Children as Learners

At Albany Kindergarten we encourage children to be problem solvers and investigators, to know themselves, and to lead their own learning. We regard children as competent and capable learners who confidently take risks and we support them in making their own decisions and choices. Our programme is child directed and based on children’s current strengths and interests. A shared interest allows us to work together with groups of children to extend and develop their knowledge, working theories, skills and attitudes. Group project work provides opportunities to develop communication and social skills as children learn to work with and alongside others. There is always something new happening in our learning environment. Check out our photo gallery to see more.

Exploring the Plant World

The children in the Pohutukawa group have been maintaining, planting and harvesting vegetables in our vegetable garden. They have explored germination and plant growth and created different gardens using recycled materials. We explored the Auckland Botanical gardens to get more ideas and entered in the Tui Garden Competition to receive tools and seedlings to enhance the children’s gardening experiences. The children developed links between home and Kindergarten as they compared and contrasted gardens in their different settings, took seedlings home to grow, and planted and harvested produce at Kindergarten to share with families. They developed a sense of responsibility for living things and learning theories about how to care for plants, how plants grow, and the food that plants produce. Scarecrows became a feature of our garden as they were designed and constructed to protect the young plants.

Gravity, Physics and Motion

The children in the Kowhai group have been using the gradients of ramps and guttering to roll balls of all sizes, cars and reels. They selected and arranged the guttering to create their own rolling tracks and explored their own working theories about things that roll. The teachers supported this by providing marble tracks, pendulums, and ball games. The children explored gravity, physics and motion in a range of different ways; not just rolling round objects but also exploring the use of water (moving objects with the water force) and their own bodies. They tested their ideas independently and developed confidence in their ability to explore, to think logically, to test their thinking and to modify ideas and solutions, and retest concepts and theories. They communicated their thinking while working in groups, testing ideas together and supporting others' ideas and solutions through discussion, sharing solutions and ideas and taking on different roles (leadership, mentoring, and support) to scaffold each other's learning.