4th February 2015
Dear parents and whanau
I hope you have all had a fun and safe Christmas holiday period, making the most of the lovely sunny days we have been blessed with.
As you will now be aware Ashleigh (Miss Best) has taken on an exciting opportunity to travel overseas next term. While we will all miss having Ashleigh as part of our teaching team we are also very excited for our close friend and colleague. For 7yrs we have prayed together for your children, the families of Grace and each other. We know that we will all still remain close friends and we look forward to SKYPing Ashleigh with your children on our big screen tv.
We have had a large number of new children join our Grace kindy family from last November.
A big Grace welcome to Adam Parker (mum Tania and dad Dave), Caleb Rae (mum Robyn and dad Andrew), Faith and Emily Yate (mum Caroline and dad Mark), Mackenzie Hume (mum Mel and dad Andy), Hetty Humphries (mum Megolin and dad Hunter), Isla Jenkins (mum Lyndsey and dad Adrian), Isabella Lauchlan (mum Stephanie and dad Ben ), Bria Moore (mum Debbie and dad Richard), Jayden O’Brien (mum Susan and dad Daniel), Lucy Rees-Thomas (mum Nicky and dad James), Olivia Sharma (mum Sybille and dad Ankit), Jake Uy (mum Jocelyn and dad Johnny), Heidi van Rij (mum Rachael and dad Stuart), Johnny West (mum Anna and dad Matt) and Isabella Yeoman (mum Rebekah and dad Ben).
We are currently looking at the theme of ‘Our Changing Environment’ due to the large portion of our children interested in the construction work now in progress for the church hall. Please see our ‘learning snapshot’ noticeboard, where we will record our planning and the children’s responses to this exciting project. We will also be doing some planting of vegetables in the next week
The teachers have all had a wonderful week back with your children. Once again we are all amazed at how well the children have settled back into kindy and embraced the change of hours. We are conscious of the heat and the effects of tiredness that come with the very hot outdoor play so we have made a few slight changes to the structure of the session that we feel will benefit the children.
For the Younger Tamariki Session, that is held on Wednesday and Friday, we will have our welcoming time followed by morning tea at 9.45am. We will then continue with our free play/exploration time at approximately 10am.
At 11.30am we found that the children embraced our music program, which was held in the hall. This consisted of the children using props and playing instruments, demonstrated by the teachers, to action songs. We also will be including some exploration songs where children can trial out their own moves and beats to a variety of styles of music.
We found most of the children had become quite hungry well before the original lunch break so we will change the lunchtime to 11.45am.
We will also need to change the later parent help start time to 11.30am, so we can set up for our lunch etc.
For the Older Tamariki Session, that is held on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, we found that the children were more attentive to our story/discussion time (based around the children’s interests) straight after they had eaten. So we have adjusted our structure of the mat time slightly.
9.45am we will have our welcome song and music, followed by morning tea.
10.15am we will have our story/discussion/research time then we will continue with our free play/exploration time at approximately 10.30am
The children having a turn at the weather chart will now be based on a list of children’s names rather than being done by the parent helper’s own child. This is due to having 2 parent helpers per session and only one chart. We do have a couple of ‘jobs’ the parent helper’s child will be able to do on the day though.
Please check the website for the whole programme.
Needs – Can you help?
We are needing a parent to help with our entertainment book fundraising. If you are unable to do a parent help this term perhaps you would please help us out with this fundraiser. Our previous parent who did this is happy to show you what to do.
We also need someone to 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 Older Tamariki would greatly appreciate any wood that can be contributed. Please let one of the teachers know if you can help.
Reminders
As the weather is now very hot, please remember to include your child’s sunhat. We have sunhats for sale at $20 each, as well as Grace Kindergarten tee-shirts.
We have sunblock available for you to use on your children upon their arrival. The teachers will apply sunblock to the Older Tamariki after they have had lunch, as the day is now longer for them.
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.
We have flyers available for you to give to friends and family on the information table if you know of families who are looking for a kindergarten.
The Term Dates for this year are as follow:
| Term | Start | End |
| One | Monday 26th January | Thursday 2nd April |
| Two | Monday 20th April | Friday 3rd July |
| Three | Monday 20th July | Friday 25th September |
| Four | Monday 12th October | TBC |