EDUCATION JOURNEY ☆幼児教育世界の旅☆ 

LOOKING for UNBELIAVABLE moments...and CHILDREN's SMILE.

Gardens [Auckland, NEW ZEALAND]

2009-09-11 | Education Trip 2009
I have been volunteering for this school for 2 weeks now-
Im with the babies, and its been great! The teachers are always making jokes and enjoying their work with the children, and always encouraging them to learn through fun activities.
Children enjoy a lot of messy play, water play, outside play, art and music- so many things to do!!!
There are a lot of things to learn from them!


One thing I learned the most is though, is the importance of having messy play in one of out activity, because children that young can really explore by seeing, hearing, but most importantly, doing.
To do so, they have to touch and feel- so its a little dirty, or cold, so what? they will learn! and we make sure to make the safe enviroment for them and its just soooo great. They have a lot of fun exploring.

Bigger kids have different activities! They do a lot of things everyday! teachers make their portofolio really nicely- so that the parents can see what is going on in school-! Oh thats wonderful!
They also put the photos and posters up on the wall from the day so that the parents can tell what they did on that day- since most children forget what they did on that day, or simply they dont want to tell them- its something like,,, little secret between teachers and kids? hehe

Here kids are a lot more comfortable in communication. If they couldnt get the world, they say, "perdon?" as young as three years old. Its very good manners. And names are very important when it comes to communication, so teachers make sure that the children remember their friends and teachers name. A lot of children ask my name everyday- whats your name again? its very nice.
My impressiong is that they are not shy to talk in front of people- Maybe being comfortable and relaxed is cinsidered more important than being polite or correct here in NZ, so children are able to explore and feel and think in their own way so that they will make their own decision- what they wanna draw, what color they are going to pick, rather than certain things are supposed to be certain colors- especially in this center it is very multi cultural- we have different color of skin- so that being unique is something appriciated and noone is treated differently or ignored. It is very important in early age these children from different background to feel they are lvoed and treated equally because they will gain confidence. Probably in the future sooner or later some of them might suffer from self identification - so it is essencial for these preschool teachers to understand different background and cultures to teach various children in a free, fun, and comfortable einviroment. And really, being yourself is the most important thing! Noone should be judged by their nationalities or races, instead, those differences SHOULD BE one of the attractiveness of individual.