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Kaitiakitanga Day
We celebrated "Kaitiakitanga Day" and it was a week of learning about the traditional Māori world view of managing the environment.
From the stories and legends that they read our tamariki knew that in Māori culture, humans are seen as deeply connected to the land and to the natural world. In their simple way they learned that land, water, plants and animals are all important and we are the guardians/ Kaitiaki to protect them. They took time to clean their little garden, their calm space. Our team also took some time to spring clean our front garden. One of the interesting activity was to plant some seeds. Children planted their favorite seeds in a cup and displayed it inside, so that they can watch it grow everyday. This week has helped us all to reflect on the notion of kinship with nature, and how this idea might be useful in an environmentally threatened world. Following with these activities we celebrated "Māori language week which helped us to broaden our knowledge about Te Reo. Our tamariki and Kaiako learned some Māori words, phrases, and sentences. We also shared some daily used sentences with our whanau. Children enjoyed learning and singing some waiata. They also read some stories, myths, and legends. They performed dance with poi and rakau.
Te Reo Māori has been an official language of NZ since 1987 and Māori Language Week is about raising awareness of the language & encouraging everyone to embrace Te Reo Māori and use it on a daily basis. By celebrating Maori language week we reassure the fact that teaching and learning Te Reo Māori is important because it relates to the bicultural framing of Te Whāriki and the vision that all children will grow up strong in their identity, language and culture.