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BestStart Puni Road 2021 Matariki Celebration
Here at BestStart we are excited to share how we celebrated Matariki this year, on the lead up to our celebration we all collected different vegetables to bring in for our hangi, we also spent the week creating beautiful Matariki decorations. Our tamariki created a beautiful wall display highlighting and celebrating the nine stars by creating a variety of stars from different resources we found around the centre.
The day before our special evening our tamariki spent the day peeling all the vegetables in preparation for our hangi, our tamariki were excited as a lot of our them shared how they help their parents prepare their kai for dinner, so it was an exciting time to share these experiences and relate back to home, this was a great activity as Te Whāriki states that children should be able to make connections between people, places and things within their worlds, through different environments.
Once all the vegetables were prepped, we learned about what a hangi is, how most of us had never tried hangi before, and even though ours was not in the ground, it was going to be just as amazing, especially because we had all gotten involved and worked together to enjoy the process.
Then came the evening, we had the biggest turn out in history for Puni Road, and enjoyed some kai, shared laughter, danced till we could not dance anymore.
As part of the of the Pohutukawa star, we shared memories and related this to our tamariki and their whānau aspirations, by doing this we created a special table where our whānau could write moments, or aspirations for the future for us to open and look back on next year.
Our tamariki got to perform waiata for their whānau, as well as our oldest and youngest tamariki on the night got to cut a beautiful cake from whaea Jasween for dessert!
We could not be any prouder of our tamariki for their confidence and courage during this experience.