Ruby's piglet and bear story

Ainslee

A new friendship forming

Lately I have noticed that Zoe and Lukah are beginning to form a new friendship. When I arrived on Tuesday morning, the girls were building with the blocks together, and I heard some of the conversations they were having. They were talking very nicely to one another, and showed good listening skills.

After morning tea that day, I saw the girls playing at the play dough table. Zoe has made lots of things with playdough before, and she was showing Lukah all the things you can do with dough.

It's nice to see Zoe and Lukah forming a friendship and enjoying interactions with each other.

Ainslee

Children's Day 2012

Kia Ora whanau

This Sunday 4th March is Children’s Day! This year’s theme is ‘treasure our children' which fits perfectly within our roles of teachers and parents every day!

You are doing the most important job there is. It’s rewarding, but sometimes it’s tough. This Children’s Day we encourage families everywhere to treasure their children. When you’re a parent that might mean:

- Making sure your kids have the things they need.
- Look after yourself so you can be there for them. It’s good to take time out to be you.
- If you’re a dad, there’s so much you can do to make your child feel like a taonga. -
- Learn about positive discipline. This job never came with a manual and knowing some tricks of the trade can make life a whole lot easier.


There are planned events happening all over NZ to celebrate this special day. Some events happening within the napier area are:

Plunket's Teddy Bears Picnic
Where: Anderson Park, by the playground, Kennedy Road, Napier
When: Sunday 4th March, 11am - 2pm
Activities: Bring a picnic and your teddy's and come on down to support Plunket. There will be bouncy castles, face painting, sausage sizzle, mini Hot Rod ride on cars and more!

National Aquarium Children's Day
Where: National Aquarium, Marine Parade, Napier
When: Sunday 4 March, 9am - 5pm (last entry 4.30pm)
Activities: Free entry to the National Aquarium for children aged 14 years and under with a paying adult. Lots of childrens activities and prizes to celebrate Children's Day!

Visit http://www.childrensday.org.nz/ for more information!

I'll be back soon to post a blog about how KIDSPACE is celebrating this day next week (5-9th March).

Na, Ainslee

Christmas decorations

As we entered in to the festive season at the start of December, I set up resources to make Christmas decorations. I had a whole group of children make things through out the morning, some staying for a long time, and others just making one or two things. Jack and Emily took a real interest in making the snow flakes, which involved tracing around something round, cutting it out, and then folding it lots of times to create a pizza/triangle shape. They then made cuts in to the paper any size or direction they wanted. Once it was unfolded, and flattened out, it was a pretty snowflake, (which are now hanging in the art room).

Thadeus, Cian, Cleo, Noah, Ahlyna and Ruby had fun decorating Christmas boots and circle's. They used glitter and special Christmas sprinkles and whatever else they chose to put on them. While the children were creating their decorations, there was talk about where they will go, and the children started to plan where they can hang them.

This experience was a great way to let the children create things individually and how they wanted it to look. They were proud of their work and couldn't wait for them to dry.

Later in the day, Emily helped me stick some on the wall and thread ribbon through some to hang off the ceiling.

Ainslee

Trip to Nelson Park School to visit Donnagh

Scarlett's dance

Last Monday afternoon I put some te reo Maori music on for the children to dance to. Scarlett wandered down to the art room after her sleep to see what all the noise was. She stood and watched as the older children danced. Once the older children had left she started to dance. She had some very graceful moves mixed with a few break dancing moves too. She danced like this for a good five minutes.

Scarlett, it was a pleasure to watch you dance. You showed great persistence and had an array of dance moves which you were not afraid to show off.

Rochelle

Teddy bears picnic

Click to enlarge

Ainslee

Socialising in the sandpit

Ainslee

Happy school days Libby

Ainslee

Goodbye Luke

Ainslee

Rugby World Cup - Teams Flags

On Friday I introduced to the children, the flags of the 20 teams that are playing in the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Hannah, Libby, and Cian showed an interest as soon as I had the laminator out. The children helped me to put the flags in laminating pockets. A few moments later, Donnagh, Luke, Joshua, and Ruby joined us. Donnagh was eager to find the Irsh flag. He held it up proud! Luke took responsibility for feeding the pockets into the laminator. As we feed each flag in, the children asked which country it was for, and this gave me an opportunity to give the children knowledge about other countries and how they are involved in the RWC. Cian liked the flag of Wales as it had a dragon on it and the children thought the flag of Argentina was funny because it has a sun on it! We talked about the New Zealand flag of course, and Ruby noticed that the NZ flag and Australia flag were similar. Good comparison!

We have proudly displayed the 20 flags in the foyer of KIDSPACE. Many learning opportunites had by the children.

Ainslee

Welcome back to KIDSPACE Marley

Ra whanau ki a Ahlyna

Today we celebrated Ahlyna's birthday at KIDSPACE. The teachers and children all sang 'Happy Birthday' and Ahlyna blew out her two candles.

Spotty the Lamb

Last week Isabella and Emily spent lengthy periods sharing their stories of when Spotty the lamb came to stay. They were very excited about the fact that they got to feed Spotty milk from a bottle, but also stressed the fact that they both missed her since her return to her owners.

After several days of hearing Isabella and Emily's tales of the lamb, I suggested they bring a photo to show their friends at KIDSPACE, which they were very eager to do, however there was a little problem, they had not yet been printed.

Today on arrival at KIDSPACE, Zilda, Isabella and Emily's mum, informed me that the girls were very proactive in reminding her about these precious photos, and suggested we view them from the camera instead, and that is what we did.

After setting up the laptop and camera, we sat down to view these much talked about photos, and before long a large audience had congregated around the screen. Isabella and Emily did a wonderful job of narrating as we flicked through the photos, and not only did we get shown Spotty, the girls very proudly told us a story about the time they stayed on a marae, and showed us the relevant photos.

It was wonderful to hear stories about the girls experiences outside KIDSPACE, and I thank Zilda for allowing Isabella and Emily to share some of them with us.

Red Nose Day

Click on photo to enlarge.

Red Nose Day is a national fundraising campaign that celebrates our communities, embraces the light-hearted Kiwi culture, and supports children across New Zealand. A simple idea created over two decades ago, the campaign encourages everyone to let go, laugh, and be silly...all for a serious cause.

On Friday 15th July it was Red Nose Day in New Zealand. As part of celebrating and drawing awareness to the day, I got the laptop out with the children, and googled the trademark Red Nose song. "You make the whole world smile with your little button nose". Starting off with just Jaz, Emily and Rionagh many more children came over and showed an interest and were asking questions. We were listening and watching the song sung by Anika Moa. When the song finished, the children kept asking for it to be played again and again. We then got the red face paint out and painted our little noses red! The children had so much fun!

Ainslee

Happy wedding day to you

Yesterday afternoon, we had a special afternoon tea for Rochelle. It was in celebration of her Wedding this weekend. Rochelle wore a special veil (which are new to our dress up area at KIDSPACE), and blew out a candle on a yummy chocolate mud cake, as we sang 'Happy Wedding Day To You'. We had a shared morning tea of yummy fresh fruits and chocolate cupcake with sprinkles. Congratulations for your special day this weekend, and all to you and Guy for the future ahead.

Ainslee and the team

Poesy's painting experience

Poesy had a wonderful learning experience yesterday. In just a nappy and KIDSPACE t-shirt, Poesy explored paint and messy play!

To begin with, I just tipped the paint in front of Poesy's legs (within reach), to see what she would do. Not fazed by it, Poesy used only one finger to dip it in the paint, and do a taste test. Not bothered by the taste she started to use her hands a bit more. I used my fingers to smear some paint on her feet and on her leg. Poesy liked the feel of it. She began to copy me. She dipped her hands in the paint and stared at her hands in fascination. I then introduced some orange colour and Poesy watched as orange spots dripped onto the green. She knew straight away where the new paint was, and what to do with it, because she picked up a huge clump of it.

I then introduced some little flower stampers and a roller. Straight away, Poesy took an interest in these. Nanny Monica even put a flower on her head, and she loved it. This is a special experience for Poesy, as well as her teachers. I was excited to watch her explore, be curious and amused and simply having fun getting messy! At one point, Poesy had an audience as some of the older girls were so excited to watch her 'paint', and thought it was cute that she had paint on her nappy. After Poesy had finshed exploring the paint, we ran a warm bath in the bathroom and she enjoyed splashing in there and getting all nice and clean before a bottle and bed :)

Infants/young children see, hear and participate in creative and expressive happenings in their own way, for example, by putting their hands in paint, clapping their hands and enjoying creative actions (Te Whariki, Communication).

Ainslee

Best of mates

Noah and Joshua are such great mates. Every chance they get, they are playing together. The imagination between those two boys is amazing. They make up their own games and simply love being boisterous.

Ainslee

Happy 5th Birthday Acacia

Ainslee

Happy 2nd birthday Anika

Ainslee