Stoke Programme

Happenings in 2018

Fun with Paint

Friday, Wheels Day

On Fridays the children can bring their bikes or scooters, and we take them into Ranui Reserve to have a ride.

Our New Mud Pit in Action

Happenings in 2017

Christmas Party at the Trains

A big thank you to everyone who came and made our Christmas excursion to the Tahunanui Trains a successful and fun experience. Riding the trains was enjoyable for children and adults alike, and of course our special visitor (Santa) was the star of the event!

Christmas Carols at Kensington Court

We had a fantastic visit to Kensington Court to sing Christmas Carols to the residents, which is an annual event.
The children looked amazing dressed up in their festive costumes and their singing was awesome! Some of our children even got up and sang by themselves or with a friend. We have stars in the making.
The children definitely bought joy to the residents of Kensington Court through their singing and the way they all went around afterwards shaking everyone's hands, giving hugs and wishing all the residents a merry Christmas. It was a very special morning.

We are now a Silver Enviroschool!

We are now a silver status Enviroschool, which recognises the collaborative journey that we have undertaken with our children, families and the community to reduce the amount of plastic in our environment and help create a more sustainable world for our children.

Manaaki whenua, manaaki Tangata, haere whakamua.
Care for the land, care for the people, go forward.

The children harvested broad beans and silverbeet from our garden to make broad bean pesto and silverbeet and cheese scones for morning tea.

Visiting Significant Local Landmarks

It was a perfect Nelson Day to explore the significant landmarks of Whakatu/Nelson that relate to our mihi and legends. Unfortunately we couldn't actually see Maungatapu, which is behind the double hills in the third photo.

Visiting Whakatu Marae

After weeks of planning we joined Victory Square Kindergarten and Kohanga Reo to visit the Whakatu Marae.

Increasing our Knowledge and Understanding

We have been extremely fortunate to have had Tiana Alesana, a third year student, with us this year as she has a wealth of Maori knowledge which she has passed on to the teachers and children. We have also had Matua Madsen visiting us for kapa haka sessions for a term.

Children hard at work,
laying the foundation for the future

Our New Mud Pit

Thanks to our very generous parents and grandparents who have donated goods and their time, we now have a lovely mud pit for the children to play in.
This is a great asset for our kindergarten and we would like to thank everyone that helped out to make this happen.

Enviroschools

Going for Silver!

We have our bronze award, now we are going for silver!
Our focus is to reduce the amount of plastic we use in our Kindergarten.

Visit to 'Smart Environmental' Recycling Station

Sarah Langi visits us to talk about waste

Burying rubbish to see what happens

Our Young Environmentalists

Our children have come up with great ideas for replacing plastic bags. Some have been sewing re-usable to take home to use and some have decorated paper bags for parents to use and return.

Kaitiake (Guardians) of the Reserve

A rubbish truck visited the kindergarten

Working together to reduce lunch rubbish

Fishing at Sunderlands Pier 2017

Nelson turned on another beautiful day for our annual fishing trip.

For many children it was their first time fishing and it was a great experience for them. We even got a few fish!

Once again, a huge thank you to the Mums, Dads, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents that came along to help out. Without you we couldn't go on these sorts of excursions so THANK YOU!

Visiting Artists

Two of our parents are artists, and we are very grateful that they gave up some of their time to visit us at kindergarten to show the children some of their work, as well as spending time with the children extending their interest in art and using different mediums.

'Mister Science'

Mister Science, Sterling Cathman, has been 'wowing' our children this term with his wonderful experiments.

The kindergarten has been filled with squeals of delight from the children as they join in with the science fun.

Our children have loved having him visit us throughout the term and have gained a lot of knowledge along the way.

Family Fun Night

Stoke Kindergarten Cafe

We opened Stoke Kindergarten Cafe for a 'Meet and Greet' session with guest speaker, Catherine Campbell. Catherine is a very experienced Speech Language Therapist, who has been employed by our Association, to support us with children's speech and language needs.

We were so lucky to have Jen Tinker as our barista for the morning and the committee supplied some delicious morning tea. We even had our own waitress, Paige Gibbins!

This was a great opportunity for parents to find out some handy hints for supporting their children’s speech and language development and an opportunity for them to have an informal chat with Catherine about any concerns they may have regarding their children’ speech and language acquisition.

We hope to have our café open each term with different guest speakers.

Everyone is welcome.

Happenings in 2016

Ranui Reserve - 'Our Reserve'

We are very lucky to have a beautiful reserve right behind the Kindergarten.
We have a gate that opens straight on to the reserve and we use it regularly.
The children play team games there, explore the environs, collect fruit from the trees and learn more about the natural world around us.
We have also held Family Fun Nights, Hangi's and other fun activities there.
Nelson City Council have been great at listening to, and acting on our ideas for edible plants, native plants and winding paths through the area and we must thank them for their hard work making it such a special place.

St Patrick's Day Wheel-a-Thon 2016

Every year our Committee holds a 'Wheel-a-thon' as a fun activity for the children and a fund raiser for our Kindergarten.
The children are sponsored for riding their bikes, scooters, or anything with wheels, around a course at Stoke School.
This year it was held on St Patrick's Day so we all got into the 'green theme!'
We also have a sausage sizzle on the night so you don't even have to cook tea.
Thanks to everyone that helped out.

Our Families joining in with the St Patrick's day theme made it a fun time for all.

Fishing at Sunderlands Pier 2016

Nelson turned on beautiful weather, but not many fish, for our latest fishing trip. For many of the children it was their first time fishing and they loved the experience. A huge thanks to all the Mums, Dads, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents who came along for the morning and made it possible.

Masterchefs

As part of our Healthy Heart Award and Enviroschools project, we grow vegetables in our garden and then cook them up into delicious healthy food to enjoy. After making pizza the day before, our Masterchefs were back at work with leftovers from the pizza, and silverbeet from our garden, creating yummy pinwheel scones.

Healthy Eating and Sustainability

Our programme helps develop our children's knowledge about healthy eating and sustainability.

Bliss!! Enjoying the abundance of sweet juicy Black Doris plums grown here and at our neighbours place.

2014 Programme

Buddies

As part of our Transition to School Programme, children who will be attending Stoke School are paired up with a buddy, an older child from the school, to help with the transition process.

The buddy comes to play with the child at Kindergarten and spends time with them when they go on school visits.

Last week we invited all the children from Stoke School that had been buddies throughout the year to our kindergarten to enjoy a special morning tea to thank them for their efforts.

Our children presented them with a certificate thanking them for being such good buddies.

Special Visitors

We have recently had a couple of special visitors at our Kindergarten.

Bucklebear and his helper came from Plunket to talk to our children about the importance of being buckled up safely in cars.

We were also reminded about the importance of being safe in driveways and for adults to be extra vigilant when leaving or entering any driveway.

St Johns in Schools have also been to visit the children and as you can see the visit was very interactive!

The children got to have a turn with the different equipment and then had a go at bandaging up one of our teachers, Toshi.

We really appreciate the valuable knowledge that these visitors have shared with our children.

Conservation Week

As part of our commitment to being an Enviroschools Kindergarten, we participated in Conservation Week from 3 - 7 November.

We walked to our beautiful local park, Isel Park, to pick up rubbish. This was to help develop the children's knowledge about what happens when we litter and how it can affect Papatuanuku (Mother Earth) by clogging up the gardens and streams we love to be in in our local area.

When we returned to the Kindergarten with the rubbish we had collected, we sorted it into rubbish that can be 'rescued' and rubbish that sadly needs to go to the tip.

The Teacher asked one of the children, "Why did you go to Isel Park?" "To pick up rubbish" "Whose rubbish?" "Silly people who left it there" "Why were you picking up other peoples rubbish?" "Because we are looking after the whole world"

'Blokes' and Kids Lunch

As part of our 'All About Me' focus on families, and with Fathers Day coming up, we decided to invite all the 'blokes' in our children's lives to come and join us for lunch.

The children helped make pumpkin soup and scones for the 'blokes' and McCashins Brewery kindly donated some ginger beer for them to enjoy.

It was great that so many 'blokes' could join us and the children had a wonderful time showing them what they get up to at Kindergarten.

BNZ 'Closed for Good' Day

Six BNZ Nelson workers spent their 'Closed for Good' day here at Stoke Kindergarten.
They were amazing and we are so grateful for their very hard work!

Our front garden got a huge clean out and new plantings. The next phase will be to add shells.

They also helped with our mosaic project and in the office. Thank you to BNZ for their wonderful community spirit.

"All About Me" Personal Safety Programme Implemented

Focus 1:
Learning about their bodies and the correct names for body parts.

What Happens to our Rubbish?

Burying the rubbish

Digging up the rubbish “The cardboard, the lemon peel, the grape and the tea bag all disappeared in to the soil while the plastic things stayed there. It’s really sad because they don’t go away.”

Investigating the compost.

We promote 'Zero Waste' lunchboxes. Are your lunchboxes Zero Waste?

We took a small group of children to the Reuse & Recycle Center to see what happens to our rubbish.

Focus on Kicking
Our Term 3 foundation skill focus is on kicking. Children are learning the 3 verbal cues as they participate in a variety of fun sessions.

1. Look at the ball.

2. Swing your foot.

3. Look where you're kicking to.

Ryan Charles, the Regional Development Officer for Tasman Rugby League, also came along to give us some great pointers.

Congratulations Karen
Karen is now a fully registered Teacher. The children and staff celebrated her becoming a 'real' Teacher with a shared lunch.

Matariki Celebrations
The evening began with the children re-creating one of the legends of Matariki.

Soup and cheese stars were served, and the children collected their glow sticks and we all headed outside to watch Toshi and Leo entertain us with a fire poi display.

Julie, from Stoke Library, helped us finish a magical evening with stories before the children headed home to bed.

Art Exhibition
In order to extend children's interest in art, we went on an excursion to visit two Nelson galleries: WOW, and the Suter. Children were given the opportunity to engage with the artwork in interactive ways, talking about them, interpreting them through movement, and creating their own pictures to bring back to kindergarten, where they were displayed in our own exhibition.

So many ways to jump!

Our skill focus for this term, as part of our Sport Tasman Fundamental Skills programme, is on jumping.
We have been incorporating this into many areas of our programme and have ‘jump started’ our Team games again in the reserve where children have had fun and been challenged with jumping in sacks, on moon hoppers and from spot to spot.

Sunflowers at Stoke Kindergarten

   We have had an ongoing project around sunflowers at
   Stoke Kindergarten.
   Last term children planted their own sunflowers.
   It was exciting to come back to kindergarten at the start of    this term and see how tall they had grown!

This term we entered a sunflower art competition, children did observational drawings or paintings of the sunflowers.

We were so proud to find that Stoke Kindergarten children won the first, second and third prizes for their age group, not to mention a further three honorable mentions from the judges for our budding artists.

Ka rawe to mahi toi, Stoke Kindergarten - awesome art work!

Fishing at
Sunderland Pier

Thumbs up for our wonderful fishing trip to Sunderland Pier, only made possible by the amazing support of Parents and Grandparents who were able to come. Thank you all so much!

2013 Programme

Wear Red for
Healthy Hearts
To launch the re-validation of our Healthy Heart Award programme, (of which we have already earned a gold award) we entered in a national competition ‘Wear Red for Healthy Heart’ run by the Heart Foundation.
We had Sport Tasman's activity trailer in the park all morning and we were out there having FUN as we kept fit and healthy.
We also enjoyed a shared morning tea of healthy red food in the shade of the trees.

Stoke Kindergarten celebrates 60 years

On March 22nd 2013, present and past staff, pupils, families, friends and supporters of Stoke Kindergarten, celebrated Stoke Kindergarten turning 60 years old.

Morning Celebrations

The celebrations began with a morning tea attended by the pupils, their families and various members of the community who had been closely associated with the kindergarten throughout the years.

What made the event extra special was that it was attended by one of the kindergarten’s original teachers, 82-year old Trixie Hindley, as well as a foundation pupil, Marie Powell.

Trixie flew from Whakatane to attend the celebrations and unveiled an engraved boulder to commemorate the anniversary.

The children performed action songs for the guests including "I'm a Little Teapot" with our guests Pat Jones (ex Story Gran) Trixie Hindley (Original teacher at Stoke Kindergarten) and Maree Powell (Foundation pupil) joining in.