Pre School Helpers

We are lucky to have so many helpers at Pre School this year and the last few weeks have been full of opportunities to help.

Parents have helped:

  • Make costumes
  • Cook food
  • Come on excursions
  • Teach German
  • Garden
  • and Clean

Thank you to all our parents who support the children and staff.  For a small group of parents this is an amazing effort.  We really appreciate your efforts and know that your children really benefit from your participation.

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Concert

Each year we hold a concert for our families and community members.

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We always have the children make dinner for them.  This year we did a casserole tea.  We spent all Tuesday morning chopping and cooking.  Then we set up all the tables and added the cutlery and serviettes.

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For the concert

For our concert this year we sang Bonkers Beat and a German counting song.  We dressed up as robots in our box costumes and sang “I’m a Little Robot.”  Our favourite part of our concert was acting out the stories of “The Three Little Pigs” and “Three Billy Goats Gruff”.  All year we have loved acting our stories – both in German and in English.

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Then we all enjoyed dinner together.

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It was great to celebrate with our family and friends.

Hand Washing

Every year we visit our local hospital and one of the nurses goes through the hand washing process with us.  This year Claudia was our hand washing teacher.  Claudia dress up as a bug.

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We put some magic powder on them and then had a look at all the germs under a magic light.  The germs glowed.

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Then Claudia showed us how to wash our hands.  We have to sing Happy Birthday while we do it to make sure we have done a good job.  This is an important part of our well being program.

Then Heather made us all bug cakes.  Yum!

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Thank you to the Manangatang Hospital staff – we had a great morning.

 

 

Funky Monkey

We have swapped Cuddles the Bear for Funky Monkey (from Ouyen Kinder)  When teachers proposed this swap we had no idea how attached to Cuddles the Manangatang children were.  There were lots of discussions about this swap.  In the end we decided to take Cuddles to Ouyen to see if he liked it.  He did and the children finally agreed to leave him for a holiday.

We have had some lovely photos and captions from Ouyen children, so we know that Cuddles is having a lovely time.  We are making a book about Cuddles’ adventures in Ouyen.

In the meantime we are enjoying having Funky visit us.

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This week we took Funky to the hospital to learn about hand washing and Funky got to enjoy our concert.

 

Waddle Giggle Gargle!

We are still making magpie traps to catch that magpie that keeps swooping us.  This week we have tried mini wheelie bins…….

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and boxes……

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Today we read the story Waddle Giggle Gargle by Pamela Allen.  There were some good ideas for distracting a magpie in this story.  I wonder if the children will use some of these ideas next week!  Thank you to Monika for reading the story to us in German.

Cuddles!

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Today Lilly’s Baby sister Gemma was dressed up like Cuddles.  Mrs Gayle put Gemma on one shoulder and Cuddles on the other.  She tried to trick the kids.

“Cuddles has grown a lot!’

“Let’s see the eyes!”

When she turned around they laughed.

Gemma really did look like a giant Cuddles.

Father’s Day

This week we have been making our cards and a gift for Fathers Day.  We printed animals on our cards, wrote our names and drew a picture to make the cards.

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We sponged noodle boxes with paint to put our gift in.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd then we made chocolate truffles to fill our boxes.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOf course we had to do a taste test to check they were ok!  The children were excited to take their gifts home to hide (probably under the bed!) until Sunday.

To all the Dad’s – Have a Happy Father’s Day on Sunday.

Soup

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We were using the mini wheelie bin as a water tank for the sand pit.  However Douglas started us all making ‘soup’.  The children added sand and flowers and seed pods to the mixture.  They stired it all up with pipes, bits of wood and a rake.  They put the lid down and said “Cook, cook, cook!”  Then they had soup!  Next week we will read the story ‘Stone Soup’.

Spring

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Spring has arrived in Manangatang.  We can see the signs.  The first sign was the bulbs popped out of the lawn and we have some pretty flowers.  Then we had some beautiful sunny days last week.

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One of our trees has new leaves and we can see the buds about to burst on our other two trees.

But the main sign for us is that our magpie is back!  This is not always a good sign of Spring because he likes to swoop us and our visitors!  We have discovered that there is no swooping when we have our hats on!  This is a good incentive to do this.  However any visitor who has come this week without a hat has been swooped!  We have tested this theory out!

The children have been on magpie watch!  Hats on of course.

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They decided they would make a magpie trap.  First they got Mrs Gayle to hold a pipe above her head for the magpie to fly through.

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Then they asked if we had a net.  I said I didn’t think so, but they remembered the ball bag.  So they emptied the bag out and they tied it too the pipe.

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We waited all session but we didn’t catch the magpie.  Maybe next week.

In the meantime we have talked about the magpie protecting her eggs in the nest (we can see this from the outside area).  We will need to be careful for the next few months until the chicks hatch and fly away.