Hello my name is Helena Bieleski. I am 8 years old. I live in Nelson with my Mum and Grandpa. Me and Mum like to volunteer as Campground Hosts and Hut Wardens in Nelson Lakes National Park. In February me and my Mum were the hut wardens at Blue Lake, Rotomairewhenua. We went on a…
Category: thoughts
Do no harm…
These are my current reading books, all are open on some page or other. Possibly I shouldn’t read so many books at once .. but there is a definite theme. They are all packed with detail and jargon, both of which make reading them hard for me and they are all of a nature that…
Patterns
Looking for patterns in things is part of the human condition to keep us alive, to make scientific discoveries, it is a key component of mathematics. Patterns are everywhere. Here is one I’ve noticed. When Helena and I get home from somewhere, be it Wellington or in this case the spectacular Rotomairewhenua, we metaphorically wander…
The school of being a hut warden
We have just spent a week volunteering for DoC as hut wardens. It was somewhat more extreme than our campground hosting as it involved walking 15kms on the first day, then getting up the next day to walk not as far but up, up, and more up. The first day went not as well as…
Talking loud so adults hear you
We were having dinner at a cafe, dining outside at dusk on a truly beautiful evening, and two very worried young women appeared trying to find their car keys. We shook our bean bags but no joy, then one of the women looked in a barrel she’d been sitting at and there they were at…
School as you play it
The kids got Explorer Packs from the Botanical gardens. They contain; a “work book,” pencils, a wooden bingo board of natural items, a laminated treasure hunt with whiteboard markers to tick off particular colours as you see them, duck food, an animal identification book and binoculars. All of which are not as Important as the…
More on water slides..
When adults run a water slide it looks like this: One at a time Evenly allocated water Not much soap Adult does the heavy work Lasts maybe an hour Orderly que down the side Losts of waiting No walking up the slide Waiting until the person who has been gets off the end before the…
Doing something wrong
Yesterday I was annoyed by a child that was exhibiting all the characteristics I think are important; creative, independent of body and thought, acting on their desires, go getting it, trying to make things actually happen, questioning authority, reasoning, and negotiation, but what did I do? I resorted to being ‘the authority.’ I said “no”…….
Mixed age play
When we put children in a classroom full of children the same age what happens is we reduce learning opportunities. Why do we do it? A lot of this is due to institutional structures. In Early Childhood you have to have particular ratios of adults to children which is all decided by the age of…
STEaMs
Is an acronym, in our little jargon world of acronyms, for Science, Technology, Engineering, a very little a for art (just a token), and Maths… Today I heard it called what it really is, “job training”, readying our kids for those jobs of the future. It has become a buzz word, something your kid needs…
homeschoolery 