Professional Development- Parent teacher relationships

This afternoon we had a tutor from Massey came and work with us as part of ongoing training we as teachers do. Two interesting things I wanted to share came up for me.

1st was our tutor's comment on "children become what we notice and respond too in them." So if your child wants to be lifted up to look at what you're doing and you notice this and lift them up it teaches them one thing, if you only notice when they demand your attention through misbehaviour it teaches them another.
So we all need to ask ourselves as teachers and parents what do we notice, what do we respond to. Better to notice first and respond to something positive now than to wait till they need to drag a response out of us.

2nd was about the importance of parents and the relationship of parents and teachers in a child's learning. Adrianne hit the nail on the head when she said her child learnt best from the teachers she was friends with.
This is so true, when you know your child's teachers and they know you, all the learning at home and in the kindergarten become linked together, we all understand what's going on in children's lives and interests better and can all respond to them more fully.
So how do you develop these parent teacher relationships? Spend time in the kindergarten, read stories, come on trips, chat with the teachers. Relationships and communication come with time. The more time you spend here, the more we learn about you, the more you learn about us, the more we learn about each others interests, how you can help us, and we can help you.
If you feel shy remember we often do too.

Did you know you can take your child's profile home to read.
step one: pick it up
step two: let us know you've got it
step three: take it home, share and enjoy, add your own stories etc.
step four: Bring it back so we can add more to it as well.

Do you have a blog for your children?
If you do let us know, we'd love to read about their adventures too, in fact reading a parents blog was what got us going in the first place.

Through the eyes of a child

Most of our artists have concentrated on people and faces but here's some work from an artist interested in curves and lines.

Through the eyes of a child.

A couple of weeks ago and parent told me “I can’t believe you let my child use your camera.”

Shortly before I arrived here, less than six years ago but before these children were born, Hunter Park brought it’s first digital camera. It was worth $1200 and was one of the first digital cameras in an Early Childhood setting in HawkesBay. Since then through the telecom friends of the school program and the work of our committees, we have added four more digitals and a video camera to our fleet.

The 8mb card’s have been replaced by 2 gb cards and we’re starting to upload kindy trip photo’s onto the web (we’ll let you know when it’s ready to go, it’s still blocked as a potential spam site.)

As teachers we finally got brave enough to let children use the cameras freely in the last few years. I can certainly find examples as far back as our 2006 collection.

They showed us what great photographers children can be. Children can often capture amazingly candid photo’s of each other, and their perspective on the things they see is amazing. Too often we have trained ourselves not to see the details in the things around us, it’s just a puddle, it’s just a plank. Children look at things with fresh eyes and when we see through them we can notice for the first time in years the play of light and shape in a puddle, the lines formed by a plank, the shapes around us.

Children aren’t afraid to shove a camera right up close and take a photo of the part of an object that interests them. They don’t worry about standing back to get the whole thing in like we do.

Children don’t worry about holding the camera horizontal and flat, they’ll look down it at the ground, point it at the sky and experiment. If the effect is interesting they’ll run with it and explore it fully before they finish. They’ll even turn it on themselves, notice their mouth is in the shot, and try another with their mouth open to see what’s inside. That’s the great thing about the screens on the back, the children can get immediate feedback on the photo they have taken, and then take another one straight away.

So back to that statement “I can’t believe you let my child use your camera.” Can you see why we do now? I’ve selected just some of the photo’s the children have taken, over just a few days, formatted them and given them a title. I really should show the children how to do this themselves, but I’m still learning to be brave. I hope you enjoy them and the others we add and start to see life through the eyes of a child.
David 3.4.8

Walk-a-thon

Our walk-a-thon has had to be postponed due to wet and cold weather. We went ahead and cooked up the sausages in the oven in case the children's lunch boxes were lighter than usual in anticipation of the sausage sizzle.
Forecast is for rain for the rest of the week till next Tuesday, so we'll try again then.

Bug Life

With winter the amount of insects around is steadily dropping, but our intrepid entomologists still manage to find a few. The Microscope is a great way to get close up views and our explorers confidently ask ask to get it out when they need it if we haven't already done so.

Steely blue ladybird

Seven spotted ladybird

Male South African preying mantis (note lots of little blue spots rather than one big blue spot)

Whirlygig mite?

and a colour variant of the south african preying mantis, a brown one. This one is male but one of the children also found a female one as well with the same colour pattern.

David

Happy Mother's Day

With Mother's day coming up we've been making cards and today our harakeke was dry enough to cut so we made putiputi for our mum's.

One son wanted to make four flowers, so we helped him and here they are. There was one for each person in his family.

When mum came he gave them all to her and then raced off to fetch the camera to take mum's photo. (He's one of our many budding photographers, check out his work on the board at kindergarten.)

The photo and the flowers looked so good we asked mum if we could put his photo of her up on the blog and she said yes.

Building Work

You've probably noticed by now that we have a new office being build at the back of the kindergarten, because with the fourth trained teacher (not to mention visiting professional service managers, students, lecturers, etc.) our old office space was pretty cramped.

Our association board budgets for such upgrades each year out of the bulk funding they recieve incase you were wondering how this is all paid for.

As well as the new office, the changes to the building have meant we were required to up date our adult toilets, so over the holidays work has been done on our toilet as well, enlarging the space by moving the wall in our art room over a bit.

The children have been fascinated by the building work, keenly watching our builder as he's added different features. We've moved a stand over to the window so they can see out and also gone out for some visits in small groups.

Term Dates 2008

Term 1, 2008
Tuesday 29th Jan-Friday 18th April

Term 2, 2008-New hours 8:30am-2:30pm commence!
Monday 5th May- Friday 4th July
Remember Queen's birthday Monday 2nd June, closed for stat. holiday

Term 3, 2008
Monday 21 July- Friday 26th September

Term 4, 2008
Monday 13th October-Friday 19th Dec.
H.B. Annv. Friday 24th Oct. -closed stat hol.
Labour day, Monday 27th Oct. -closed stat hol.