around our body and its super important to have healthy hearts!

Some friends brought in healthy options for morning tea, fruit, vegetable muffins and crackers. We had quite an array of food to enjoy and talk about the benefits of healthy eating! So delicious and so great for our bodies! We thought it was a bit like an Uxbridge café! The tamariki enjoyed being able to make the choice of what they would like to eat and really enjoyed going back for seconds.

                                             

Many of us made cards for our friends, went on heart treasure hunts around the Centre and played with red slime and balloons. Oh how much fun it is to celebrate at Uxbridge!

Ted enjoying the morning tea celebrations

Chloe and Riya enjoy the red water. Looks like it's time for a cup of tea!

Look at that concentration Chloe!

In My Heart by Jo Witek is a wonderful book on feelings, enjoyed by the tamariki here. 

 

Sid and Cohen enjoyed a long, active game keeping their balloons from touching the floor!

Found you heart! Chloe notices a big heart on our window! How did that get there?!

 

Rylee and Blake tested out some slippery, sticky slime!

Active play builds healthy hearts. 

They playdoh table awaiting friends!

Te tiriti o Waitangi

 

Te tiriti o Waitangi



February 6^th marks an important date in Aotearoa’s history where the signing of the Treaty took place in 1840! As a group we talked about that being nearly 200 years ago! That’s a long time and it was so important.
Teacher Laura did a mat time story with our special Tui puppet.
During that we looked at pictures of a waka and talked about how Māori travelled to NZ from Pacifica to discover a beautiful, lush island- Aotearoa! Our friend Scottie said “ Hey that’s where I live!” pointing to New Zealand.

 

Māori learnt to live from the land. “ They went fishing” Sid contributed! Another group of British came exploring in a big ship that our tāmariki thought looked like a pirate ship!! Sid knew it was powered by the wind. Tāwhirimātea did power those sails and the boat had travelled a long way- we looked at a map! Eliza added that she liked exploring too! Hazel said that she did as well!

We learnt that when the two groups saw each other they didn’t know how to be friends, and didn’t even speak the language!  There was some fighting which we agreed at Uxbridge isn’t very good behaviour.  We wondered how they would solve this problem.  A treaty was made up, which is like an agreement. Over 500 chiefs signed the document and it had 3 main ideas; Participation, Protection and Partnership  (Three very big words that we had a look at the meaning of) and as some of you may know, forms the basis of our curriculum Te Whāriki.

A very big concept for the children to grasp hold of but all seemed to be engaged and enjoyed helping Tui the puppet understand. It was wonderful for our tamariki to contribute their ideas and bounce ideas around about this.

Xīnnián hǎo (新年好) - Happy Chinese New Year!

A time for celebration! Xīnnián hǎo (新年好) - Happy Chinese New Year! 

The Year of the Tiger

The Chinese New Year, which is also known as the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year is celebrated by millions of people around the world. Houses are decorated with lanterns, red message banners and New Year pictures, there are parades through the streets with music, acrobatics, and dragon dances, Other traditions include having a family reunion dinner on Lunar New Year’s Eve and distributing red envelopes with money to children. The festivities continue for two weeks, finishing with a lantern festival, which signals the end of the New Year celebration period. This year, it is from February 1st to the 15th.   

This week we have had a wonderful time filling the centre with festive decorations, activities and experiences.........

We made lanterns to decorate the classroom

We had a pretend feast, experimented with playdough and paint as we explored different chinese symbols and made red envelopes (hongbao) decorating them with chinese symbols

 (some of our friends were hoping, they too, might receive some money, if they took their red envelopes home)

We painted cherry blossom trees

And made two types of paper fans

We even dressed up as dragons!!!

The Banana Tree

 We have something very cool growing in our garden. BANANAS

We were gifted this tree many years ago by one of our families and it has finally fruited for us this year. It was very exciting to come back after the holidays to see lots of bananas growing on the tree and has created a lot of chatter about how our fruits and food grow. Be sure to have a look when you come in!