The Rabbit Patch Preschool - Greers Rd

Kia Ora Whānau!
We have not disappeared, just been incredibly busy as the year begins to wrap up and our projects come to a close. Soon it will be time for project celebrations, but for now:

🪵🌿Things we found this week in our environment:
1. Snail eggs 🐌
2. A spiderweb 🕸
3. A woodlouse🪳
4. A drop of rain 💧

🐚🍁Day Eight | Loose Parts 🍂🪨

Last lockdown I went on a treasure hunt around my neighbourhood to find a collection of loose parts to use for provocations- encouraging ngā tamariki to do the same with their whānau.

This time I would like to invite you to do the same again, but this time consider what could perhaps be built from the items you have collected.
Recently tamariki have been exploring buildings and structures, with some loose part provocations encouraging their creative thinking, and problem solving skills.

The loose parts I’ve collected around Hawea are mainly in the form of satisfyingly flat rocks, a kete of which I am gathering, to bring back to preschool for ngā tamariki to build with later.

In the photos, you will see a simple provocation created with blocks, half marbles, and long strips of paper. This was a wonderful exploration for the children, who remained engaged with it for a long period of time as they worked to explore how to make their paper bridges hold increasing amounts of weight.

It is important for us as adults, to remain open minded when it comes to providing our children with mediums/ areas of exploration. Often, it is not something complex which peaks the interest of the child. The act of sourcing, gathering, sorting, and then building, is a very gratifying one, and one that I- as a (sometimes) adult myself, still find very satisfying, especially during the mundane routines of lockdown.

We look forward to seeing your creations, and remember to be kind to yourselves. It is Monday after all.

Kia kaha,
Daisy

💛Day 7 | Thoughts from your Kaiako 💛

Today I have some lovely photos and ideas to share from your Rabbit Patch kaiako.

Our hardworking kaiako have been busy writing documentation and uploading your beautiful investigations and areas of interest to Storypark, so if you haven’t already, head over to check out the gorgeous pieces they have written for you.

Today the thoughts from our kaiako include some ideas of things to do to help the weekend along, as well as some photos of what they have been doing during their time in lockdown.

🐑 Laura has shared images of some of the animals on her parents farm. What can you spot?
🦒 Tegan created a family profile for her family of giraffes. Do your stuffed animals have names tamariki? Perhaps you could make your own version of Tegan’s idea!
⛺️Aleithea’s daughters Grace and Phoebe have been camping inside! What sort of spaces can you create inside your own homes?
🚴Kirsten and Bronwyn have been biking with their families and making the most of Christchurch’s beautiful weather.
🐶 Daisy’s little dog Xena has been loving the Hawea waterfront as they spend lockdown with her partner’s Mum.

We hope you enjoy, and we look forward to hearing about your own lockdown adventures soon- either through Storypark, or when we all meet again in Level 2.

Kia kaha,
The Rabbit Patch Team 💛

🍄Day Five Pt.2 | Fairy Gardens & Mushroom Houses🧚‍♀️

🍄To accompany my previous post, I wanted to share one of the children’s recent and spontaneous Atelier projects - Mushroom Houses!

🍄 Complete with mushroom people, a sunny afternoon saw three of our tamariki spend over an hour creating a mushroom house from an entire bag of clay.

🍄This sparked a very passionate exploration into structures made from clay, and has slowly evolved and developed - as other children join - to create a ‘mushroom city’, a collection of organic sculptures that have different roles to play (city council, hospital, spa pools, house, neighbours, to name a few).

🍄This exploration has pushed the children’s imagination and creativity, as well as their understanding of clay medium and how it can be moulded and shaped into three dimensional form.

🍄Before lockdown, the children were waiting for their houses to dry so that they could paint them. Needless to say, they will be busy after lockdown lifts, doing just that!

🧚‍♀️Day Five PT.1 | Fairy Gardens & Mushroom Houses 🍄

Our wonderful kaiako Aleithea shared her daughters beautiful Fairy Garden for inspiration today and we think it’s perfect as it aligns with one of the children’s ongoing projects in the Atelier - Mushroom Houses! (See Part 2).

Grace has been making this fairy garden alongside her Nan, and we think it is a wonderful contribution to their garden.

🧚‍♀️What sort of items can you see in Grace’s garden?
🧚‍♀️I wonder what things you might need for your own fairy garden?
🧚‍♀️Is there a place in your garden/home that you think the fairies might like?
🧚‍♀️I wonder what your fairies might look like?
🧚‍♀️What sort of jobs do fairies do?


We look forward to listening to all your magical ideas tamariki!

Kia ora!

Today we are sharing some photographs, documenting the Whare ngārara - insect house ngā tamariki have created/ been maintaining, with some suggestions of how you could make your own.

In the words of ngā tamariki themselves, a successful bug house is one that ‘is the same as where they live in the wild’ and careful discussion led to the instruction list that follows.

How to Make a Bug House.
(An excerpt from ‘The Bug Bug Hunting Book for Children by Children’ - This is the book ngā tamariki have been making as well, busy 🐝)

‘You need a jar. A big one.’
‘A little jar is fine too though.’
‘You need dirt. And sand. And some stones at the bottom. You have to layer it, like when we made the worm farm in the container.’
‘Then you need leaves. Because beetles, centipedes, and millipedes live in leaves.’
‘You need wet leaves, and dry leaves.’
‘You need a plant. Just a little one. A vegetable plant for the slugs to eat. Then it can grow more when they eat it.’
‘We should put some sticks in!’
‘And a stone to hide under.’
‘This bark too? This bark too.’

And in the words of Lou Bega- put it all together and it looks like this!

The children’s bug house has been a sustained ecosystem for about three months now. We ‘make it rain’ with a spray bottle every Monday, and as the leaves degrade and turn into soil (thanks to the worms apparently) we top it up with fresh ones. The children have explored planting micro herb seeds in the terrarium as well, watching them grow against the glass - as well as watching a few wild mushrooms pop up randomly (much to their delight.)

🐌Do you have a spare jar at home to use for a bug house?
🐌 What sort of critters have you observed, in and around your home?
🐌What kind of bug house do you think they would need, in order to survive?

🏔Locations🏔

Tamariki, your kaiako know how well travelled some of you are, from your eager korerorero - discussions about the various places you have visited with your whānau.

And so, your kaiako have complied some images to test your (and your parents) knowledge about our beautiful country. Some might say all mountains look the same, but I think tamariki might be familiar with more than a few of these locations! Remember, any guess is a good guess 😄

Some areas of discussion may be:

🏔Which places have you visited/ seen before?
🏔How would you travel/ what form of transport would you take to get there?
🏔Why do some mountains have snow, and some don’t?
🏔Who lives on snowy mountains?
🏔Why does the sky change colour? What makes the sky change colour?
🏔What maps do you need, to find these places? Can you draw a map to lead me there?
🏔On our travels, what would we have to watch out for/ be careful of?

Have you or your family been travelling anywhere special before lockdown tamariki? Now might be a good chance to go through those photos and revisit special memories together.

We hope you all are well,
Kia kaha,
The Rabbit Patch Team

Kia Ora Whānau!

We are over halfway through the year and boy has it flown by. Ngā tamariki have been busy exploring both long and short term projects as they continue to discover and make sense of the world around them.

We are anticipating a some upcoming social events, such as Pyjama Day and the Disco that (fingers crossed) will be able to go ahead as planned this year depending on Alert Levels.

Thank-you to all our families for your contributions to our community so far this year, and welcome to the new whānau who have recently joined us.

Ngā mihi,
The Rabbit Patch Team

We would like to extend a huge thank-you to Burnside Highschool and their Junior Drama Department, that visited us late last year to perform an abridged version of 'Bad Jelly the Witch' for our tamariki.

The children had a fantastic time watching you perform and continued to incorporate your performance in their own imaginative play in the weeks following your show.

The Te Tipu children were also inspired by you, to investigate creating their own show - a project that is still currently on-going.

'It takes a village, to raise a child.' - African Proverb

And how blessed we are, at Rabbit Patch, to have such a fantastic village surrounding our precious tamariki as they grow, play, explore, and discover their place in the world.

Although this post may be a little late to make - it is no less important to acknowledge, (at the start of a new year,) the efforts that our community made to move through the previous year.

We would like to extend a massive thank-you for the donations that we received for the Christchurch City Mission Christmas collection this year. The gifts were delivered on time and were gratefully accepted. It was also a wonderful opportunity for ngā tamariki to learn the joy of giving, as well as receiving gifts, at Christmas time.

The children's Christmas Party, was a fantastic way to celebrate the end of 2020 and we were overwhelmed with the turn out and positive feedback that we received from our families and the entire Rabbit Patch community. After a bumpy year, we were so pleased to have been able to finish the year with everyone gathering together to celebrate.

On looking back through the photos taken during this wonderful gathering of our community, we are reminded of the well versed Maori Proverb -

He aha te mea nui ki tēnei ao?
Māku e ki atu. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

What is the most important thing in the world?
I would reply that it is people, people, people.

On Wednesday the 11th of November, Tuhura (Two to Three 1/2 yrs) invited ngā tamariki and their Whanau to participate their much anticipated Project Celebration.

The Project Celebration is an opportunity for the children and their families to explore, experience, and reflect back on the children’s investigations from over the past year.

Thank-you to all of the Tūhura families that attended this wonderful event, ngā tamariki relished the opportunity to share with you their experiences and knowledge of their ongoing Investigation into ‘Transport, and the different tracks they create’.

We hope you enjoy some of the photographs from this event, keep an eye out for the Project Celebrations from Kumanu, and Te Tipu to come.

Ngā mihi nui and a big thank you to all the tamariki and whānau that came to the Kumanu (0-2 year olds) project celebration! We celebrated our year long investigation by setting up experiences that reflected the child led provocations. This started with exploring their own shadows using an overhead projector which led to using a data projector to explore movement, light and shadows before moving to an outdoor provocation using natural light. It was beautiful to see the whakahi-pride that the children took in showing their families around our year long mahi- work around shadows, light and movement.

🐠• F I S H • 🐠Nga tamariki we’re thrilled to welcome a new friend into Te Tipu, (3-5 year old’s) upon their return after lockdown.

🐠The additions inspired a weeklong investigation which included generating and voting for names!

🐠Thus the two have been dubbed, Whale and Taniwha (Slippery Fish inspired).

Can you tell how excited we have been to come back to Preschool? Nga tamariki have returned to newly represented learning spaces to explore, friends to reunite with, and investigations to revisit, as well as a few new fishy friends to keep them company!

We want to extend a massive thank you to our Rabbit Patch Whanau for their patience and support as we work through Level 2 guidelines, as well as our Kaiako for all the extra effort they have put into ensuring nga tamariki are able to continue to thrive in our unique Rabbit Patch environment.

Kia Kaha,
The Team at Greers ❤️

Kia Ora Rabbit Patch Whanau!

During the nation wide lock-down, our Atelierista Daisy has been busy creating a provocation a day for you and your children to explore/ be inspired by at home.
You might see some of these explorations popping up on this page during the remainder of the lockdown and if you have an instagram, feel free to follow along at (our Atelier account) and (our Greers Road Preschool account).

You can also find our Saffron branch on Instagram as and

Take care!
The Team at Greers

Last weekend we were thrilled to host our first Art Exhibition at Rabbit Patch Greers Road, for our Rabbit Patch families and wider community.

The Exhibition was a feast for the eyes, showcasing work from all age groups and their respective Investigations from the past year, as well as the ongoing exploration into Portraiture, (the Atelier long-term Investigation,) and other side explorations, including (but not limited to), Rocket Ship construction, Chandelier creation, and Kinetic Drawing.

This was such a fantastic opportunity to display the children’s artwork, alongside relevant language, theories, and photographs, (documented by our talented Kaiako,) truly showing what makes us unique as a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool.

We would like to extend a huge thank you to all of the hands that helped to make this event possible, as well as those who came to celebrate with us on the Saturday night for the opening, and the Sunday morning with the children.

We hope you enjoy some images from this fantastic show.
Arohanui to all,
The Team at Rabbit Patch

Our Atelierista, Daisy and the team are very busy preparing for our art exhibition this weekend. We are very much looking forward to sharing the children’s amazing work from throughout 2019 with our community!

Thank you to the ninety or so friends and family of Rabbit Patch who came along to view and experience our new learning space today. We are so thrilled with how it is looking and are eagerly anticipating how the children will interact with the spaces. Not long to go now before we open!