LATEST STORIES
Utilising our natural enviroment for learning
With the winter months in full steam here at the children's preschool room in Palmerston North, we have been using the natural environment to drive our localised curriculum.
From celebrating Tane Mahuta dropping his leaves and investigating the beautiful colours to making leave fossils using salt dough. This has led children also to examine light through painting and being imaginative within the environment by collecting items to be creative with.
As part of our school holiday, we celebrated our cultural day with a special Tongan Lakalaka (dance) thanks to Sione and Lafumoa family coming in to show us what a beautiful performance.
Children have shown enjoyment in fairy tales and literacy. With this in mind, our community library bus turns up for children to make connections to fairy tales, the natural world, and construction books and research other areas of interest like dinosaurs and volcanoes.
Kaiako, alongside ākonga, enjoyed these opportunities to wonder and question what would happen if we still had dinosaurs walking the earth.
This led to the 'project robot' Tamariki collected boxes and created a robot. The learning that took place was ākonga problem solving, how to use cello tape communicating ideas wananga (debate) about what wasn't working when balancing boxes without them falling over.
This robot grew to be as tall as the teachers and was there to 'protect' the dinosaurs. What wonderful learning about the natural environment that led to other avenues of curiosity and hypothetical thinking about what would happen.