This week was an exciting week for our year 0/1 students because we moved into new classrooms! We were busy packing up boxes, moving them into our new room and setting up. It was super nice that the teachers were able to move during the school day and didn’t have to find time outside of school to do the moving. Our new classroom now has a fenced in outdoor classroom attached to our room. It is amazing and it is so much bigger. Especially being a play -based school, the outdoor classroom is a huge plus. Even with all the moving taking place we still had time for learning of course. This week we have been busy in maths working on 5 and 10 frames. We have been playing a couple math games to help quickly recognize numbers by using the 5 and 10 frames. Today was our last day of swimming for term 4. No worries, it was a successful day, only 2 out of the 40 kiddos admitted to peeing in the pool…while standing right next to me….yay! I’ve heard worse stories from the staff so I’ll call this a win.
On Monday, Dr. Kirst came to observe—yes, yes, he was able to experience the crazy chaos of moving classrooms. The moment he walked into the room the kiddos just swarmed him. Of course, his classic magic tricks were a HUGE hit. They were so mind blown. Dr. Kirst was even able to see my students do NZ sign language and showed him a little bit of the Maori language. It was awesome that he was able to come in to observe and see a little bit of Swanson. The school is really like no other school. It is hard to describe to people without them really being there so I am happy that Dr. Kirst was able to check it out. As if moving classrooms and having an American visitor come in this week wasn’t enough excitement, today I added a little more excitement into the week. Today, we FaceTimed Katelyn Landerman’s (she student taught in NZ 2 years ago at Swanson) kindergarten class. We did a Q & A with our students and the questions they came up with were actually pretty good. They asked each other about food, sports, animals, you name it! Both of our classes had a blast and it was so funny watching them engage with each other over FaceTime. It was a great cultural experience for our little ones!
This week has been absolutely incredible. Having Dr. Kirst here the last three days has been a lot of fun. I think it is awesome that SNC sent him over here to check out the various schools in NZ. Not many people can say that their professor was able to come visit them while they’ve been abroad. It was fun being able to show him a couple of our favorite places to eat and filling him in on everything we have been doing here so far. He also got to meet our favorite bartender Cami, from our favorite restaurant Frida's. It was so funny because we took the train into the city to meet Dr. Kirst and as we were walking up to Frida's we saw Kirst sitting down at the table already talking to Cami. It isn't a complete trip to the city if you haven't tried out Frida's...seriously could go there overnight for dinner. Even though Dr. Kirst could only be here a couple of days, it was great to have him here! If only they would let him stay a little longer so he could join our trip to Queenstown this weekend…
Queenstown is up next! We are excited for our "big" trip tomorrow and to hop on the plane after school. We have a cruise to Milford Sounds booked which I am really excited for. There is so much to do in Queenstown so we will see what else the weekend brings us!
