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Planting seedlings to celebrate Matariki
In celebration of Matariki, the Māori New Year, we planted some seedlings in our centre vegetable garden. In preparation, the week before, a few of our tamariki helped get all the dead leaves out of the garden and turned the soil. The next week an outside guest from our community came in and helped us plant the different seedlings. We had discussions about what fruit and vegetables we like to eat and what we think they will look like as they start to grow.
With Matariki we have been talking about the different stars within the Matariki cluster and with this we learnt that the stars, Tupu-ā-nuku and Tupu-ā-rangi, are related to the growing of food. Tupu-ā-nuku is the star of food from the earth – root vegetables and anything that grows directly from the ground and Tupu-ā-rangi governs food from the sky – so that’s fruit from trees, berries, and birds.
There are many benefits for children working with the vegetable garden. From this experience and the experiences to follow with our vegetable garden children:
- are working together
- engage all their five senses
- have the opportunity to observe the world with their own eyes and to directly engage in a natural environment.