Whistling Jack
Attention Mums and Dads!
Are your kids’ bedrooms a bombsite? Does their furniture cope with the ‘unique’ storage issues that children have? Do their rooms need a refreshing makeover?
We’re proud to introduce Whistling Jack – furniture designed especially for Kiwi kids who want the latest colours and designs to brighten their bedrooms, and for parents looking for Kiwi-made quality and craftsmanship.
Whistling Jack offers a wide range of contemporary furniture in funky colours for boys and girls who need to tidy their rooms! Our furniture is beautifully crafted, finished with safe paints, and you can even customise your order! Affordably priced so you can proudly buy Kiwi-made, and your kids can take pride in their rooms.
Buy direct from our showroom at 315 Rosebank Road in Avondale, Auckland, phone 0800 668 347, or shop online at www.whistlingjack.co.nz and check out our extensive range from the comfort of your own home. And to make things even easier, we deliver nationwide using a reputable furniture freighting company.
We pride ourselves on our high service levels too, so your whole experience with us will be enjoyable and stress free!
Trade Aid
It’s hip to be fair
Trade Aid is a registered not for profit organisation founded in 1973 with 33 shops nationwide in which over 800 volunteers work. Nowadays it’s ‘hip to be fair’ – however, our founding principles still form the basis for selecting co-operatives to trade with.
Textile production provides a fascinating insight into the various methods, materials, colours and designs that are used to transform a purely functional object into a beautiful artefact. Made from reeds or leaves, wool or animal hair, cotton or jute, used as sleeping mats, prayer rugs, furniture covers as well as floor coverings, all reveal the unique traditions that define remote, often isolated communities across the developing world.
Trade Aid stock an eclectic range of toys and musical instruments for children which meet their stringent environmental sustainability code. Fair trade is an important step in reducing the number of children labouring in fields and factories around the world. Unjust trade creates both the demand and the supply of child labour.
Through the improved returns to communities from fair prices for labour and goods, the lives of women and children can be improved by enabling access to education and healthcare, affording them greater dignity.
Seabrook McKenzie Trust
The Seabrook McKenzie Trust runs the only specialist primary school for children in New Zealand who have Specific Learning Disabilities (including Dyslexia and Dyspraxia). The Jean Seabrook Memorial School is in its fourth year of operation. Results show clearly that modifying classroom programmes slightly to take their difficulties into account and using teaching methods that have been shown to be effective by international research has a beneficial effect for these children. A charitable trust, Seabrook McKenzie is a warm and stimulating environment providing a professional service to the community.
Montessori Primary School
Montessori. Ask most people what these schools are like and they’ll suggest that at Montessori they do a lot of breathing exercises or work with only wooden toys. At the Auckland Montessori Primary School in Parnell, there’s a lot more going on than just that.
Flow is a key component of the Montessori pedagogy, a highly effective state of total immersion in a voluntary activity where the conscious and subconscious mind work most harmoniously together. The children at Montessori Primary in Auckland certainly seem very content.
“The majority of our students come from previous state or private schools and quickly settle into a much happier routine,” says director Pearl Leung.
“I have been delighted to find that in a matter of months, since starting at Montessori Primary, our son has developed a new level of confidence and self motivation. Both from an academic and social perspective we have noticed a significant improvement.” – Parent
Maria Montessori, the founder, intended teachers to be ‘silent presences’ in the classroom, taking their lead from the needs of the child. Montessori was born in Italy in 1870, becoming the first woman to practise medicine, graduating from the University of Rome’s medical faculty in 1896. Here she voluntarily studied mental retardation in children and this work has been described as her ‘most loved occupation’. This led to her setting up a children’s house for 60 such young children in one of the notoriously poor quarters of San Lorenzo, Rome.
Just six months after opening the Casa dei Bambini, she developed the methods that enabled its young residents to pass examinations thought possible only for ‘normal children’. People from all over the world came to see these achievements and in 1909 Montessori taught her first course to other teachers.
Famous people who had Montessori education include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, Anne Frank, author of The Diary of Anne Frank, and Princes William and Harry, British Royal family.”
There are five Montessori schools in Auckland today, three attached to state schools and two private, of which Auckland Montessori Primary is one. Their popularity has grown considerably since inception in Lower Hutt in the 1970s and training good teachers quickly enough is always a challenge. Furthermore, comprehension tests carried out globally suggest that over a wide socioeconomic scale children do better holistically at Montessori schools.
Turning each opportunity to learn into a flourishing curiosity is precisely what Montessori philosophy does its best to foster. It’s enough to make you want to go back to school!
* Enrolments are now being accepted for 2009. Auckland Montessori Primary School invites you to attend one of the upcoming open days from 10am – 12.30pm on Saturdays 20 September and 11 October, and 1 and 29 November 2008. Address: 27 Glanville Tce, Parnell, Auckland. Ph. 09 307 3777 or email admin@aucklandmontessoriprimary.co.nz. Website: www.aucklandmontessoriprimary.co.nz.
