South Wellington Montessori School

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!

It's been a rocky start to Term 2, but through it all, our teaching team have supported one another and our community!
So here's a wee introduction to us to round out week 2 in our temporary space.

Dana (Centre) - Lead Teacher
Dana brings a decade of teaching experience alongside a lifetime in Montessori to our team. Teaching is her dream job, and her love for children is evident in all she does.

Sue (Left) - Teacher
Sue has spent her career in Montessori centres, building her knowledge and appreciation for the philosophy. Her eye for detail supports our prepared environment to look beautiful all the time!

Vonnie (Right) - Teacher
Vonnie is the newest member of our SWMS team and has been building her knowledge and understanding of both Montessori and teaching with us. She brings a warm, calm nature which supports the children to feel safe and secure at preschool.

We look forward to continuing to support our current children and welcoming others to join us at SWMS!

Have a wonderful weekend, our team will be ready and waiting to welcome everyone back on Monday 🥰

Today we had a session with Little Dribblers Football Club! The children were excited to see Tony again and enjoyed spending half an hour running, learning soccer skills and returning to an activity they loved in Term one!

The school is letting us use their field, so it's an easy walk as well!

We are already excited to have our next session next week! And it is great to have a highlight of our week back in our calendar while we are in our temporary home!

Little Dribblers will also be holding Sunday sessions at Berhampore School! Come along this week to say hi and give it a go! https://facebook.com/events/s/free-have-a-go-day-berhampore-/2619767995091000/

Over the last week, we have been working on understanding how we can show gratitude and appreciation to those who have helped us immensely.

We decided we could make cards and wrapping paper! We looked at ideas for thank you cards and decided our wrapping paper should say thank you!
We are now working on putting these together with a little gift and delivering them.

We have felt incredibly well loved during this time. Our children have talked a lot about how we have to be very careful with the materials that have been gifted and also that if we lose the balls over the fence, we don't have any spares. This has been an opportunity for us to discuss how sometimes we are in a position to help others and sometimes we need the help.

It has been a busy week at preschool as we have begun to settle into our new normal.

Thank you to everyone who has donated or allowed us to borrow materials and resources which have allowed us to get up and running! We are incredibly grateful for the ongoing support and encouragement from the local and wider community. It's been a big few weeks for the children, families and teachers, but we have felt well loved through out!

We will look forward to providing more updates as we work through the rebuild process of our Duppa Street School!

Some photos as we move into the middle of week three of term! This week the older children have been talking about growing their brains, asking for support to find the trickiest work and telling us they feel proud when they achieve something they were unsure of!