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Gardening Day at BestStart Rongotai
Gardening is a great hands-on experience that offers so many amazing learning opportunities for tamariki. At BestStart Rongotai we decided as we moved into the New Year, we would have a Gardening Day to refresh our vegetable garden, getting it all set up to plant new seeds.
Tamariki worked together with Kaiako to pull out old vegetables and weeds, and later they helped plant new seeds and water the garden and seeds at the end of the process. This opportunity engaged all sorts of senses, such as sight, touch and smell as tamariki emerged themselves into the whole process. Tamariki further developed their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and confidence in using garden tools, such as shovels, folks and scissors.
Gardening at an early age encourages healthy eating habits and at BestStart Rongotai, we use our vegetable garden as a great way to support tamariki to build an interest in eating vegetables as they are part of the whole process of growing them and watching them grow, taking responsibility in looking after them and learning when the time is right to harvest different vegetables to then eat them.