June 2013 - Little Einsteins Educare

Bonjour Pukeko families!
Aren’t the months flying by with half of the year already over!
This month we welcome to Rūma Pukeko Riley, Hamish, Jacob and Eleanor who have
transitioned through from the Tui room, as well as our newest baby Freddie who our teacher
Charlotte brought in to visit recently, much to the delight of our tamariki and kaiako.
As you are probably well aware our preschoolers have
been ` learning French, even having the opportunity to
try some French food such as croissants and baguette!
French lessons are taking place on Wednesday mornings
at 9.15am with our wonderful volunteer parent
Charlotte Godwin and her trusty sidekick Serge. As we
know children are like sponges and our tamariki have
been loving absorbing this new language, being found
singing Frère Jacques around the playground, and even
(as we have been told by some parents) coming home
and teaching their families a thing or two! This has tied
in nicely with the increased level of literacy and
communication we have been seeing within the
classroom with the children exploring a wide range of
ways to express themselves and share ideas using
language. If your child is not enrolled on a Wednesday
you are more than welcome to bring them in to join us
for these approximately 30minute morning lessons.
We have been seeing a great deal of collaboration and team
work taking place amongst the children lately, with large
scale projects involving lots of children occurring
frequently. The sandpit has been the prime spot for some of
these ventures with a recent multi day exploration into
volcanoes leading to our responsible preschoolers working
together to provide their younger Kiwi friends with a
volcano of their own in the Kiwi sandpit – check out the
display in our room of all this teamwork!
This collaboration is being extended upon through Matariki
activities, which as you may well be aware is a huge event
for us this month. As well as our upcoming star trail, and
trying our hand at weaving we have been singing group waiata
and learning about the haka, practicing and exploring using
the poi, and playing tī rakau (stick games)
together. These activities all involve the
children co-ordinating with one another,
listening and working in unison – as they
have all witnessed from watching Maori kapa haka performances. This is a great
build up to Maori language week which takes place at the start of next month.
continued next page