Child Education News and Articles - Connecting with our families

A day of visitors

18/8/2019

Today we had some special visitors come and see us at Beachcomber.....

Andy from Howick Library read us some funny books and sang songs with us at group time. Some of our children recognised Andy from going to Rhyme Time at the library. Later in the day Theresa's dogs Bonnie and Wolfe came in to say "hello". It was very exciting to have furry friends join us at kindergarten.

A fascination with insects

31/7/2019

There has been a surge of interest in finding insects at Beachcomber. We have been busy watching bees hard at work collecting pollen, looking for praying mantis in our mandarin tree and finding spiders in dark corners inside our climbing boxes. We have enjoyed using magnifying glasses and posters to find our more about the creatures that share our world.

A Giant Centipede Visits Beachcomber

5/6/2019

A Giant Centipede was brought into today to show the children. It was about 16 cm long and had 36 yellow legs. The front legs had spikes on them, and out in front it had 2 very long feelers. It was amazing!!

The Mud Kitchen

1/4/2019

MUD, MUD, MUD! Our mud kitchen is a very busy play area with so much exploration, creativity and messy mucky fun. Our children enjoy driving the great big trucks in the muck and creating busy road constructions as well as making sand cakes and mud pies, fixing drains and pipes and creating muddy lava pools. Such endless fun and opportunities for learning.

Harvesting our Garden

6/3/2019

We are excited to have lots of yummy vegetables ready to pick and eat from our garden. We have enjoyed trying cucumbers, radishes and tomatoes and have collected the seeds to plant again later in the year.

Celebrating the Chinese New Year

16/2/2019

As part of our Chinese New Year celebrations one of our families taught us some Chinese words and a "Happy New Year" song.

Our Beachcomber Garden

15/10/2018

Our Beachcomber vegetable garden is in need of some new plants. After lots of discussions with children about what we should plant a small group headed off to Palmers Garden Centre to buy seeds and seedlings.

When we got there we noticed lots of different types of plants and lots of different smells from the flowers. Each of us had a card with the name of a vegetable we needed to find. We helped each other and looked at the letters on the card to find what we needed. Into our shopping baskets went the plants and seed packets.

We soon headed back to kindergarten and showed our friends what we had bought. Over the next week we worked busily to prepare and plant our vegetable garden.

A few weeks later we were very lucky to receive a donation of lots of strawberry plants from our local Bunnings store, we got busy planting them into our colourful barrels. Everyone chose a plant and waited for their turn to plant it. We noticed that some of the plants had white flowers and some even had little strawberries on them. As they were being planted we could see all the roots in the soil.

We are excited about watching our garden grow over the nest few months.

Living Eggs

25/9/2018

Early on a Monday morning, Jo from Living Eggs delivered hens eggs, an incubator and a brooder. We carefully placed the eggs into the incubator and turned the heater on. The incubator heat was set at 37.7 degrees celcius, just the right temperature to keep the eggs warm enough for chicks to hatch. Over the next 3 days children, parents and teachers were fascinated as they watched chicks hatch out of the eggs. When they began to hatch we could hear the chicks chirping inside the egg. Then came a tapping sound from inside the egg. That was the chick's beak tapping on the shell to crack open, this is called pipping. When a chick hatches, it needs to stay in the warm incubator to dry it's feathers as they are wet when they are born.
Once the chick's feathers are dry after hatching, they can then be moved into the brooder. This is a bigger box with a light bulb as a heater, water and feed. The chicks sleep under the light bulb to keep warm. Every day the brooder is cleaned. We replenish the newspaper, sawdust, water and feed.
Every day we could see the chicks growing, getting bigger and getting louder as they chirped for food.
The children named the chicks - 'Wriggly, Pop & Hop, Fight, Ruby, Walkie and Popsicle'.
Some children were keen to hold the chicks, a very special moment.
We incorporated games, stories and art activities during this special time. A wonderful learning experience for everyone.

Fathers Day Celebration

29/8/2018

Celebrating Fathers Day has become a tradition here at Beachcomber Kindergarten. We invite Grandads, Dads and their children to come along to kindergarten in the evening to enjoy dinner together and play. Here are some photo's of the evening.

Matariki

27/6/2018

Matariki is the name of the Māori New Year and is also the name of the star cluster known as Pleiades, The Seven Sisters.
Matariki is traditionally a time for remembering the past by telling stories (korero), for harvesting crops, sharing food (kai) with friends and whanau, and for planning for the future.
At Beachcomber we enjoy celebrating Matariki through singing songs (waiata), making artwork, kites and weaving, retelling legends and stories, picking and eating mandarins from our tree, planting in the garden and coming together to share breakfast with our friends and whanau. This year we also had lots of fun shaking cream in a jar to make butter, which we spread onto our toast at breakfast time.