Do your books have characters that look like the children in your neighbourhood?

Do the books on your centre’s bookshelves reflect the ethnic make-up of your families? Can every child in your centre read books, lots of them, every day, about children who look like them? These are important questions for anyone responsible for young children’s wellbeing. If you are of European descent, you’ll find thousands of picture books filled with people that...

/ December 15, 2017

Six lovely Christmas picture books

Books and Christmas are a great match! If you would like your children to have an idea of why some people have a special holiday at Christmastime, here are some lovely picture books you might want to add to your collection. For a good laugh, read Jesus’ Christmas Party, by Nicholas Allan This hilarious book tells the story of Jesus...

/ December 15, 2017

Better Books: Does Your Book Collection Encourage Gender Equality?

Are you a huge fan of reading with children? There’s just about nothing better, is there, than cuddling on a sofa with small people, watching them learn to love the world of books. Every parent and teacher wants the best for children, and for them to grow up able to navigate through the world by being able to read and...

/ December 15, 2017

How to Help Children Cope with the Loss of a Loved One

We are fully immersed in the holiday season, and we love it, right? This is the time for magical moments with family pulled close to our hearts. There are treats to bake, decorations to display – and plenty of music, celebration, and togetherness.  But for children who have lost a parent or close family member in the last twelve months,...

/ December 14, 2017

Self care part 2

In part two, the thread of self-care continues with some ideas about control, choices, and saying yes. In this two-part blog, I talk about self-care as not being a ‘one-shot deal’- it is more a bunch of little things repeated time and time again to ensure that you are at your peak. In part one, I talked about ideas about...

/ December 10, 2017

Self Care

Self-care is one of those trendy ideas right now. It’s a funny mix with people who are ‘typically Kiwi’, and are ‘just getting on with it’, and for the most part that’s ok. But, sometimes it’s not. Leading up to Christmas, I find it an ideal time to reflect on what I can manage, and what I have to do...

/ December 10, 2017
christmas lights

Putting the love into Christmas

What do you want your children to remember about family Christmases? The world is a pretty diverse place so Christmas will mean lots of different things to us, but I bet your list has ‘love’ on it, and something about having a lovely time together. The reality for lots of parents, of course, is that as well as all that...

/ November 21, 2017

Supporting relationships and attachment in the early years

Relationships are broadly defined as the state of being connected or related. This can mean an association by blood or marriage, a kinship or the mutual dealings, connections, or feelings that exist between two parties. It is also recognised as a type of dependence or alliance in the way that we behave or regard one another. When considering the National...

/ November 8, 2017

Family engagement makes a huge difference for children at Auckland YMCA early learning services

Lorraine Duncumb, Group Manager ECE for YMCA Auckland In New Zealand wrote about her experiences using Storypark to engage families in their children’s learning and communicate important information about their services events and procedures.  Storypark has been a huge part of our development in communicating with our families in our early learning centres. When we were using a scrapbook to share...

/ November 6, 2017

Healthy recipes for children

Finding new, delicious and nutritious recipes for young children can be a struggle at the best of times. We have created a printable selection of recipes that have been tried and tested by some of our youngest scrutineers. This involved testing using all of their senses, and we can safely say the selected recipes passed with flying colours! Cauliflower Tots Healthy Fruit...

/ October 29, 2017