Loop da Loop..One eternal round

Our Nursery mailbox had 2 new letters for Tilly and Chase today. They were both very excited about getting mail. Finley was curious to see what the mailox was all about, Tilly showed everyone a picture of her family and talked about her Mum and Dad, and 'Tilly'.

The children all like to look at the photos on our Nursery Famil Board and talk about their own families......we are still waiting for new mail from Joshua, Finley, Xavier, Jade, Asjah, Teina and the Te Maari whanau...please email any more photos to nzmera@gmail.com.

"We just got a letter...wonder who its from"

Tilly loves talking about her family.

Chase was 'super' surprised that his mail was the biggest of all!

Music time with Brother Hall is always a pleasure, having the accompaniment of the guitar as we sing fun songs, the children enjoyed stamping their feet to show they were happy..

Finley and Manaaki were our Master Chef's today..... I must admit I have never seen such great service from them both WELL DONE!

Our snacktime story was entitled "When dragons are dreaming" about a little BIG dragon who whilst his mummy his dreaming he is off being a HERO and helping others, he learns about friendship and what it means to be a good friend. Sister Nash was a cativating storyteller and the children were mesmerised by her voice and the beautiful illustrations.

Sister Reri, Nash, Mauili and myself helped the children make FRUIT LOOP jewellery, it was a crunchy and delicious creation (although, there we more fruit loops in their mouths then on their necklaces and bracelets LOL)

Here are some pictures of some of their creations!

Sister Nash took our lesson today about eternal families, it was interactive the children identified pictures of Jesus, family members and even letters of their names!
They all had opportuntities to hold members of the family and stick them on the lesson book.

Great job Sister Nash....you were incredible organised and well resourced....a true teacher in action!



I was a little sad today because it would be my last Sunday at Sunset Ward Nursery, so I asked if we could have a Farewell Photo of all of us together....

Thank you all so much for a special time in Nursery, it has become a place of learning, fun and giggles....to our new Nursery teachers thank you for your love and service!

May the Lord bless you all to do as the Saviour would have you do for his 'little ones'

Hugs and kisses,

Sister Henare

xx

Teddy Bear Teaching & Nursery Mail

Hi All,

Thank you so much to those who could bring in a teddy this morning at such late notice....it was truly a stroke of inspiration! we managed to share the teddies amongst us and it was so cute to see them teaching teddy how to pray and be reverent. I was amazed at how much more attentive and interactive they were when they were sitting with teddy, this connection to their homes created a point of reference for them to talk about things they do at home, we could introduce morning and night time prayer in association with bedtime and their teddies.

Alongside our visitors (teddies) today, the children were introduced to our Nursery Mail box, which had 2 envelopes inside with Brookie and Manaaki's name on it, they were so surprised to find that someone had sent some mail to Nursery for them.



The children were very interested and curious what was inside....when I showed their names on the front they were excited to open and find a picture of their families, we thought we would select two children at a time and allow them to talk to us about the picture, the members in their families and the place they had their photos taken. It was special to see how much they love their families.

Once they had finished talking about their families, they placed them on our Nursery Poster which we will leave out during Nursery class for them to revisit from time to time.





Introducing the theme straight after their settling in time is a new change to our nursery schedule, as we felt waiting til lesson time was to long a period to have opening prayer so we give them 15 mins for free play and then we have a opening exercises, singing Hello, Hello/ Here we are together and introducing today's lesson and monthly theme. Opening prayer was supported by teddy and then did a little fun song "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" where the children instruct the teddy to do various things including saying his prayers before he says goodnight...

......the children then put their teddies to sleep and then went off to music time. (except for Manaaki's All Black Ted...."my teddy is and All Black he doesn't sleep" LOL...I just love it!) 

To encourage the children to sit quietly at their table for their snack, a child is selected to be our NURSERY MASTER CHEF, last week it was Manaaki, this week Chase was chosen....he looked so cute!

We managed to get one picture before my camera battery went dead arrrgghh!! but he looked great, the Master Chef's role is to be the Teacher's helper with the snack, helping to prepare the snack and serving his Nursery friends, he looked so proud with his chef suit and hat on. (sorry Mum and Dad, it was a back shot - we'll catch him again)



During their snack we read  "Why I love my Mummy" by Daniel Howarth, I love it because it is writtten we children's very own words, I put some pictures of the book on here, the illustrations are captivating and the children loved the story...Tilly said "I love my Mummy", Brookie said "that's a Koala" pointing to the Koala hugging her little one, Xavier was fortunate to be sitting right next to the book and was eagerly pointing to the pictures of the ducks and said "duck", he was so excited he kept leaping out of his chair every page we turned :-)



After we had our snacks, sand our "brush our teeth" song, and "this is the way we brush our hair/wash our face/say our prayers so early in the morning" the kids really like this.

Our lesson was on Lehi's family and their journey to the promise land, we used the picture of Lehi and his family in the Gospel Art book and talked to the picture with the children, we talked about prayer and how it helped them in their journey, they held BOM character finger puppets www.bomt.co.nz and scripture4kids.com, we named all the people in Lehi's family and ended Nursery with a Teach me to walk in the light and closing prayer then we reviewed our Prayer Bear and handed out their teddy lollies (sugarfree/gluten free)

while we read another story entitled "Just like my Dad" by David Melling...it's quite a humourous story about a father trying to teach what's right to his cub but sometimes struggling with it himself.

We had such a great day!....thank you so much for all the love you show your children, being an early childhood teacher you get to see children from all walks of life with many varied backgrounds, and I must say there is truth to the scripture "and all thy children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of thy children" I felt the peace of the gospel in the lives of your children and feel so blessed to share gospel principles week to week.

Much Love the Sunset Nursery Teachers xx.



Welcome to our Sunset Ward Nursery Blog!

I have been trying to think up ways to communicate with parents on a monthly or weekly basis as we redesign and develop our growing nursery and in speaking with other Nursery Leaders they all have such great ideas for keeping Nursery teachers and parents informed of lessons and acitivities that we a doing....Creating a Blog sounded like such a great idea!

I am a bit of a novice at these things but figured I would give it a go....please have a look any chance you get and comment on anything we are doing well (its good to focus on the good:-) and provide suggestions for improvement as we will be making quite a lot of big changes in Nursery so I am hoping to keep you all updated with the change.

Our biggest change is having such a BIG Nursery teaching team...Thank you so very much to Jade, Hui and Brother & Sister Mauili who are now apart of Nursery we hope to see some wonderful picutres up here of things we are doing in our little groups.

I hope to post up month to month lesson plans and songs we are learning.....Today we rounded up our July Theme of the BODY and taught the children a cute little song about brushing their teeth, it goes something like this...."we wake up in the morning at a quarter to six, gotta get ready for school so we brush our teeth...shshshshhshhsh we brush our teeth shshshshhshhsh" they loved the laminated toothbrushes I made and we sang it after their snack, we talked about caring for our bodies.

The children made BODY Bookletswww.sugardoodle.net and did BODY Tracing sticking eyes, wolly hair and pasting church clothes on....some children we not so keen to lie down but were happy to talk about their bodies and colour in.

This Month our theme is around Families, and next week's lesson will talk about the love that they have for their family....

*Could you please send in a photo of your family with them or email a copy with the names of their family members for them to talk about over this month.

We are all looking forward to a new month and new learning!