LATEST STORIES
Building relationships with teamwork!
Another busy month of growing our young minds within the pounamu toddler room. We celebrated book character day, Queens birthday and begun our celebrations for Matariki (Maori New Year). They have been busy exploring a variety of experiences of arts and crafts such as creating Matartiki stars, kites, playdough stars, making cards and play dough cakes for their friends and teachers and expressing themselves through music and art and pretend play.
Children learn to express themselves through music and art, they practice teamwork, and it also enhances social skills. Immersing children in music can help boost their brain power. Music stimulates the parts of the brain associated with academic achievement and emotional development. We ended our Matariki celebrations with a Disco and Whanau evening which we all loved!
We have recently reviewed our birthday procedure within the centre as we want to ensure that every child is made to feel special on their birthday. We now ensure that every child has a special celebration on their special day this consists of dress up’s, play dough cakes, a special party and a fun photo booth photoshoot with their friends. This has been a huge success for our children within the Pounamu room and they all get very excited to celebrate each other.
Working together and strengthening relationships has been an area of growth for our toddler tamariki lots of enriched conversation – both verbal and nonverbal, peer engagement working alongside each other and together we have seen that a lot of these skills have been extended within their pretend play/family play experiences. We know this play provides an opportunity for kids to practice and develop their language and social skills by merely being with and talking to other children, It boosts the development of problem-solving and self-regulation skills alongside role modelling and exploring what they see within their daily lives!