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Beauty of Cultural Diversity at BestStart Manuroa Matai
In our matai centre we promote different cultures. We believe cultural responsiveness provides a foundation for teaching which provides all children with authentic and appropriate social contexts to develop their full potential. Cultural diversity can have a positive impact on children’s acceptance of differences and their sense of belonging in an early childhood education environment and beyond.
Embracing cultural diversity can strengthen partnerships with families and foster respect and open-mindedness for other cultures. The month of March has been very special for Beststart Manuroa - Matai with many diverse cultural celebrations. We celebrated Eid-al-Fitr which is a significant event for our learning community as we have many Muslim tamariki. With the support of our whanau, our tamariki enjoyed a special traditional food called ‘Sewaian’ which was prepared by one of our parents. She also talked about the importance of Eid-al-Fitr at mat time and distributed goodie packs containing ‘card-making’ material to the children.
All our children actively participated in the ‘card making’ activity and made Eid cards for themselves to take home. We also celebrated the most colourful and vibrant cultural event ‘Baisakhi’. Its a spring harvesting festival celebrated in the north of India. The celebrations traditionally include singing and music. This event was celebrated in our centre with a traditional cultural dress-up day with lots of music and dance events. Parents' participation in dancing with Kaiako and tamariki was admirable and fun. Our children also enjoyed eating traditional food such as chickpea curry and rice, known as chole-chawal.