Fundraising for Plunket was super fun and created a lot of conversations with whanau about who they wanted to slime, teachers encouraging tamariki to put money into certain jars, as well as parents talking amongst themselves who would be best. It ended up being our Head Teacher, Andrea who ended up snatching the lead at the last moment from our Centre Manager, Helen. 

The experience will be one we will repeat as not only did we have fun, raise money but it bought our centre whanau together. Continuing with the fundraising we had one of our much anticipated bake sales. As we have amazing bakers in our community who love to bake and support us we were treated to delicious date loaf (a family recipe that isn’t allowed to leave the family), beautifully decorated cupcakes, yummy chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, caramel slice and chocolate and caramel brownie. The theme for this bake sale was to booster our garden fund as we are looking to extend our garden to include more medicinal plants that we can offer to whanau to come and use. 

We are working alongside a couple knowledgeable people who are helping us with our natural remedies and what plants to plant to enable that to be successful. Part of the funds will also get set aside for continual planting and nurturing of our vegetable garden, Te Koha. With Autum upon us we are looking at what we can replant our garden with that will continue to support our whanau and wider community connections. In among all this we have been enjoying the learning around bees with the addition of a bee box from Biobees. This is a box of bumblebees that have a hive already started and as they are pretty self-sufficient the hive will naturally do what it needs to. We have learned that once the Queen Bee has a successor that successor flies away to hibernate and the hive naturally dies out. The complexities of the hive are amazing and tamariki are learning that every bee has a purpose and it is the male drones we see in the garden gathering their nectar and pollen to return to the hive. 

As our focus has been on the natural world and our impact upon it we extended “Sea Week” to be our theme over March with the climax being a beach clean up around the playground in Onerahi. We gathered quite a bit of varied rubbish before having a picnic of fish and chips. Our tamariki continue to thrive and explore around the Te Ao Maori concepts of kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga. Caring for our animals is a much favourite part of our day especially taking the chickens their morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea scraps. It is really lovely to see that our older tamariki are being the tuakana and nurturing the interest in our younger tamariki who are now spreading their independence and taking the scraps out unaided. 

Our tamariki love to help and be part of everything that is going on and have found a new friend in Ben who comes once a week to change our mats out for clean ones. Taking pride in their centre is lovely to see especially with all our new tamariki learning our kaupapa and embracing it too! March has also seen the beginning of our major project of cleaning up the river. We have had many discussions with our tamariki about the cleanness of the water and how we could make it better. This has really struck a cord with them as they are now making sure that Shelley (our turtle) has clean water and making it known to kaiako when she needs a clean. We have had discussions with Whitebait connection and we are now beginning to plan out our next steps. 

The first step has been to grow oak seedlings from the acorns that are dropped from our huge oak tree that is on the river bank. We have heard stories of tamariki going home and praying for all our plants and so spreading the word of a clean and beautiful river. We are looking forward to April and seeing where we head to next with all of the amazing things that are happening here at BestStart Pipiwai Kindy.