31st October 2014
Dear parents and whanau
Well, what an eventful term we have ahead of us, being the Christmas term. This term is especially exciting for the teachers and the children who are blessed to be able to talk about the true meaning of Christmas and our Christian culture naturally in our environment.
Please make sure that you mark in your diary the date of our Christmas show which is Friday the 5th December. The show will start promptly at 6pm, further details will follow.
Welcome to Zara Delahunty (mum Charlotte and dad Paul) and William Musson (mum Helen and dad Rhys) who have recently started at our kindergarten.
We are currently looking at science and encouraging the afternoon children to form theories about the world around us. We then have been following up on the children’s ideas with research and discussions. This includes ‘How do we make ice?’ ‘What is lightning?’ and lots of dinosaur related questions such as “How big was the largest dinosaur?” and ‘How small was the smallest dinosaur?’. The afternoon children had a wonderful bus trip to Te Papa’s educational unit this week, which involved lots of hands on dinosaur related activities and a look at the dinosaur exhibition.
After recently reviewing our ‘children’s sign-in table’ for the afternoon children, we are now having a teacher available for the first 15min of the session to encourage all of the children to participate by writing their name.
We have been focusing with our morning children the ‘fruit of the spirit’ of gentleness and being a good role model. This has been reinforced by the ‘casual children,’ who have been attending from the afternoon session, who see their role as setting a good example for others around them.
Thank you to Susie (Edward’s mum) and all those parents and friends who purchased entertainment books. We raised $420 which will go towards our new playground.
Thank you also to Anne-Maree (Naomi’s mum) and Rebekah (Oliver’s mum) who made us small bean-bags that can be used with music.
Needs – Can you help?
Someone who will kindly volunteer to sand and paint the legs of our water play troughs. Paint and sandpaper will be supplied.
Do you know someone who has access to wood, that is not tanilised, for our carpentry table? The afternoon children would greatly appreciate any wood that can be contributed. Please let one of the teachers know if you can help.
Please remember to bring your sunhat and drink bottle for each session, particularly for the sunny weather that is becoming more regular. We have sunhats for sale at $20 each, as well as Grace Kindergarten tee-shirts. These are a great way of supporting your kindergarten.
Also please check out our facebook page (you don’t need to be a member to see it). It contains all of our updates, plus if you like or follow it you can receive updates to your newsfeeds.
There will be a number of places coming available at the end of the year so now is a good time for new families to join the Grace Kindergarten community. We have flyers available for you to give to friends and family on the information table.
The Term Dates are as follow:
| Term | Start | End |
| Term four 2014 | Monday 13th October | Friday 19th December |
| Term one 2015 | Monday 26th January | Thursday 2nd April |
| Term two 2015 | Monday 20th April | Friday 3rd July |
| Term three 2015 | Monday 20th July | Friday 25th September |
| Term four 2015 | Monday 12th October | TBC |