Welcome to our latest update of information and stories you may be interested in... This week is the last call for letting Chanelle know if the photos she has sent you in the photo bank have approval to be used publically. Please try your best to meet the timeframes she has set. If you have any problems just give her a call. We are looking forward to seeing you at our end of year celebration tomorrow at Mac's Brew Bar, 5.30pm to 10.00pm. Jane. 
Scam Calls And Emails For PLD  Our teachers and office staff have continued this week to receive phone calls and emails inviting them to attend professional development or asking for the contact details of colleagues. We now know these are scam calls. Never give your contact details or those of your colleague's to anyone. Please be vigilant when dealing with people/businesses over the telephone or online. It’s very likely to be a scam if: - somebody contacts you unexpectedly
- they ask you for money or personal information
- you are being pressured to make a quick decision.
Always double-check if a person, offer, or company is legitimate before providing any details or payments. Contact the company from their official website address, rather than using the information they provide. Never click on the links or attachments in e-mails and text messages that ask you to login or verify your password. Instead, go to the legitimate website and log in from there. Ask somebody for help or even for a second opinion – do they think it’s real? There are also resources on line that you can refer to for assistance, one being Netsafe. You can access their website here.
Nicki Cook On Leave Nicki Cook, Relieving Coordinator, is on leave from Wednesday 28th November to Wednesday 5th December. Teams who work with Nicki will need to organise their own relievers over this time. We will send out a list by email early next week. We know this is a busy time so if you have any difficulties please do contact your Senior Teacher on their cell phone or call the office – someone is usually here from 7.30am. You might also want to make sure you have emergency relievers (parents from your kindergarten) who can step in if needed.
Policy Reviews Thanks for the feedback we have been receiving on policies, some useful changes have been able to be made to policies – so please keep it coming ☺ This week there are 3 policies for your comment: Feedback on these policies is due back to jane.braun@wmkindergartens.org.nz by Friday 7th December.
Hazards Just a reminder that the Termly Hazard Checklist is completed during week 9 of each term. The checklist is downloaded from GOSH and is then completed manually. Any hazards that are identified during this process that cannot be eliminated immediately are then entered onto your kindergartens Hazard Register using GOSH. Once you have completed the Termly Hazard Checklist, please upload this onto GOSH using the Hazard checks form (see below) and then following the prompts.  Hazard Reviews Also week 9 of each term is the time to review your kindergarten Hazard Registers. This is an opportunity to update your Hazard Register, including deciding if the hazard still exists within the kindergarten environment, if there are any changes to the actions and approaches you are taking related to each hazard and ensure that hazards that do exist in your environment are included on the Hazard Register. As seen below, you will see that on the bottom right hand corner of each hazard on your register (using the edit option), there is a place to add the date the hazard was reviewed and by who. All reviews will show up on the Hazard Register. 
6 Monthly Fire Evacuation Drills  Just a reminder that we are required by the Early Childhood Regulations to carry out an evacuation drill involving the Fire Service every six months. When scheduling the drill, Teachers should complete the “Schedule and Evacuation Drill” form located on GOSH. A copy of this form is automatically emailed to the NZ Fire Service and to WMK Office. Please ensure that all the instructions on the form are adhered to. Please ensure emergency drills provide practice for what would happen in an actual emergency. For example, if the group would leave the grounds then this must be practised as part of the drill. Following the completed evacuation drill, it is important that the ‘Report an Evacuation Drill’ form located on GOSH is completed. A copy of this form is automatically emailed to the NZ Fire Service and to the Association Office. If you have any questions, please contact Lorraine.Coulston@wmkindergartens.org.nz
Photo Bank Approval - Final Action In the past we have sent out photo content banks to each kindergarten to have photos approved for use. To date we have received 30 responses, so if you have not responded we need you to now. The photos were captured either by Doug from Glasstower or Chanelle at the office. The idea is that once we have the photos approved for use we will be able to access these when we need images for our reports and advertising etc - rather than sending out 50 emails asking for photo permissions every time we put out a new document. Some of the images may seem dated, however so long as we have approval, these photos will always be useful for us! They will also be used in a number of different ways, so while you may think a photo is not particularly flattering, it may be that we intend to crop and re-colour the picture etc. You will first receive an email from Wetransfer telling you, you have files to download. (Please be sure to check your junk folder for this). You will then need to click ‘get your files’ which will take you to the wetransfer website where you can begin downloading the images. Once these are downloaded they will most likely go to your downloads folder where you can view these. If you could then go through the photos, making a list of which photos can not be used due to permission, and then please send this list to Chanelle at the office –chanelle.huia-rutten@wmkindergartens.org.nz. Please could this be actioned by the 7th December. If you have any queries or questions, please email Chanelle.
Giveaway Day The next giveaway day is being held on Saturday, 1st December, at Nuanua Kindergarten. If you have any goods you wish to donate to this giveaway day we would appreciate them being dropped off at the office next week. Donated goods could include clothing, bedding, kitchen utensils, furniture and linen. We are always appreciative of the generosity of our kindergartens; their staff, families and community. Thank you.
New Strategic Plan For ECE The government has released a draft strategic plan – He taonga te tamaiti Every child a taonga - for early childhood education, which proposes significant changes to the sector, including restoring funding for 100 per cent qualified teachers and moving to a fully qualified teaching workforce. It also proposes improved ratios for children under three, more monitoring of services and greater consistency of pay and conditions across the sector. There is no time frame for funding services for employing 100 per cent qualified teachers. The draft stops short of introducing major changes to move from a largely private, profit-oriented system to a public system. The new strategic plan has some similar goals to a previous ten year plan, Ngā Huarahi Arataki. Here’s a link to the plan in Te Reo Māori and a link to it in English. There are also summaries available. Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens put out a release in response to the launch of the draft strategic plan. Here’s the link. New Zealand Kindergartens (NZK) has also responded to the plan. Here’s the link. A consultation process on the plan is open until March 2019. There are a series of hui run by the Ministry of Education. The first of these is in Lower Hutt on 5th December. Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens will make a submission on the draft, and individual staff are also encouraged to respond. One point worth making is the urgency of restoring the 100 per cent qualified funding so we can afford to keep on doing what we do. Regulating so all services have at least 80 per cent qualified teachers moving to 100 per cent, is also important for quality in early childhood education overall. Regulations like this are harder for future governments to reverse, whereas funding incentives are easy to change. There will be more information about the plan and the consultation in future Kōrero editions and in the toolbox on Storypark. We will also produce material for using with families, to encourage them to take part in the consultation and to stress the importance of qualified teachers and the funding to support them.
Environmental Sustainability Around 40 Whānau Manaaki staff, including 30 kindergarten teachers met in Porirua this week to discuss moving towards environmental sustainability. Teachers travelled from as far afield as the Wairarapa and the Kapiti Coast for the meeting. Carolyn Evans from Heretaunga Kindergarten gave a presentation based on a recent Enviroschools conference she attended. Her presentation included reference to the 17 United Nations goals for sustainable development which include cultural and economic sustainability as well as environmental sustainability. It will be made available on Storypark, in the toolbox. Many ideas were put forward, including making environmental responsibility a more visible part of the strategic plan, sharing ideas across kindergartens, providing research into which products are the most environmentally friendly, using bulk buying power to negotiate good deals with eco friendly providers, learning from other organisations and using links with outside organisations to support environmental practice. The Te Ao Māori worldview where the environment and people are part of each other, not separate entities, was emphasised during the discussion. All ideas were collected and a position paper is being developed to take some of these ideas further. Kōrero will be used to spread ideas both big and small about environmental initiatives.  
Doris Nicholson Kindergarten's Inclusive Practice Celebrated Congratulations to the Doris Nicholson Kindergarten team whose strong focus on inclusive practice has been recognised and shared on the Te Whāriki website. You can check out the story here.
Kaitiakitanga Wellington College and Campbell Kindergarten Mural Project The Wellington College art teachers and students worked on a Kaitiakitanga (conservation and preservation) mural project for Campbell Kindergarten for 12 weeks. They visited the kindergarten this week to install the four murals on the fence for their Annual College Volunteer Day. Everybody at Campbell Kindergarten is very excited about the murals that are bicultural, natural and relevant to their learning community. The art students did a great job at designing and painting the murals to represent the vision, philosophy and aspirations for their learning environment. The project has been a great opportunity to feel a sense of community of learners and build a reciprocal relationship with the wider community.  
 
Eddie's Manaaki Day Sunshine Kindergarten has been taking part in Eddie's Manaaki Day. Over the past few week their wonderful families have been bringing in all sorts of lovely presents. The team have also been talking to the children about how the goodies are being given to other children for Christmas, and how this is one way of showing manaaki and caring for others (which is something that is spoke about often). Santa's helper also came in and took the presents.  
Brown Owl's New Mud Kitchen The children at Brown Owl love playing with their new kitchen that Karl made for them using a sink that Mitre 10 Mega Petone kindly gave them. Two Members of the Mitre Mega team came up to see them and to view the mud kitchen. They bought with them a number of gifts including new hats, a bubble machine and sandpit toys. This was amazing and so kind, some of the children were so excited and happy, they said this was the best day ever, how cool is that.  
Craig Rescues A Dragon! Craig, one of the kaiako at Island Bay Kindergarten, ‘rescued’ this dragon from Newtown Kindergarten. They were throwing away the dragon as they were having murals painted on their fence and the dragon was surplus to their needs. The Island Bay Project, “Re-purpose Dragon", began with conversations with whānau to see if anyone was interested in helping us “re-purpose” this old dragon. Kaiako, Craig and Nick, painted over the dragon and prepared it for some artistic talent to take over repainting and redesigning it into the two taniwha of Wellington harbour; Ngake and Whātaitai. The completion of the taniwha was celebrated at a special mat time where they first watched a video about the taniwha of Wellington harbour. Ākonga made suggestions and recalled what they remembered from the taniwha video. The taniwha was then unveiled, there was more discussion about the taniwha story and lots of practice pronouncing the names of the taniwha; Ngake and Whātaitai.  
There was always a keen interest from our Nick helping to paint the Taniwha ākonga as soon as the dragon landed in our outside environment.  
Craig unveiling the Taniwha The finished Taniwha
Irmgard Ritchie Visit The Island Bay Marine Educational Centre The children and whānau had an awesome trip to the Island Bay Marine Educational Centre. They had a lot of fun going on the double decker bus. They were welcomed at Octopus Headquarters by Eddie and Victor. Then they all walked to Bait House Aquarium to see their large collection of live marine creatures and explore the "touch-gently" pool to get up close to some of the sea creatures. Some of the children had a go at feeding the fish. They had lunch and a short play at the park before heading back to kindergarten.  
Handy Facebook Pages  The purposeful parenting movement – A community for purposeful parents, raising big-hearted kids who will make a mark on the world, you can check their page here. 
This Week On Facebook   
 The focus of Miramar Central's Community Learning Project is ‘Practising and Persevering.' Teachers have been supporting children with goal setting and planning for success. Here are a few of the activities and experiences children have participated in to realise their goals.  The children at Ngahina have been practising dropping into a turtle shape! The teachers regularly talk about earthquakes and what to do if the ground starts shaking at kindergarten.
Previous Kōrero Editions If you are wanting to access previous editions of the Kōrero you can find them at www.wmkindergartens.org.nz/archive or you can click here. It is a good idea to save this link as an icon on your desktop.
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