Fire Evacuation Drill

Today at 10.45am we held a fire evacuation drill. All the children were very quick to respond to the alarm, making their way to the hill at the rear of our yard, which is our designated meeting place.

This would be a great time for families to discuss safety plans should you experience a fire in your own homes. It would also be wise to check your civil defence survival kits,or to think about putting one together if you dont already have one.

Monica

Bake a difference

THIS WEEK IS BLIND WEEK

To raise funds for the foundation of the blind, KIDSPACE is participating in this organisations rally called, Bake a difference.
The teachers will be doing all sorts of baking with the children to sell to you.

BRING YOUR SPARE CHANGE

Be ready to grab yourself a bargain!

Treat yourself, family or friends with some yummy baking!

That's raising money for a good cause.


Thank you all for your support

News from Josef

Today we received a card and photo from Josef and his whanau. This is what they had to say:
Kia Ora All
Sorry it's taken a while for us to send a thank you card... You guys are amazing, thank you Irene for taking wee Josef in without any hesitation. He enjoyed his time at Kidspace and often talks about the centre and Thumper (Murphy).

We are still living in Christchurch and have adjusted to our environment. Josef's papa is working in the red zone with the rebuild, he said there's not many buildings left in the CBD with wide empty spaces. As for wee Josef he is back at his daycare and enjoying life. I have returned back to work. Our building is in the CBD just borderline of the red zone, so slowly we are getting some normality back into our lives...

Thank you for all you have done.
Arohanui
George, Josef and Josef Jrn. xox

Happy school days Libby

Ainslee

Goodbye Luke

Ainslee

Our canvas masterpieces

Today I brought in some canvas for the children to do a special painting on. One that they can keep and hang on their bedroom wall. Each child concentrated hard on their paintings and were proud to show off their work. Next time you are in the main room have a look at their wonderful creations, they are just on the shelf outside the door to the office, and will be coming home with your child over the next few weeks.

Ann

New rock resources

Yesterday I brought in my new rock resources which I have been painting at home. I have painted the rocks with different colours, and then numbered each rock from 1 to 20 on one side, and on the other side having the corresponding number of dots. This is a simple math activity in which the children count all the dots on one side and then check to see if they are right by turning the rock over to find the correct number. Jack, Donnagh and Charlie spent a long time counting and turning rocks over to see if they were right, with Donnagh saying "look Ann I know how many this one is". Kai Pai boys great counting skills.

Ann

New books to KIDSPACE

A big thank you to the Gallagher family for bringing in their old books from home for the children at KIDSPACE to read. The children have really enjoyed reading the books and will spend many more happy hours reading them.

Ann

Phonic's within KIDSPACE

In August, Mohanan and I went on a phonics course. Phonics is the letter sound relationship of blending and segmentation (of words), together with the knowledge of the alphabet.

Research on phonics has shown that "preschoolers who were given training in phonological awarness show significant accerleration in their later acquisition of reading" (Adams, 1990). "The best single predictor of future reading achievement, at school entry, is phonological awareness" (Gillon, 2004; Pressley, 2002; ehri et al, 2001; Goswami, 2001; and Blachman, 2000).

There are 7 stages to phonics, with the scope of the course focusing on stage 1: supporting children to listen to and discriminate sounds, hearing alliteration, rhythm, sound breaks and rhyme within words.

The course highlighted many activities to support children learning phonical awarness within stage 1. One such activity that I have introduced to the children is Mr Croaker, my word puppet. Mr Croaker helps children to hear phoneme letter breaks, starting on words with only three sounds such as cvc (consonant vowel consonant) words eg. cat, dog. Within this activity children chose a picture word out of the flax bag. I then sound out the word with the children before we teach Mr Croaker how to say the word. Then it is Mr Croaker's turn to say the word. Of course he muddles it up the first couple of times, to the delight of the children, with the children re-telling him how to say the word. On the third time Mr Croaker gets the word right and gets high-fives from all of the children.

There are many simple ways to help your chilren with phonical awareness at home such as reading books like Dr Seuss and Lynley Dodd to playing eye spy games of rhyme; "I spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with bat?".

Please feel free to come and talk to me or Mohanan for more information.

Ann

Just a Wee Squeeze Please

Lately Ahlyna has been showing a real interest in Squeezy our KIDSPACE guinea pig.

Every chance she gets, she will seize the moment to give him a cuddle and will often go looking for him when he is roaming around the centre. This photo depicts how gentle Ahlyna is when handling Squeezy, and all the KIDSPACE children have been taught how to handle him with care and respect. Ahlyna and her friends are developing respect and a developing sense of responsibility for the well-being of both the living and non-living environment.

Welcome to KIDSPACE Maia

We give a warm welcome to Maia and her family.

Maia had a good first day, she was quite fond of

Mohanan and followed him all around the centre.

She walked around KIDSPACE and explored the environment

finding things of interest, like drawing, looking at books and so on.

We look forward to getting to know you and your family more Maia.

Tamara

Happy 1st Birthday Poesy

Marble painting

(Double click to enlarge)

I set up marble painting for the children out on the deck last week. The children took a huge interest in this, all eager for a spot at the table. I had a range of colours for the children to choose from. They took turns at placing their paper in the tray, then spooning paint on to the paper. Once they had enough paint, they placed big and small marbles in the tray and turned it side to side and all over the show, to get the marbles rolling around. Jack and Donnagh tipped their trays really high to make their marbles move fast, and it created a really neat affect on their paper. All of the children had different ways of creating their marble picture, and had fun doing so.

Children develop and discover different ways to be creative and expressive through the use of colours, patterns, shapes and designs.

Ainslee

Happy birthday Rochelle

Trip to Park Island

Welcome to KIDSPACE Caiyah

Well, Caiyah has been here for a week now. It hasn't taken her long for her to settle into her new KIDSPACE environment. She certainly has made the most of getting involved in what we have to offer. From what I have observed she loves playing with water and the bubbles getting wet from head to toe. She has become an artist painting both her checks, painting the walls, oh and on some paper of course. Caiyah's sister Te Kira used to come to KIDSPACE, so it is nice to have Caiyah and her family back with us at KIDSPACE. We look forward to getting to know your wee personality more Caiyah.

Tamara

Happy Birthday Charlie

Happy birthday Rie

Rie celebrated her birthday with the KIDSPACE children and teachers, last Wednesday. The children sang happy birthday to her, and she shared a yummy chocolate cake.

Hope you enjoyed your birthday weekend Rie.

Ainslee

Making Canadian flags

In preparation for visiting the Canadian rugby team to watch them train, we made flags to show our support. I put red paint on the table and the laminated canadian flag for the children to use as a guide. Emily, Zoe, Hannah, Charlie, Isabella and Ruby took a real interest. The great thing about this experience is that the children showed individual creativity and varied perception of what a flag should look like.

Charlie decided to carefully look at the flag and paint slowly, to get it as close as possible to the printed one, even doing a Mabel leaf in the middle.

Zoe wanted to paint her whole piece of paper red, except for one of the corners that she left white.

Ruby wanted to make the red strips on the side much bigger, with a smaller 'flower' in the middle.

Once these had dried over night, we found some pieces of wood in the carpentry area, and stapled them to it, to hold as flags for when we watched the rugby. The children were very proud of what they made, and enjoyed taking them along to the game. For the children that didn't visit the rugby but made a flag, they have wanted them in their profile book.

Ainslee