In Southland, we excel at connecting our Deaf learners!

The Southland Outreach Team recently held our first KIT Days in a long time. Seeing so many of our students come together again was so wonderful.

At our Junior KIT Day, 36 primary-aged students gathered in Invercargill, some travelled up to 1.5 hours to get there, and one student even flew from Stewart Island. Accompanying the students, we also had Southland Resource Teachers of the Deaf (RTDs), the regional coordinator, our local Advisor of Deaf Children (AODC), Communication Education Support Workers (CESWs) and Teacher Aids; we made a good-sized group!

We spent the morning in our local Queens Park, where we went on a selfie scavenger hunt. We took our time exploring and made the most of the opportunity to connect in nature.

We embraced the upcoming festive season and spent the afternoon working on Christmas crafts which was a lot of fun!

We also hosted students at our senior KIT Day a few weeks ago. It was an evening of pizza, fizz and learning about the video sharing platform Flip. We all had a go at creating our Flip video and experimenting with the different features.

It was lovely to see new friendships being formed and connections rekindled at both of our KIT Days, and we look forward to more next year!