Pipis Preschool

As some of you will know I really want to open my own preschool one day. In order to do that I need to learn how to run one. That’s one of the opportunities my new job is offering me. Plus my new centre is a smaller with only 25 children a day instead of up to 75 at Lollipops. I like the smaller more homely feel. At times Lollipops seemed way to much like a business. Don’t get me wrong a preschool is a business and needs to be run like one if you want to keep it open, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to feel or even look like it to the teachers, parents and children.

Today, I started my new job at Pipi’s Preschool. I actually worked at Pipi’s for 3 weeks earlier in the year while doing a teaching practice for University. I enjoyed it so much I decided to move. That being said Pipi’s also needs a lot of work. The staff are great but things aren’t running the best in my eyes.

Of course, things can change and my views of what is optimal will change as well. I’m just looking forward to learning a lot and pushing myself into more of a leadership role at my new centre.

My Online Resume

Not exactly perfect for your average persons resume, but for me it’s great. A bit of a laugh never stopped me from getting an early childhood teacher job.

Dressed Up

The reason they didn’t get to meet me was because I was dressed up like a giant cat (Lollipops the Cat) standing on the street corner directing traffic. To my surprise, I actually had a great time doing it. With the full face mask it’s not like anyone could see who I was, so I went wild. I was raising the roof, doing the running man, air guitar, blowing kisses and waving. I got heaps of honks and waves from passer byes. It was a shit load of fun.

Airdmhor Montessori Front Door

Teacher’s College has started up again, so I’m back in to Uni on Wednesdays. We had our first day last week and were told we would be going on teaching practice (TP) this week. Not much notice for me to tell my pre-school that I would be away for the next two weeks on TP.

For those of you not in the know. I am in my final year of a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education. I’m studying at Canterbury University in their College of Education via their Centre Based route. This allows me to work four days a week at a pre-school and come in to Uni one day a week to study. You are actually only required to do 16 hours of work a week, but I have bills to pay so I do the full 32 hours plus whatever shifts I’m needed at the liquor store.

Anywho, twice a year I am required to go on TP at another centre. This is a great opportunity to observe and learn how other centres work and stimulate learning among their children. In other words a great time to steal others ideas to use in your own centre. The problem with this is you don’t get paid while on TP. So that leaves me out of pocket for two weeks now and three weeks at the end of the year.

Airdmhor Montessori Outside

So, I have been on TP for the last week at the Airmhor Montessori. This is the first time I have worked at a Montessori school and I am really enjoying it. This particular Montessori has moved with the times and adapted there policies to be more up to date with todays early childhood teaching strategies. This has made them less strict with the children allowing more self exploration learning through free play while still providing wonderful structured learning activities. Resulting in some truly magnificent children who respect their environment and others within it, are academically ahead of their peers. All the while having a fun time and enjoying their childhood.

Working in Kindergartens in Taiwan I was amazed at how much the children were academically learning, but also upset with the lack of social interaction that was taking place. Most kids enjoyed the classes while there attention could be held, but often got over tired or upset with not being able to focus more on what they personally enjoyed. Resulting in incredibly academically smart children who were happy at the beginning of the session but turned into robots with in an hour or so, only to spark back into life when a particular subject they were truly interested in would be discussed. This allowed the kids to learn great amounts of knowledge through rote learning, but quite often the children found it hard to adapt that knowledge to solve real life problems.

Airdmhor Montessori Classroom

After returning to New Zealand and working in pre-schools here I found the tables had been completely switched. Children were encouraged to learn through free play while the teachers were almost completely taken out of the picture and only used as observers and guidance. These kids have a fun time, but seem to be quite often under stimulated. They are still learning basic academic skills through play like maths through blocks and pattern matching games etc. But teachers seem almost scared to help push them to the next level. Afraid to use real academic strategies in fear that it won’t be fun for the children. I have noticed this almost unlimited freedom seems to result in a lot of behavioral problems with in the classrooms.

I could see the benefits of both cultures education systems, but believe neither were offering a balanced one. That is why my goal is to open my own centre and work towards offering children a balance learning opportunity. Thanks to Airdmhor Montessori my minds picture of how that center will operate is much clearer now.

Messed Up

Anywho, my last day went pretty well. Got lots of cuddles from the kids and even had some kids that were on holiday come back to say goodbye. My co-workers gave me a fantastic send off. First spraying me with silly string and painting purple hand prints al over me. Later they sat me down in front of all the kids and gave me a nice good bye card and a present, which was a cool monkey puppet. They then proceeded to pour water, oats and glitter all over me. If that wasn’t enough just before leaving I was antiqued and had three eggs thrown at me. The eggs all missed. Of course I knew all this was coming as I have been involved in doing the same thing when others had left.

All in all my time with ABC was a good one and I hope I can stay in contact with my ex-workmates.

Water Slide

It’s super hot here, so we are going to sit inside and watch Ice Age 2 to cool down a bit. Might run the hose down the slide this afternoon and go nuts with the kids.

Beer

My Bottlo is connected to a bar and it turns out either someone left a tap running or there is a leak in the system somewhere. The result is beer waist deep in the storage area under the bar. That might seem like a good time, but heads are rolling around here and nobody is looking forward to telling Snoop Dogg. Either way I’m glad I’m not going to be here Monday morning.

UPDATE Should have called this post Water Water Everywhere, as it turns out it is water that has flooded the bar storage area. That’s a big sign of relief for Snoop’s wallet. Might still cost him a bit though as the Fire Department has been called to help pump out all the water.

Here is the scavenger hunt list:

Photo of team with no less than 4 Asian tourists.

Photo of team on roof of a car parking building.

Photo of team on the free shuttle bus.

Photo of yesterday's front page of 'The Press'.

Photo of team in a lingerie department.

Photo of an event poster.

Photo of team surrounded by erotic items.

Photo of team holding an engagement ring in a jewelery shop.

Photo of team with sign "Where United and City" live.

Photo of team on a hotel bed.

Photo of team in a human pyramid.

Photo of team with a policeman.

Photo of a car that was manufactured before 1980.

Photo of a church steeple.

Photo of a book by author Tolken.

Photo of team sitting at an outside table of a cafe.

Photo of team hugging the Chalice.

Photo of a New Zealand flag.

Photo of team with time.

Photo of team in/by a fountain.

In the end, our team was the last to return, a whole 5 minutes late. We were also the only team to get photos of everything on the list. Although we did cheat a little by getting our photo with the movie of ‘Lord of the Rings’ instead of a book by Tolken.

Did we win? Nope, another team got a bonus for being the first back. A very big bonus. We were so robbed.

Face Painting

Today we had our annual Christmas Party for the children at the Pre-School where I work. The day didn’t start off to well. We opened the center to start setting up for the festivities, only to find that one of the class guinea pigs had died over night. The poor one that was still alive was head butting the dead one trying to wake it up. So we quickly cleaned that up before the kids started to arrive.

Once everyone was there the party was going great. We had an Ice Cream Truck for the kids and a Coffee Truck for the parents. Dawn the center cook had the BBQ going full bore supplying the masses with sausages and candy floss, while teachers were painting faces, talking to parents and playing with the children. There was also a parent their, who has a bunch of ponies, giving the children pony rides.

Pony Rides

After a couple of hours of playing and eating. Santa made an appearance. He did the rounds shaking hands and scaring babies before sitting down and handing out presents and candy canes to all the children. As you’d imagine the kids loved Santa and he had their full attention for a good half an hour. This gave the teachers and parents time to sit back and relax a bit.

Santa!

All in all a great day!

Click here to view the embedded video.