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Te Wiki o te Mana Hauora- Mental Health Awareness Week

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In a quiet place, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and go inward. Place your attention on your heart, in the center of your chest. Sit quietly and easily let your attention remain there.” -Deepak Chopra

To raise awareness of this week, our wonderful home of the brave kaiako have come up with wonderful ideas to share some well-being tools with our tamariki to bring awareness for our tamariki this week.

 “Close your eyes . . .lay your hands on your tummy. .  .and feel it rise and fall . . . breath in. . .  .breath out”. We kicked off our week with ‘Meditation Monday’, taking time to slow our bodies down, and calm our minds. Our tamariki enjoyed a guided meditation from Spotify where we breathed and imagined riding on a boat.When this finished, our tamariki weren’t ready to put away their yoga mats, so we put on M3 Mindfulness and went on a journey with Jase Te Patu. Such a beautiful calming experience as we did karakia and learnt about Atua (Māori Gods). Meditative practices have been used since ancient time to improve health and well-being. The simple act of teaching tamariki how to stop, focus and just breath is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. 

As our tamariki pulled out their yoga mats we set up for ‘Taichi Tuesday’, we started off by laying down and taking three big deep breaths before Tai Chi begun. As our tamariki and kaiako were guided by the instructions of the video, we stretched out our bodies, calmly and majestically flowing with our arms, legs and bodies. Tai Chi has an almost magical effect on health improvement. Tamariki love to learn and they learn fast, especially when engaged in a fun activity, whilst developing the minds and bodies of our tamariki. 

Woosaa Wednesday, calming our bodies and slowing down together. Firstly we created a beautiful calming atmosphere with lights off, essentials oils and crystals. Our tamariki bravely courageously supported me to set up these new taonga (special items), as we created our calming circle. We talked about their purpose, and how they supported us to create this circle of calm. We used this opportunity to put our hands on our puku, take deep breaths blowing our cheeks up like Tāwhirimātea and letting it out, blowing the wind of Tāwhirimātea into our circle. We used our hands to feel the rise and fall of our breaths, as our puku moved. We learnt about “Mudra”, a focus point of our fingers to support our meditation practice. Then we moved on to a meditation where our imaginations took us on a journey over the rainbow. 

Thankful Thursday, inspired by a beautiful saying by Eckhart Tolle, "Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." We created our home of the brave tree of gratitude and invited all our whānau to add their own leaves to our tree. We had a beautiful parent share with us via StoryPark as she wasn’t going to make it in to the centre; “I am really grateful from the bottom of my heart to all the teachers in Kindy for listening me and putting so much efforts . I can clearly see the difference in my child . I would like to say specifically thankyou to Stacie , Kathy , Danielle, and Waveney for their continuous support in building my son's confidence level and entertaining his superhero face painting demands. He is a different child now. Thank you once again to all the teachers and staff.” We are so grateful to all our whānau that contributed, as kaiako its an honour and privilege to have our amazing tamariki here each day at home of the brave.

To finish off our week it was all about sharing the love, and paying to forward with, ‘Fortune Friday’. Our tamariki were supported by kaiako to create messages of love and kindness to share at home of the brave, at home and with the universe. We demonstrated gratitude through our actions of love and kindness in reciprocity. Our tamariki demonstrated their mātauranga (knowledge) on what kindness looks like, both as a giver and recipient. Our tamariki honoured and shared these acts and opportunities with Stacie: “I’m fortunate for my whānau”- agreed Alexandra, Mikayla and Susi. “ I’m fortunate for the hugs and love I receive”  agreed Dante, Maringi and Oriwia Such a beautiful week teaching tools to our tamariki to support with Mental Health Awareness. I think many of these tools are going to become regularly practices at home of the brave to support our tamariki; to be brave, be bold and be authentically them. He aroha whakatō, he aroha puta mai! – If kindness is sown, then kindness you shall receive.