Pakuranga Baptist Kindergarten

Pakuranga Baptist Kindergarten Community-based kindergarten offering short day and long day sessions.

Our hours are:
Short day: 9:00am-3:30pm
Long day: 8:00am-4:30pm
We operate Monday - Friday.

We are working on an entry for the Parnell Rose Festival Upcycle Garden challenge, we need coloured bottle lids and cans...
30/08/2026

We are working on an entry for the Parnell Rose Festival Upcycle Garden challenge, we need coloured bottle lids and cans and any other materials you have to make our design real. We have drawn, designed and then transformed this into a photorealistic design using AI so you can see what we are working on. Can any of our families help us with some of these resources?

The teachers have been thinking deeply about how children communicate and represent their ideas.A key part of our approa...
27/08/2026

The teachers have been thinking deeply about how children communicate and represent their ideas.
A key part of our approach is inspired by the Reggio Emilia idea of the “hundred languages”, the many different ways children make meaning, through drawing, painting, clay, movement, storytelling, music, sewing, light and shadow, conversation and so much more.
Recently, this has led us to explore a new and somewhat unexpected medium, generative AI. But we want to be thoughtful about this. Our intention is not to take a child’s drawing and make it “better”, nor to replace the original work with something more polished or realistic. In fact, the opposite is important to us. The individual proportions, unexpected shapes, extra tentacles, colours, eyes and marks in children’s drawings are part of their thinking and should remain visible. Instead, we have been exploring whether AI can offer another way of revisiting and questioning a child’s idea. This gives us another opportunity to ask the children - What would you change? What is important about your drawing that is missing here?
In this way, the generated image becomes another question rather than an answer, and we learn to critique what AI offers us.
This offers us interesting opportunities as we continue encouraging the children to consider the world from an octopus’s perspective. What might an octopus see? How might it move? What might it notice beneath the water? How might it protect itself? How might its world feel different from ours?
We may move between many forms of representation as these ideas develop—drawing, movement, sound, sculpture, light, digital images, storytelling and sewing. Each form allows children to notice and communicate something different.
We are also mindful that technology is never neutral. Something can be gained through a new representation, but something can also be lost. For us, this is an important part of the inquiry. We want to preserve the child’s original thinking and allow the children to remain the experts on their own ideas.
So rather than thinking of AI as replacing one of the hundred languages, we are wondering whether it might sometimes become another material through which children can explore, challenge and re-imagine their own theories.
We will continue to approach this slowly and critically, following the children’s curiosity and ensuring that the technology serves the children’s inquiry, not the other way around.

As our thinking about te wheke o Muturangi continues, the children have come across a new problem.They know this is no ...
27/08/2026

As our thinking about te wheke o Muturangi continues, the children have come across a new problem.
They know this is no ordinary octopus. In the story, te wheke is enormous. Even bigger than the waka Kupe sailed in! So how could we possibly make an octopus that big?
The children decided that first they would draw one. Together they began creating an enormous two dimensional octopus. They talked about its size and shape and shared their ideas as they worked on the drawing together. But then came a much trickier problem - How do we turn this drawing into an octopus that actually has a body and is three dimensional?
As the children talked about different possibilities, Danielle wondered if fabric might work. Could we sew an octopus?
This has taken the children’s thinking in a whole new direction. An idea that began in a story was first represented through drawing. Now they are trying to turn that drawing into something they can actually make.
As we work we are encountering questions like:
How does a flat drawing become a three dimensional creature?
What shapes will we need?
How will the pieces join together?
There is so much learning happening through this process.
Creating our wheke means the children have to work together, listen to each other, negotiate different ideas and make decisions as a group. Not everyone's idea can be used, so they are learning to explain their thinking, listen to someone else's perspective and find ways forward together.
They are also learning what it means to stay with something that takes time. This is not an octopus that can be made in an afternoon. There are going to be problems to solve, things that might not work the first time and lots of little steps along the way.
Our enormous wheke is slowly taking shape. But so is the children's thinking.
They are developing their ideas, learning how to work together, solving problems and discovering what can happen when they keep going with an idea and create something together.

Recently we have been using small cardboard tubes to help us slow down, focus our gaze and look closely at the plants an...
21/08/2026

Recently we have been using small cardboard tubes to help us slow down, focus our gaze and look closely at the plants and tiny creatures with whom we share our kindergarten environment. Looking through these small tubes seems to make the familiar unfamiliar again. Details that might usually go unnoticed suddenly become worthy of our attention.
We talk together about what we notice and use drawing as another way of looking closely, revisiting details and making our thinking visible.
But recently, our looking has begun to shift.
What, we wondered, might the insects see when they look back at us?
The children began imagining themselves from an insect's point of view.
Perhaps the insects are asking, "Why are people working in my garden?"
One child considered the enormous difference in scale between our bodies and an ants. This small shift, from looking at the insects to imagining the insects looking at us, has opened up some surprisingly complex thinking.
The children are beginning to recognise that there are many ways of experiencing the same place. The garden that we think of as our kindergarten garden might look quite different to an ant, a worm, a spider or a bee.
Perhaps, from their perspective, it is their garden and we are the visitors.
This raises new questions for us:
Who does the garden belong to?
What might it feel like when enormous people walk through your home, move things, dig in the soil or pick the plants?
Learning to shift perspective asks children to move beyond simply knowing about another living being. It invites empathy, curiosity and ethical thinking. It asks them to consider that humans are not the only ones with needs, homes and ways of experiencing the world.

This week we have continued to deepen our thinking about te wheke, the octopus.The children returned to the drawings the...
20/08/2026

This week we have continued to deepen our thinking about te wheke, the octopus.
The children returned to the drawings they had made following their encounter with the real octopus, this time adding colour. Looking closely at our photographs, they mixed and experimented with paints, searching for just the right colours for the octopus they wanted to represent. This careful revisiting is giving children time to look again, notice more, and refine their ideas.
The overhead projector has offered another way of exploring. Through light, shadow and movement, the children could almost step inside the underwater world of te wheke, imagining what it might be like to inhabit the story from the octopus's perspective.
And this shift in perspective is leading to some wonderfully complex thinking.
We have been wondering together: If the people need fish to survive, what does the octopus need? Could there be enough for everyone?
The children are beginning to imagine alternatives to conflict:
“The octopus could eat vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, then they won't eat so much fish and the people can have some.”
Perhaps, another child suggested, Kupe could become friends with the octopus and simply ask, “Can I have dinner with you?” Then, they decided, “They will make soup for the people.”
Rather than accepting that Kupe and te wheke must be opponents, the children are imagining sharing, friendship and ways for both to flourish. They are grappling with surprisingly big ideas about fairness, resources, relationships and the needs of other living beings. Then another intriguing theory appeared. In several drawings, children surrounded the octopus with musical notation. When teachers became curious and asked about these marks, we discovered a new idea emerging: perhaps octopuses sing beneath the sea. We don't yet know where this theory has come from, and perhaps that doesn't matter. Instead, it gives us another question to pursue together:
What might the voice of te wheke sound like?
Through drawing, paint, shadow, storytelling and conversation, the children are doing more than retelling the story of Kupe and te wheke. They are learning to look again, to consider another perspective, to question what seems inevitable, and to imagine different possibilities.

What a wonderfully joyful - and rather exhausting! - day we had as we celebrated the magic of children's books together....
20/08/2026

What a wonderfully joyful - and rather exhausting! - day we had as we celebrated the magic of children's books together.
The idea for our Storybook Character Day came from one of our children who is soon leaving us for school. We loved her idea and wanted her to experience what it means to have her voice listened to and her suggestion become something that our whole kindergarten community could enjoy. From the moment the children arrived, Kindy seemed to have slipped into the pages of a storybook. Favourite characters appeared everywhere, and the teachers joined in too, with the Gruffalo, Gerald the giraffe who couldn't dance, and even Goldilocks and the Three Bears coming to spend the day with us! But we wanted to do more than dress as the characters we love. We wondered what it might be like to step inside some of our favourite stories.
So, just as the Three Bears had done, we made porridge together for breakfast and morning tea. Our baking area became the Gingerbread Man's bakery, where the children mixed, rolled, cut and decorated their own gingerbread people before enjoying them for afternoon tea. Throughout the kindergarten, invitations inspired by favourite books encouraged children to revisit familiar stories through play, imagination, making and conversation.
There was such delight in seeing stories that children know and love spill from the pages of books and into our day together.
As we wrote on our chalkboard:
“Storybooks can take you on a magical adventure to an enchanted world. Today we celebrate the magic, wisdom and lasting comfort found in children's books.”
And that is exactly what the day felt like - a celebration of imagination, of much-loved characters, of children's ideas, and of the extraordinary way a good story can become part of who we are.
It was busy, messy, delicious, exhausting - and absolutely filled with joy.

This week our investigation into Kupe and Muturangi’s wheke took an exciting turn.As the children began sharing their th...
20/08/2026

This week our investigation into Kupe and Muturangi’s wheke took an exciting turn.
As the children began sharing their theories about the octopus, we realised that for many of them an octopus was still quite an abstract idea, something known through pictures, stories and imagination. We wondered what might happen to their thinking if they could encounter one for themselves.
So, after tracking down a whole octopus from a local fishery, we placed it in our water trough for the morning. The children were able to look closely, touch its skin and tentacles, count and examine its suckers, notice its shape and texture, and experience its weight and size. Later, as part of our Garden to Table programme, we cooked the octopus and everyone had the opportunity to taste it. Some children thought it was delicious; others very definitely did not!
But perhaps the most interesting learning became visible afterwards.
We invited the children to draw the octopus again. Their new drawings were noticeably different. Having encountered the real creature, they were able to bring new knowledge to their representations, details, shapes and features that had not been present before. Their drawings showed us something important: first-hand experience had changed their thinking. Something that had existed largely in their imaginations had become tangible, knowable and real.
And something else began to shift too.
In the story of Kupe, the wheke had initially been understood as the creature that was eating all the fish, leaving the people without enough food. But after meeting an octopus, we began to wonder together:
Did the octopus need to eat too? Does an octopus have a right to food so that it can live? If the people and the octopus both needed the fish, how might they have shared?
Suddenly the wheke was no longer simply the “problem” in the story. It was a living creature with needs of its own.
These are wonderfully complex ideas for young children to encounter. Through story, drawing, sensory exploration, cooking and conversation, the children are building knowledge, but they are also learning that stories can be considered from more than one perspective. They are beginning to think about relationships, fairness, empathy and our responsibilities towards the other living beings with whom we share our world.
Sometimes deep learning begins when something we have only imagined becomes real enough to touch.

Nature meets maths in our KindergartenEvery day, a group of children gather beautiful flowers and leaves to create stunn...
07/08/2026

Nature meets maths in our Kindergarten
Every day, a group of children gather beautiful flowers and leaves to create stunning art, deepening their connection to the natural world. Then together we set up our space for creativity. Our mantra for this space is simple: Choose, Use, and Put Away.
Every step of this mantra holds its own special magic:
• Choose: Children enjoy mindfully selecting flowers and leaves, noticing the glorious colours, textures, and details.
• Use: Creativity flows as they design their patterns, expressing their ideas through nature.
• Put Away: Early maths comes alive as they sort and group their treasures back into place.
This nature-based learning is sensory, rich, and sparks deep thinking.

Our firepit cooking was such a huge hit with our wee ones that we wanted to do it again this week. We decided to try a ...
07/08/2026

Our firepit cooking was such a huge hit with our wee ones that we wanted to do it again this week. We decided to try a healthier option so made potato, onion and capsicum parcels, and then apple 'jaffle' pies. The kids relished the food they cooked over the open flames, declaring it 'delicious'.

This is a tui telling jokes.
07/08/2026

This is a tui telling jokes.

Address

2 Fremantle Place, Pakuranga
Auckland
2010

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 8am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 8am - 4:30pm
Thursday 8am - 4:30pm
Friday 8am - 4:30pm

Telephone

+6495767632

Website

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