Weathering Winter in the Early Years Whānau Centre

In the Early Years Whānau Centre, we officially welcomed Olivia Townshend, who works supporting the teachers on Tuesdays in Sumner. We’ve also enjoyed having Amber-Rose from the Hagley provision working with us on Mondays at Prebbleton.

We have loved our storybook sessions and Experience Book activities connected to the books We’re Going On a Bear Hunt, The Big Block of Chocolate, and Clean My Teeth. We chose these stories as they have lots of rich and repetitive language, which supports building vocabulary, new category knowledge, theory of mind, retelling, and story sequencing.

We loved going on a Bear Hunt through the long, wavy grass and sticky, eeky mud. At Sumner, we went on a chocolate hunt and found a big block of chocolate hiding in the tree. We chose to share it with our friends. As always, child-led activities ensure choice and peer engagement in everything the tamariki do.

During our NZSL time, we’ve continued to learn new words and vocabulary with Bonnie and Maria.

We had so much fun visiting Tumble Times at Pioneer and loved having Debra and Terryn from First Signs Deaf Aotearoa join us. Seeing the children participating in the parachute games and taking some risks on the apparatus was fantastic.