Precious Years Learning Centre

At Precious Years, we deeply value the importance of uninterrupted play and the rich learning that unfolds when tamariki are trusted to lead their own ideas, interests, and discoveries.

Through everyday moments of self-directed play, children are testing theories, solving problems, negotiating with friends, revisiting familiar experiences, taking risks, and building confidence in their own capabilities.

Play is the work of childhood. It is where tamariki practice life. Sometimes this looks loud and adventurous, and other times it appears quiet and deeply focused.

As kaiako, our role is not to rush children toward an outcome, but to create environments where agency is nurtured, curiosity is protected, and learning can unfold naturally through exploration, repetition, imagination, and connection.

We often notice tamariki returning to the same ideas again and again. This revisiting is important. Through repetition, children strengthen working theories, refine skills, deepen understanding, and gain mastery over their world.

Exploration sits at the heart of our curriculum and reflects our belief that joyful, meaningful play provides the strongest foundation for lifelong learning.

20th May ~ World Bee Day

🐝 Bees can’t see the colour RED

🐝 Bees have 5 eyes, 4 wings and 6 legs

🐝 In a bees entire lifetime they produce only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. Respect the mahi!

🐝 Honey bees are super-important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables. This means that they help other plants grow!

🐝 Bees have 170 odorant receptors, which means they have one serious sense of smell!

🐝 To share information about the best food sources, they perform their ‘waggle dance’. When the worker returns to the hive, it moves in a figure-of-eight and waggles its body to indicate the direction of the food source.

🐝 Honey bees live in hives (or colonies). The hive is divided into three types:
Queen: One queen runs the whole hive. Her job is to lay the eggs that will spawn the hive’s next generation of bees. The queen also produces chemicals that guide the behaviour of the other bees.
Workers: these are all female and their roles are to forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean and circulate air by beating their wings. Workers are the only bees most people ever see flying around outside the hive.
Drones: These are the male bees. They do not work. Their purpose is to mate with the new queen. Several hundred live in each hive during the spring and summer. But come winter, when the hive goes into survival mode, the drones are kicked out!

🐝 If the queen bee dies, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva (the newly hatched baby insects) and feeding it a special food called “royal jelly“. This enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen.

Jane and Bruce, our wonderful centre owners, wishing you both a truly special day as you celebrate your 55th wedding anniversary. What an incredible milestone ~ one that reflects a lifetime of love, commitment, and shared memories.

We hope your day is filled with joy, laughter, and a chance to pause and celebrate all that you have built together. Enjoy every moment of your well-deserved day off.