Little Treehouse Kindergarten

SAMOAN LANGUAGE WEEK
This week we have been celebrating Samoan Language week by exploring lots of Samoan language at mat times and enjoying learning some new Samoan songs at music. Our daily set ups have also focused on Samoan culture through fabric, tapa cloth and arts and crafts activities.

Today we were lucky enough to have Henry (Lily’s Dad) come and spend some time with us at morning tea time. He brought along his guitar and shared some great songs with us such as A, E, I, O, U, Sa’valiali and Mili Mili Patia. We also learnt some valuable words including Talofa (Hello), Tofa (Bye), Fa’amolemole (Please) & Faa’afetai (Thankyou). Thank you Henry for giving your time so generously to sharing your Samoan heritage with us at kindy.

BUSY IN THE GARDEN
With the lovely sunny days that we have been fortunate to have throughout May our garden has been florishing and there have been lots of opportunities to spend time in the garden with the children. The children are great kaitiaki of our garden, nurturing it every day with watering and feeding of fresh compost and worm juice when available. Our lettuces that were planted earlier in the year have been continuing to provide us with lettuces to enjoy and we have noticed that our strawberry plants are already starting to fruit and we even had a red strawberry to pick this week, well before the traditional strawberry season.

The children have also been learning all about kiwifruit in their Know Me Eat Me programme, learning about the different varies, how they got their name and what an important part they play in supporting our health and digestion.

Lets hope that the beautiful sunny days continue!

PYJAMA DAY
Today we had a cosy day at kindy wearing our pyjama’s as we celebrated our annual pyjama day. Our bedtime friends joined us for the day and we enjoyed introducing them to our friends, sharing lots of stories in cosy spaces together and a relaxing time enjoying teddy bear yoga. Children have kindly been bringing in new pyjamas from home to help those in need over winter through the Kindness Collective Pyjama Project. Thank you for to all of our families for supporting this initative and extending kindness within our wider community.

NATURE EXPLORATION
Today our 4 year old Wise Owls had an amazing sunny autumn day for their nature exploration to Mt Hobson. They enjoyed a picnic lunch, music on the mountain, followed the map to their favourite destinations and had fun storytelling The Three Billy Goat's Gruff at the 'troll bridge', the perfect prop for our story!

STORY TELLING
We are currently exploring drama and story telling at kindy and today the children have been enjoying lots of opportunities for story telling. They have been re-enacting the story of the three little pigs through a simple provocation as well as re-enacting the story at mat time. They have also been revisiting our learning from earlier in the week about the three Billy Goat's Gruff through a creative art provocation. The puppet theatre has been busy all week with endless stories to be told and 'shows' to enjoy through the use of our puppets.

We will look forward to exploring other story telling and drama opportunities over the weeks ahead.

ANZAC DAY CELEBRATIONS
Today at kindy we celebrated ANZAC day by participating in lots of Anzac crafts, making poppies at the glue gun table, art easels and the collage table. We created poppies out of playdough and made some yummy ANZAC biscuits which we all got to enjoy for morning tea. During our mat time children learnt about ANZAC day, why we celebrate it and we shared a story about ANZAC Ted. Earlier in the week we also had the privilege of seeing Hugo's great grandfathers 4 medals that he received for fighting in World War II and some photos of his Grand Pop Russell and his Army Battalion.

We wish all of our kindergarten community a lovely ANZAC day tomorrow and an extra special long weekend together.

CELEBRATING WORLD BOOK DAY
Today we are having a fun day at kindy celebrating world book day by dressing up as our favourite book characters and sharing our favourite books at kindy. We have lots of different book characters at kindy including a dragon, panda, bear, mouse, cats, dinosaurs, princesses, Where’s Wally and so much more. The teachers shared a favourite kindy book by being all the Colour Monsters.

Nurturing a love of books is an important part of our curriculum on a daily basis at kindy so spending the day enjoying books and the characters they create is a fun way to spend the day at kindy.

ICE CREAM CASTLE
We have reached a milestone moment in our Ice Cream Castle project today with the completion of our milk bottle walls and the addition of a roof. We used a total of 358 milk bottles to create our walls and the children are busy today adding decorations. We have also been adding our own version of 'turrets' utilising our Lewis Road Creamery milk bottles to add some architectural design to our castle. Discussions are underway about what our next stage of this project will be.

Thank you to our families and the local cafe for your supply of milk bottles to support us with this project.

CELEBRATING THE SINHALESE NEW YEAR
Today we had an early celebration of the Sinhalese New Year. This special day is normally celebrated on the 14th of April however as Dulya and her family are heading off to Sri Lanka for a holiday and will be spend the new year with family we have celebrated early. The children spent time last week helping Mrs Hesh to make a 'Happy New Year' sign. During the morning the children made some Erabadu (flowers) and helped to make Sri Lankan milk rice - Kiribath and rice flour. Excess milk rice was then used to water the garden.

At mat time we had a lovely story about what Dulya will be doing for this celebration in Sri Lanka. We then got to try some yummy food - the milk rice and kokis. After mat time we played some New Year games - we tried to eat kokis hanging from a string with our hands behind our backs, enjoyed a tug of war, a pillow fight and a game of ‘put the eye on the elephant’. We really enjoyed learning about the Sinhalese New Year today and being part of this cultural celebration with Mrs Hesh, Dulya and her Appachchi.

CELEBRATING EASTER
We have also been celebrating Easter this week with lots art and craft activities to enjoy and treasure hunts to find big colourful letters that we discovered spelt HAPPY EASTER and of course an Easter Egg hunt where we found lots of colourful Easter Eggs filled with Easter stickers. We have also enjoyed wearing our bunny ears, dancing to bunny songs and bunny yoga.