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Our community at BestStart Meadowbank
This month we noticed that our tamariki showed great interest in talking about their families drawing their family pictures and houses.
Many of them had just come back from holidays and had lots to talk about the places and the happy times spent with their loved ones. Some of the children also loved to pretend play and involve in construction involving fire engines and firefighters, policemen and building and construction in general. We thought we would explore the interconnectedness between these units by making 'Our Community'; family, neighbourhood, Meadowbank community and the wider world as our main focus.
Community has always been a strong part of BestStart Meadowbank curriculum. The home away from home environment we provide, our prominent links with the Meadow bank primary school community, the longstanding relations with families and their involvement in our centre's life have always been our biggest strengths.
While involving in drawing family pictures discussing their extended family and the places they visited along with their family we feel that the children are enhancing their sense of belonging, learning about each other's cultures and customs and different aspects of the society they live in.
We believe it helps the children develop a shared language, rituals and customs, and a collective memory of experiences and things that empowers all. We sang songs like ‘hurry hurry lets go fire truck’, pretended to be doctors , firemen, nurses, chefs and bakers.
We also extended our interest to the visual art area by painting and drawing the community places that we regularly visit like the Meadowbank supermarket, Rangitoto reserve and playground and the rest home we visited during the Christmas time.