LATEST STORIES
Supporting our communication skills
Kia ora, throughout the Totara room, we have been working towards improving our communication skills (mana reo). Through enhancing the children’s communications skills, we are providing them with the right tools they need to be ‘school ready’. This means, encouraging them to express their thoughts, ideas, and opinions and helping them to have a voice, as this matters. Within our room, we strengthen children’s communication skills through experiences such as art, music, at times, feeling charts, games, dancing, literacy, science, reading books, sensory play, and physical play. This has helped tamariki connect socially and emotionally with each other.
Throughout each experience that children are exploring, they can gain numerous skills to enhance their day-to-day communication. During mat times, tamariki are enhancing their mana reo through singing, and listening, and they are also encouraged to contribute their ideas and opinions in group discussions. In this experience, we are also scaffolding children with self-regulation through breath work and stretching. Alongside self-regulating, Kaiako enhances the children's mana through their pepeha and whakapapa. This enhances children's understanding of where they come from and continues to foster their sense of belonging within the environment. Through physical play, these skills are also strengthened when children are playing games such as tag, hide and seek, or digging in the sandpit.
As children are engaging in each of these experiences, they are strengthening their knowledge of counting, and names of body parts, and becoming familiar with verbs. In the Totara room, on a day-to-day basis, Kaiako likes to play music, whether it is background music, sleeping music, or music for dancing. We also enjoy singing waiata as a group, songs such as Old McDonald, Ma is White and 5 little ducks. By singing these songs, tamariki are gaining an understanding of numbers, colors, and animals as well as enhancing their te reo. By practicing our communication skills throughout each area of play, tamariki have grown confident in communicating effectively with their peers and their Kaiako. They are also able to hold conversations with one another, supporting their relationship and connection with their peers.