Community

Through our project based curriculum we like to involve the community in our learning and take trips to extend on their knowledge when relevant. To achieve this we need parent support and already this year with parent help the children and teachers were able to catch the public bus to the local library and were shown around the library and joined in with Rhyme Time. By liaising with the bus company to ensure they would stop for us instead of waving to us as they drove by, the bus company gave us a free ride which became the highlight of the whole trip. We also have police families in our centre and they stopped the traffic for us to cross the road back to Bright Bears. This was also very exciting and highlighted road safety to the children.

Again utilising the community we often ask our police families if they have time to let us sit their police vehicles and use the lights, speakers and sirens.

The fire department is also a regular visitor. Sometimes it is not always possible to go to them so they are more than willing to visit us and therefore often wave as they drive past.

Gross Motor skills are also very important to us and to extend on our normal curriculum we have an exercise time once a week with a Physical Education Instructor and we repeat this practice later in the week to ensure all of our children have access to some form of physical exercise.

Just recently we extended the invitation to our preschool families to join us for a Fish and Chips Night at the centre which was a great way for the families to spend some time in the centre getting to know other families and spending time talking to the teachers about each child's individual portfolio. These have a collection of your child’s artwork, some work sheets if applicable and observations and incidents that staff may have recorded of your child’s day at the centre building a comprehensive portfolio on your child linking home and centre. Staff are constantly observing and recording the children’s development enabling us to have a better understanding of your child and from these goals are set and achieved following the Te Whariki Early Childhood Curriculum.