Month: September 2018

Our latest newsletter is available online to read.

 

Click link below to read  https://mailchi.mp/ba94b100c85c/newsletter-august-1550157

One of the self-reviews that we are doing at the moment is Under Two’s as Priority Learners. Our objective is to ensure that the educators of babies and toddlers are given relevant information, support, and resources so that they can effectively and confidently provide children of this age group with quality care and education.

As part of this review, we have developed a list of age-appropriate experiences that relate to each goal of Te Whāriki. We are also in the process of updating our resource kits with resources and experience ideas for educators to use with babies.

Each week the teaching team meet to discuss the goals the children enrolled in our educational programme are working towards. It is important to ensure that we are providing positive learning outcomes for all children enrolled in our service and to compliment this, the teaching team has areas to focus more in-depth. The way the team decides on which areas to focus on is by seeing where the most common areas of focus are. Once these have been established planning around these key areas become more in-depth.

We ensure that our playgroups, professional development, and outings all ensure relevant outcomes to these goals. It is important for us to provide resources that link to these goals as well as this we set projects that all of the children enrolled can participate in, such as the cultural flag and sock bunny make. Focusing on specific key areas at a time provides many ideas to share with our educators and whanau.

We currently have 5 key areas of focus for our group planning at the moment. These are;

Communication Goal 2 “children experience an environment where they develop verbal communication skills for a range of purposes”
Communication Goal 4 “children experience an environment where they discover and develop different ways to be creative and expressive”
Exploration Goal 1 “children experience an environment where their play is valued as meaningful learning and the importance of spontaneous play is recognised”
Exploration Goal 2 “children experience an environment where they gain confidence in and control of their body”
Exploration Goal 3 “children experience an environment where they learn strategies for active exploration thinking and reasoning”

We have had a wide variety of differently themed playgroups that cater around these goals. Our playgroups are held in play centres which are fully resourced for all areas of the curriculum which means that we are able to provide excellent activities and experiences that provide exposure for all areas of development.

We have had many outings that have been a great success as well as other ones planned – Storytime, messy play time, Arion farm, the botanical gardens.

Professional Development is proving to be a great success. Topics that have been covered or are being offered in the near future are; Te Reo Maori pronunciation, Under 2’s as Priority learners, Autism, The Wonder of Movement, Montessori practical life skills, sign language.

We like to send out group challenges that encourage everybody to add their own personal touch and personal flair; these have included making sock bunnies mask making, creative junk challenge, and cultural flag creations

Our group planning is forever evolving and changes from week to week. Some areas will remain the theme for months whereas others may only last for a shorter space of time, it purely depends on the interest of the children. For more information please contact a member of the teaching team.