Activities for young, gifted children
Welcome to Small Poppies
Small Poppies is an enrichment and extension programme and community for young, gifted learners aged 2-6 years old. We currently run regular classes during school term time in Christchurch and Auckland.
For our learners, we offer a safe and supportive place to connect, learn and grow. For our parents/guardians a chance to connect and engage in discussions about the complexities of parenting a child who may be very different from their same-age peers.
2024 Dates & Locations
Please note: classes run during school term time.
Auckland locations
Mondays: 10 am - 12:30 pm
Onehunga Community House
Wednesdays: 10 am - 12:30 pm
Fruitvale School, New Lynn
Saturdays - fortnightly:
9:30 am - 12 pm
AGE School, Takapuna
Christchurch locations
Thursdays: 12:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Redwood Playcentre
Fridays: 12:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Rolleston Playcentre
How do you know if your child is gifted?
If you think your child might be gifted, but you’re not sure, have a look at the list of characteristics of young, gifted children here. No child will tick all the boxes! But you may recognise traits over time.
Is Small Poppies for you?
If you think your child will thrive in our gifted learner program please fill out our form, join us for a class and see if you are a good fit!
Example classes for gifted learners
Check out some examples of classes we have run in the Small Poppies Program.
Colours, Symmetry & Art
This week’s classes were all about colours, symmetry, and creating beautiful art.
To get started, we used all those little muscles in our hands (which need to get stronger for things like cutting and writing) to create a play dough colour wheel.
Carbon Dioxide
This week, classes were about carbon dioxide!
To start, we had a discussion about atoms and how they can be combined to make molecules. Carbon dioxide has a special scientific name, CO2, which means that it’s made of one...
What parents say...
Small Poppies was an absolute life saver for us. My son attended Small Poppies with Ashle from age 3 to 5 and gained so much from it. Ashle not only embraced him in all aspects of his giftedness, she was invaluable in our own education about giftedness and navigating the gifted world which was totally new to us. We cannot speak highly enough of her it the Small Poppies programme.
- Anonymous