South Wellington Montessori School

And just like that, our first week back at Duppa Street is complete!

After so long away, it has been lovely to watch the children settling back into their preschool, rediscovering familiar activities, exploring new ones and finding their rhythm again.

There has been a lot of concentration, independence, conversation and laughter as we have once again started to settle into our new normal.

There is still a lot happening around us our neighbours continue their rebuilds and our local community recover from all that was lost in April. Our own outdoor spaces are still blank canvases which we are working together to beautify. But our tiny preschool is once again home

We are coming home!

17 weeks after the devastating flooding, we are headed back to our Duppa Street home. We have this afternoon received our sign off and licence from the Ministry of Education and will return on Monday!

It has been an enormous few months, and we are incredibly grateful for all the love and support we have received along the way. Thank you to everyone who helped us with the clean-up, rebuild, donations and so much more. Thank you to our families who have supported us throughout it all.

A very special thank you to Berhampore School for so graciously opening your doors to us and accommodating us. We are incredibly grateful to have had such a welcoming temporary home.

We have a busy few days ahead as we relocate and get ready to return home. We also know the next few months will continue to see us finding our feet, making improvements, and establishing our new playground and gardens.

But finally, after 17 weeks, we are coming home!

The teachers have just finished 2 days at the Montessori Conference in Christchurch!

We have had a wonderful time connecting and reconnecting with our Montessori colleagues, gaining new knowledge and being inspired to continue the work we love!

We hope everyone has a wonderful Mid-year holiday and we will see a few of you next week for the holiday programme and everyone else on Monday 20th July for term 3!

This week we have been learning about Matariki.
We have learnt the names of the stars, sang the Matariki macarena and done some colouring.

Today we came together to eat Kai. We started with our Karakia and then all tried the food. We had tomato soup which was a big hit! It was wonderful to see all of the children giving it a go and many ended up loving it, even when they originally weren't sure!

Today we had a visit to the Life Education Trust Mobile Classroom. We saw Harold the Giraffe and learnt about breathing with the fish at Kelly Tarltons.

Everyone's favourite part was the changing light colours in the classroom!

We had an awesome experience!

A very busy start to the week!

We look forward to seeing what else the children get up to this week!

Over the last six weeks, we have learnt a lot about resilience, recovery, and community.

As we reach the end of our fourth week in our temporary home, we wanted to share a reflection on our journey so far.

Read our story here:

https://montessorieco.nz/?p=133

South Wellington Montessori School We are a small Montessori preschool, located in a converted house in quiet Duppa Street, Berhampore.
We cater for children aged 2-6 with a class size up to 25.

We run a preschool session form 8:45am - 2:45pm with additional care until 4pm available

Music Jo came today!

She mentioned the children were super engaged and excited to see her after so long! They also had remembered lots that we have learnt previously!

We have really valued these little parts of our normal preschool life as we have worked to settle here!

We have loved exploring the school library!
We have found books we know and New favourites in our visits!

Some of our children will soon transition to the Montessori primary unit here and have loved talking about how this will soon be their school library and their school! What a wonderful way to build familiarity!

We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and we will see everyone on Monday for week 4!