LATEST STORIES
Nurturing from seed to kai
Our mara / garden is working wonderfully with our tamariki / children taking lead responsibility for deciding what to plant, nurturing while growing and now harvesting. Our tamariki absolutely love caring for our mara and seeing what’s growing. They’ve been very excited about looking at the finished produce and even sampling some of our scrummy red, ripe strawberries. It’s amazing for our tamariki to be able to see the whole process and they definitely are keen to try eating our kai / food. We believe this is because our tamariki have been able to make more of a connection from seed to kai and being involved in nurturing them.
We’ve had such an amazing batch of broccoli, carrots and strawberries; so much that we’ve been able to share some of our produce with our whānau. This has led to some amazing discussions about our mara and now some of our whānau have been sharing their matauranga / knowledge of gardening and also bringing in some of their own produce to share. What an amazing community of sharing and learning! This month we’ve been investigating sustainability and thinking of ways to reduce wastage. So we’ve found a lovely local lady to come and take our food scraps to feed her poaka / pigs! We now have a photo of our poaka friends next to our food scrap bin so our tamariki can see who they are feeding. We've also donated some broccoli leaves to one of our Area Managers for her bunny. We received a lovely photo of appreciation of him eating our yummy broccoli leaves. We love to share and we are very passionate about building a sustainable place.
Since Spring arrived and our mara has been thriving, our tamariki have been noticing insect visitors and have delved into an animal project. We’ve been exploring kararehe / animals, insects and habitats through art, music, research and games. We’re in the process of building a volcano for our dinosaurs! One day our tamariki were building a dam in our rockery river and this led onto a discussion on beavers. We researched at wā whāriki what these animals were and how they build dams too.
As well as all this amazing learning we celebrated Diwali. Our Indian whānau led this event and helped organise our evening celebration. We learnt about what Diwali was and why it was significant. We made diya lamps , rangoli patterns and then dressed up for a cultural night of music, Indian kai / food and a whānau demonstration of worship. It’s amazing learning about cultures and their traditions!