Wairarapa Montessori

from The Year That Was 2021

by Wairarapa Times-Age

Trinity - St Matthew’s Collegiate School

62 Wairarapa Montessori

PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

Pauline Harter

It has been a wonderful learning journey since establishing our Montessori Centre in 1995.

We moved to our present site 11 years ago, a former villa in Lincoln Rd, and this lovely home has become the ‘Children’s House’ I had dreamed of: A home for busy, con dent and connected learners, teachers and children (parents too!) all learning together.

Tāne is working with the Binomial Cube.

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STUDENTS

9

STAFF

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Jade is completing the Alphabet Puzzle.

Books for children who are resilient and curious about our world and beyond…

Congratulations on your achievements and good luck for the future.

3 Clifford Square, Featherston (beside the playground) chickenandfrog20@gmail.com | 021 293 5224

Open Friday - Sunday, 10am - 4pm Plus Thursdays during School Holidays And Public Holiday Mondays It is important for us to share with parents the ‘magic’ of the Montessori learning materials the children use, and to discover the philosophy that guides us as teachers. A priority for us is to communicate with parents in order to share their children’s learning at our centre. This is done regularly online as well as at our centre. We aim to follow the children’s needs and interests, nurturing their love of learning, being a friend and being part of a community. Our Montessori Children’s House is an inviting, peaceful learning environment carefully prepared to engage our children in purposeful activities. This leads them to become independent and responsible for themselves and each other.

Our Montessori curriculum provides the children with specially designed Montessori learning materials and these activities are set out on open shelves to support place and order. It is this structure that enables the children to choose purposefully and maintain an orderly consistency in their learning environment. We incorporate children’s individual interests into the curriculum on a daily basis as this is important across all learning contexts. Throughout the day the children can choose from a wide range of learning experiences, from a range of curriculum areas such as biology, botany, geography, art, and maths to practical life including food preparation, baking, washing dishes and windows. We have an established indoor-outdoor ow that follows the seasons and connects the children to daily changes in Nature. Indoor activities include children working with colourful puzzle maps, construction materials, moveable alphabets, and a ‘bank’ with thousands, hundreds, tens and units for children to manage. Model animals are classi ed into biological families, diurnal or nocturnal, and world geographical areas. Tamariki study life cycles of the frog, butter y, corn and apple. Children use real tools and objects to engage in real work. Hammers and saws are for woodwork, while rakes, brooms, and spades are for the vegetable and ower gardens. Kaiako incorporate children’s individual interests into the curriculum on a daily basis. Each year we have community festivals and

THINK CHRISTMAS. THINK

JAYCAR

Kids toys, remote control cars and much more in store!

BRING NEW LIFE TO YOUR ROOF! WANT TO BRING NEW LIFE TO YOUR ROOF?

BEFORE AFTER

We restore, repair & replace concrete, decramastic & metal roo ng

evenings such as the Harvest Festival so that our tamariki can share our produce with their families, including walnuts, hazelnuts and Nashi pears from our lovely trees. We celebrate Matariki with a Lantern Parade so our children experience the beauty and excitement of the night sky, while singing and walking with their lanterns and later returning to the centre to share kai. Each day is a celebration of who we all are: growing, changing, caring for ourselves and each other as well as our beautiful Mother Earth, being well prepared for the children’s next educational and social steps in their lives.