Minischool Vacation Care January 2016

Minischool Vacation Care ~ January 2016

These January holidays, we returned back to Minischool vacation care early on the 4th due to popular demand.

The past few weeks have been filled with picnics, races, painting, making movies and dances, dressing up, building, creating, fun and games and a few crazy times. Welcome back to all of our vacation care children and welcome to some new faces here on holiday and newly arrived on island.

 

At the same time as vacation care, we were very fortunate to be able to run 2 weeks of ballet and jazz dance classes for 3-13 year olds.

Visiting ballerinas Abbey and Lara Wilkinson had been working with their own teachers at Noosa Performing arts factory to choreograph and teach the younger set.

30+ children were signed up for the dancers who learned amazing strength, exercises and skills during the fortnight. We learned that dancing can be fun to dress up and move to music but also so much more.

There was a fantastic comradery formed between the classes as Abbey choreographed and taught  an incredible 6 classes and 6 dance pieces over the space of 2 weeks. These new found skills were displayed to a packed uniting church hall full of siblings, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbours.

It was an amazing effort showcasing a need for more creative arts classes on Norfolk Island.

Minischool Director and coordinator of the dance classes explained to the parents during the concert that we are very fortunate to sample many activities on Norfolk Island, but sporting team events and clubs can be a constant in the children’s lives here yet creative arts are fewer and further apart in time frames and choices than sporting choices. Abbey explained that the strength taught in Ballet is the basis for all types of skills, not just dance.

The program of the dance concert was as follows.

3+ Ballet~ Frozen classical piece

6+ Ballet ~ Beethoven 5 secrets

9+ Ballet~ Skrillex music

Contemporary Ballet solo by Lara Wilkinson

3+ Jazz group ~ Uptown Funk

6+ Jazz group~ Afro Circus

9+ Jazz group~ The nights

Contemporary Ballet solo to ‘Lost boy’ by Abbey Wilkinson

We hope to bring Abbey and Lara back for more summer workshops next year.

In the meantime, for anyone wanting ballet classes to continue throughout the year, please register your interest with Teresa Langusch on 57986

Can all 2016 preschool enrolment forms please be returned to determine your places, first in first served for the days of your choice.

The Preschool graduation afternoon tea party will be held at Minischool 4pm Wednesday 27^th of January. This will be followed by one of our favourite final events, the teacher/ student dinner out.

We farewell our 2014/2015 (even two from 2013) pre-schoolers and wish them all the very best as they transition to kindergarten. We know you are all ready and can’t wait to see you in uniform and when you pop back and see us.

End of January Vacation care

Minischool vacation care program is coming to an end and will finish on Pupil free day Tuesday 27^th January for Primary and Wednesday 28^th for infants who begin school on Thursday 29^th.

So far these holidays, we have been using  papier mache to make animal money boxes. We watched as Teddy’s wearable arts costume came to life each day as he worked hard on it. There have been board game challenges, music and dancing concerts, treasure hunts and games through the Minischool gardens, drawing competitions, baking painting, playdough and biking adventures.

Everybody loves Mr. Jingles the Christmas preschool kitten. This delightful and very patient little bundle of fur has been dressed up in all sorts of dolls clothes and wheeled around in strollers. We often find him curled up in one of our children’s arms as they read a book on the bunk beds or bean bags. What a lucky little kitten!

We wish all of our graduating Preschool children the very best of luck as you begin your new adventures at ‘Big’ school.

Our Graduation afternoon tea and dinner out with the teachers was a lovely end to our preschool journey together.

We hope you enjoyed your surprise gifts and completed preschool work from your time with us.

We will miss you all so please remember to come back and visit us.

There are over 90 graduation photos on the facebook page for you to enjoy. Thanks to all of our families for attending afternoon tea to wish our outgoing class all the best.

Thankyou also to the Paradise hotel and Captain James for hosting our preschool dinner this year. Mandy, you are the best! Thanks for staying back to finish off all those scrapbooks, you are amazing & we love you ♥

We say farewell to Jen as she heads back to teach her primary class back in Australia. We now welcome Shelley Mitchell to our team. Shelley and I worked in preschools in Queensland. She also has extensive experience working as a special needs teacher aide in primary and high school and has joined the Minischool team seamlessly. Welcome, we know the children and families will love you as much as we already do.

 

Welcome to our new ‘little’ Minischoolers who have transitioned up to preschool. We know your journey will begin with wonder and will be some of the most memorable years of your lives filled with very important first and lifelong skills.

 

By now all Minischool preschool enrolment forms should be returned, If you haven’t as yet, please drop into Minischool between 8:30 and 3:30 or phone Cristina on 51862.

Minischool Mini News July 2014

Minischool Mini News July 2014

Another month has flown by. Here is all of the July news from us here at Minischool.

Let’s start with 2 very special Vacation care weeks. I can only describe them using one word…Happy.

The kids were happy, the staff were happy, we hope the parents were also happy.

It was a nice break from routine and change of pace. Our big school children play beautifully with the younger pre-schoolers and are fabulous role models. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few future teachers in our group, a lovely caring team of kids indeed. There were plenty of fun with bubbles, art using handmade sidewalk chalk, surprise playdough and French knitted scarves. Recipes and patterns to each of these are on our blog (address at the bottom of the page).

WE had excursions to Cascade, to the airport to see the RAAF planes land, Queen Victoria gardens, The Nakamal and back to the airport to farewell the Commonwealth games team on their way to Scotland.

Mooshie kids are already looking forward to the next holidays.

When school returned , MOOSH (Minischool out of school hours) Care began. With thanks to Eloise Grant for her time walking the kids down the hill from school and staying to play with us.

Each session includes afternoon tea the Mooshies have been planning and sometimes cooking themselves. so far we have made

Pancakes with Butter Caramel sauce, Pasta, Sausages, Meat Pies, Oranges, pizza, fruit, Custard and Jelly.

The Mooshies enjoy the unwind after school by playing games in our garden and some adventures out and about at mini golf & walk in the wind.

As school had returned we continued our topical weekly themes that have been popular since Minischool first began.

To start this term we went with a winter Christmas celebration and explained why we were celebrating our European ancestors celebrating a cooler Christmas in this warmer part of the world. Some of our activities included revisiting some of our favourite Christmas carols while playing on musical instruments, stencilling, tracing and decorating Christmas trees, singing and reading Christmas themed books from the NICS library.

On a side note, Teddy and Sienna were very excited to meet Jonny Young and Normie Rowe at the RSL club when Sienna sang there with her Daddy.

On to our Commonwealth games theme which we began preparing for way back on the 14^th of July when we took our ‘Clyde’ the commonwealth games mascot to the airport to farewell the commonwealth games team on their way to Scotland.  We have continued on for the past 2 weeks, learning about Scotland the country and the other Commonwealth countries and their flags. A trip to the Bounty centre provided up with all the makings for a good sports championship. We have had constant team and individual competitions of ten pin bowling, boules, hoola hoop hookey, table tennis and obstacle courses.  Each child has earned a gold, silver and bronze medal as we learned about sequencing first, second and third places.

Then we surprised the children with our new 12ft trampoline (Cristina was one of the first to test it out as she forgot for a moment of her broken tailbone from watersliding with the kids in summer, as she tried to remember the flips and gymnastic routines of her youth ☺) Thanks to Land & Sea for your great sale and for mentioning us on your fb page, we promise some bouncing good photos soon.

The cross country was scheduled with perfect timing on our ‘games’ theme, we continued our support for cheering on the teams while lunching at Kingston. The Minischoolers wore their colours as we facepainted, made flags and ran alongside the big school kids, cheering for our brothers and sisters and last years minischoolers until we were hoarse.

Well done to Misha for breaking a record & to the Norfolk team for winning the day. We were proud of all of you.

 

Visiting speech pathologist Lynn Rodgers spent some time with us and our children at Minischool, we learned new games and ideas for encouraging correct speech patterns and will continue these for the rest of the year. It was nice to catch up with her and the Banyan park staff for lunch. Lynn prepared a fantastic booklet to help support early intervention. This will benefit all of the children of Norfolk Island. Thankyou Lynn for your valuable time and resources.

Happiest birthdays to Nate, Issac and Asher . We hope you enjoyed our celebrations with you ♥

Welcome to our new children Mitchell and Jai, we look forward to lots of fun, games and learning with you for the rest of the year and beyond.

Last week we began the first of our regular Friday tennis sessions at the Cheryl tennis club. We thank super coach Danny for all of those fabulous new games and gross motor/cognitive skills learned. Thanks to our parents for their support of this project, we know that your children will be benefitting from this training for years to come.

 Photos from all the tennis sessions, Cross country, after school and vacation care are on both the facebook page and the blog. Most photos are put up weekly on our Minischool facebook page, so keep checking in for new ideas and inspiration.                                                                                                                 

Until next month, see you on our blog http://norfolkislandpreschool.blogspot.com

Come and see us on Shortridge road (entry via the red gate). We love our visitors. 

or on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/minischoolpreschool  

Stop by and say hi!

Love from all of the Minischool team ♥

Minischool is a fresh, fun, inspirational & educational preschool offered to 3 to 5 year old children of Norfolk Island.
Now including Vacation & After School care. Phone 51862 for any information.