LATEST STORIES
Local River
A big focus for us here at BestStart Grey Lynn is learning about our local curriculum. A part of this is learning about the area around us and our local community. Our overs (Studio) tamariki love to go out into our community on our local excursions to do recycling and visit local parks. This has led to some amazing learning for our older tamariki. We have been learning all about making connections in the Studio.
We have been researching the whenua / land that we were built on here in Grey Lynn and learned that a long time ago, there used to be a river called Opoutukeha that flowed right past us! We had so much fun painting Opoutukeha to flow through our classroom and creating some landmarks that we knew from our excursions into our local area.
In Te Ao Māori (the Māori worldview) connections to the land are important for knowing where one comes from. Local landmarks like maunga (mountains), awa (rivers) and moana (oceans) are used and the phrase ‘tangata whenua’ highlights how people and the land are closely linked. We have loved learning how to honour tikanga Māori (the Māori way) and how to make connections between the centre and our local area!