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Our forest adventure at BestStart Rangiora
As part of our curriculum programme here at Rangiora Best-Start we have been learning about Tāne the Atua of the Forest. What an exciting morning we had with our friends and whānau that came and experienced our trip to Woodend forest. We saw lots of exciting things. We saw Piwakwaka’s, “fantails” who danced around us and sung their beautiful song.
The Paradise ducks flew over. We saw how the fire last year had damaged the forest and we noticed Tāne “Atua of the forest” was slowly repairing itself. It is important part of our philosophy to teach our tamariki about taking care of our environment and being good kaitiaki “guardians of our environment”. Some of our older tamariki noticed some rubbish that had been dropped, we were prepared with an extra bag to collect rubbish. We stopped and listened to the sounds of the forest and could hear the sea, on the way back the wind “Tāwhirimātea” came for a short visit and rustled through the trees. We investigated the new trees that had been planted, they were all protected by a cardboard cover surrounding them which sparked rich conversations, language and curiosity. Sustainability is an important part of our values that we live by. We role modelled by collecting some natural foliage which smelt like Christmas along with pinecones, and some beautiful shells to do some follow up artwork which was exciting, and creative. We had a well-earned break having a picnic morning tea in the forest. While we were sitting down, we met a man who lived in our community walking his dog, he said good morning to us, and told us his dogs name "Rusty". We also met some other people in our community riding their bikes through the forest. When we got to the end of one track there was a horse sign. Kaiako Vicky explained that there are people in the community that trained racehorses on the beach, and this was the trek that they used. Goodness, we learnt a lot about the people that live and work close by and use our forests. We ventured back to the big playground where we had fun before going back to preschool for lunch and a moe “sleep”. What an amazing day of learning while having fun within our community environment.