Miramar North Kindergarten

Our Garden is Underway!
A huge thank you to all the amazing families who came out for our working bee last Saturday! Thanks to everyone’s hard work, muscle, and community spirit, we officially wrapped up Stage 1 of our new kindy garden.
The groundwork is laid, the area is prepped, and we’re officially one step closer to creating a beautiful outdoor space for our community to dig, plant, and learn.
We couldn't have done it without this incredible team.

Our Tamariki have been exploring recreating the story
"How Maui slowed the sun"
We have a wall display of their work. The story is being told within the curriculum through imaginary play and the natural outside learning environment.

Our Tamariki made Weta houses with the Toymaker. They choose were to place them in the trees to attract the Weta. We watched and waited and no Weta went into our new houses. The Tamariki had a korero and decided that the new Weta house should be placed between the old currently occupied Weta houses. We also added some flakey bits from the old house and have discovered our new house is now occupied. Great problem solving and collaborative working out of theories from the Tamariki.

Over the last few weeks, our kindergarten has been buzzing with excitement as we celebrate Matariki. The tamariki have been busy exploring the significance of this special time through creativity and art. You will see or walls with beautiful star-themed artwork, paintings, that represent the night sky.

When tamariki are learning to use scissors, they’re building lots of important skills. As they snip and cut, they’re strengthening the muscles in their hands, developing their hand/eye coordination, and practising using both hands together. They’re also learning to focus, take their time, and feel proud of what they can do. All this makes a simple cutting activity an important part of helping tamariki grow into confident, capable learners.

Loose parts are a wonderful way for our tamariki to explore throughout the day, encouraging creativity, imagination and problem solving. With open ended resources on offer, children are free to lead their own learning and create in meaningful ways.

We had lovely Kelly the librarian visit today at kindergarten. She brought her warm smile, beautiful singing, and a stack of wonderful stories. The tamariki were absolutely captivated — joining in with the songs, listening intently, and enjoying every moment of her visit. It was a engaging experience that filled our day with excitement and imagination.

We welcomed Mina and Koru the whale from Project Jonah to talk to us about the importance of looking after our ocean, and especially whales. We learned all about how whales dive, breathe, how massive they are, what they eat and how to look after them in a stranding situation. The tamariki all had turns at pouring water on Koru, remembering not to pour water near the blowhole. What an amazing educational resource. Nga Mihi Project Jonah.

Screen Printing.
The Kaiako have been teaching the Tamariki the concepts around the processes of the art technique.
Practicing our cutting skills in making our blocks.
Placing the pattern blocks down on a piece of paper, adding paint and then pulling the paint across the screen to create the underneath print. We are also using primary colours and over printing. This is to see if we can make our own colours and add depth to our designs.