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Our 2021 Christmas Celebration
The end of the year is always a magical time of celebration. This year we had a fun center competition of decorating our rooms in a way that celebrates a culture.
Our Tōtara Room has a high number of whānau with Pacific Island heritage, so this led to being our decor focus for Christmas.
As a team we discussed how best we could celebrate these cultures with the children's involvement and input at the forefront. We decided to move away from the usual tinsel and premade decorations for our decor. Instead, we chose to focus on using the beautiful foliage and native flowers from the various islands as our Christmas decorations. In keeping with the theme, we asked the children to choose flower printouts for display and colouring in. Children were engaged over the weeks with painting, gluing, printing, stamping, drawing and writing letters to Santa.
We talked about how our focus is always the children's interests, goals and whānau aspirations. So, with that in mind, we asked the children and whānau what Christmas means to them to create a display wall of "How we celebrate Christmas". We asked the tamariki what they wanted to create to decorate our room. Many tamariki replied with "Santa", Christmas tree", "Gingerbread man", "Reindeer". Our kaiako encouraged the children to draw, paint, create and cut out their own decorations which were all then proudly displayed on walls and windows.
Tapa cloth is an important aspect of many Pacific Island cultures. Used in homes, ceremonies and gifting. We made our own version using cloth material, recycled from pillowcases, soaked in a tea mixture to change the colour and then encouraged the children to choose their own stamps to create patterns on their tapa.
Festive feasts are a center point of celebrating among Pacific Island cultures. Getting together with whānau and friends to share a meal is a beautiful way to celebrate together.
Unfortunately, due to Covid regulations, this year we were unable to have our children's families come and celebrate with us. However, we were able to have a wonderful celebration within each room , in center. In the morning each child was provided the opportunity to decorate their own muffin. Our kaiako provided each child with their own icing and sprinkles. It was a definite hit! At lunch we decorated the table with Christmas tablecloth and cups. We sang Christmas songs before karakia and enjoying a selection of delicious kai to eat. Aunty Keri came rushing in to show us that Santa had sent us a letter too! We were all so excited to read it!
Our gifts to send home this year were beautiful photos of our tamariki and their incredible mahi toi that they worked so hard to create throughout the month.
We hope everyone has a relaxing holiday period filled with love, laughter and fun.
Arohanui from Tōtara Room at Best Start Omahu.