Mud, mud, glorious mud

Anyone who lives in Northland will of course be very aware of just how much rain we have seen over the last few weeks. This rain is something that our ‘nature programme’ children have also been extremely conscious of.

This little blog story begins three weeks ago when Kim and the children discovered a very large muddy patch at Mair Park. This find was quite unexpected and the mud patch was so large, that it was not only fascinating but also extremely tempting. Honestly, who couldn’t resist getting stuck right into this?

Creating mud angels.

 The sensorial feeling of playing in mud is irresistible to some children. Mud is soothing, cool, dense and rich and quite unlike any other element to explore in play.

Oh dear - it's easy to loose your boots in the mud.

Trying to pull out the stuck boots.

‘When you engage the whole body, along with the senses – learning comes naturally’ (Angela Hanscom)

The following week was my turn as the teacher on the nature programme. I was pretty excited, as the children had spent the whole week telling me all about this mud patch, and how much they were looking forward to revisiting it. That week we immediately headed there – and guess what – it couldn’t really be called mud anymore. In fact the mud had transformed into one of the largest puddles we had all ever seen. It was such a surprise that initially we all stood around the edge of the puddle wondering what to do, then one brave child decided she was going to venture in, and oops fell straight over onto her bottom. This caused such delight, and encouraged the other children to head into the puddle to jump, splash, sit down, chat, and just generally just have a fantastic time immersed in the water and mud.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful

E.E. Cummings

Then last Friday was Donna’s turn as the teacher, and once again the children had told her they wanted to go and visit the mud. Many were wondering and guessing what it would look like this week. I only wish I had been there myself – look at these fantastic photos – the children in just three weeks have gone from being slightly tentative and possibly a little apprehensive at times to being almost completely immersed, head to toe, in the mud; so much so they needed to help each other to get out with a rope. What an experience this must have been. We have all engaged in this type of play ourselves as children, but sometimes it’s easy to forget the delight that comes from doing something so incredible and exhilarating for the first time. When was the last time you did something for the first time, I wonder?

Mud connects us directly with the natural world. It lets our children get up close and personal with nature, discovering different mud in different places, the creatures that live in the mud and the plants that grow in it. We all need to recognise that you can't expect the next generation to love nature without letting them experience it to its fullest.

Playing with mud and water is “not only loads of fun, but blends together science, art, math, social studies, sensory input, and language by providing opportunities to accomplish, communicate, conserve, cooperate, create, count, facilitate, differentiate (size, shape, amount, colour), discover, explore, express, converse, initiate, and be gleeful” (Zavitkovsky, 1996)

There is certainly something invigorating about plunging your hands or feet into the earth that creates a connectedness between humans and mother nature that we can feel. Here is a short collection of photos and videos from the last three weeks of the nature programme. I hope it makes you want to get your gum boots out (or your bare feet) and go and find a large muddy puddle!

The Mairtown Team would like to acknowledge that the continued success of this programme is due to the on-going, generous support of community funding organisations like COG's. For the past two years COG's have been able to support our programme with a grant to cover our Education Coordinators role. Thank you :)

Hei konā mai i roto i ngā mihi,

Christine

Mairtown Kindergarten Royals



At Mairtown Kindergarten we love to foster and celebrate the beauty and wonder of our children’s great imaginations. We support this play through lots of thoughtful planning and intentionally by setting up an environment that is beautiful, inspiring and full of open-ended resources.
At present some of our most frequently used inside resources include the colourful scarves, and the wooden castle pieces and figurines.
There is always a lot of imaginary play happening with these resources and the children that are involved are often deeply engaged with one another, creating a world of drama and delight around the roles of the princes, princesses, knights and dragons.

After recognising this popular play and listening to the wonderful dialogue between the children it was evident that imaginative play was alive and well. I decided to ask the children about why they like to dress up and pretend to be these characters.

“When I pretend to be a princess it makes me feel good, like I can do anything I want, like I can sing heaps of songs.” (London-Rose)

“Pretending to be things is good because if you want to be something you can. It’s fun!” (Khaia)

“When I’m a princess I like to play with Maria. We be mums and queens. We pretend to be something. It makes me happy.” (Payton)

“You know when I am a princess I’m not actually Korari, I’m Princess Alice! That is my pretend name I like.” (Korari)

To extend on this interest I decided to incorporate the children’s love for dressing up, with their love for playing the castle and royal figurines by personalising this play space. I took photos of the children dressed up and made small figurines to play with in the castle area.
Some children also drew pictures of kingdoms and these were used as back drops. This was all set up after the children had gone for the day and when they returned in the morning new levels of magical play and interaction began.

“Wow, this looks so beautiful here!” (Kate)

“Oh, this is a little tiny me. Can I play with me? I am being a beautiful princess” (Emma)

“I am the only boy one, the only prince. I might be the king too!” (Wyatt)

“We are playing princesses and Madison and I are being witches.” (London-Rose)

“They turn into witches, they do the bad things but then the other princesses make them stop doing the bad.” (Khaia)

“I like being this little person, I am playing with all my little friends. We have a castle to all play in as little ones together.” (Maria)

Over the past week more children have become interested in their tiny friends and have engaged in lots of imaginary play and story-telling.

“Look Zeke, I see all these people, they are our friends and they are little people in this castle. Let’s play with them!” (Matteo)

So these lovely little Kindergarten Prince and Princesses have been wonderful for creating many opportunities for extending on our children’s interest in imaginary play. This type of play allows children to explore the magic of being creative with their ideas and knowledge in a safe but meaningful way. The world of royalty is an imaginary place for our children, however the roles that they chose to play with in them are boarder line realistic for them. For example playing with other children’s figurines that they usually would do in real life. Or playing roles that are familiar to them like being a Mum Princess with a baby as they have a little baby living in their household at home.

Davis (2011) acknowledges that, “Imaginative play is essentially when children are role playing and are acting out various experiences they may have had or something that is of some interest to them.  They are experimenting with decision making on how to behave and are also practising their social skills.  Children learn from experience: from what happens around them, from what they see, hear, smell, taste and touch.   To absorb those experiences and make sense of the world, they need to be engaged in imaginary play.”

 

 

The joy, magic and creativity that happens during this type of play is so wonderful to be a part of. Children are incredibly good at being free and thinking outside the box through their play. As a teacher of young children I feel blessed to be privy to the value imaginary play and the important role it plays in terms of lifelong learning. It is great for helping develop strategies that support problem solving in real life situations.
 

Harris (2002) gives a great example of how imaginary play gives children skills that will support them in the future, “... suppose we think of pretend play and fantasy as something that’s quite characteristic of young children—it makes them playful and endearing but doesn’t really contribute to their later cognitive development and by adulthood it has in some sense disappeared. I tried to argue that this is wrong. Human beings have a gift for fantasy, which shows itself at a very early age and then continues to make all sorts of contributions to our intellectual and emotional life throughout the lifespan. To give you some examples, imagination helps us to make causal judgments about how things might have turned out differently. If something goes wrong in life, then we ask ourselves where we went wrong. The imagination allows us to engage in thinking about alternatives in this prosaic form. In making moral judgments we also think about alternatives. We look at something that has happened and we ask how it could have been done better or differently. And again we are exercising our imagination.”

Imaginary play is important work for our children and as teachers it is so important that we foster this. We do this here by providing beautiful, interesting spaces full of resources that capture the imagination. The Princes and Princesses of the Mairtown Kingdom are on a journey, learning about their worlds, expressing their knowledge, ideas and thoughts whilst having fun along the way.

 

 

Written by Zair Taylor

Nurturing whanaungatanga - Mairtown's annual hangi

On Friday 8th of August we celebrated our annual Hangi at kindergarten. The Hangi is usually part of our Matariki events; however due to the weather we had to postpone the date and what a great decision it was, as the weather on Friday was just awesome. Ranginui must have been taking care of us as though it showered twice, neither of these downfalls effected our festivities.

Our Hangi is a highly anticipated event, from the beginning to the end of the day the focus is on working together, sharing, making connections and caring for each other as we collaborate in the creation of a delicious feast and experience.

Taika helps to put meat in the Hangi basket

 At the heart of our Hangi is the Te Ao Māori principal of whanaungatanga. Whanaungatanga recognises that people are taonga (treasures) and are part of a larger collective; therefore it is our relationships with each other and how we care and nurture these connections that is most important.

Roman carries his lantern

Paul Hirini describes whanaungatanga "as a value, which reinforces the commitment whānau members have to each other. Such commitment is expressed through the process of caring, sharing, respecting, helping, assisting and nurturing" (MOE)

Tiaki holds his sparkler

Ritchie (2012) also states that "Whanaungatanga recognises the centrality of whānau and relationships to early childhood care and education, and is consistent with the Te Whariki principle of Family and Community/Whānau."












On behalf of the team I want to say a huge thank you to our parents, whānau and tamariki for helping to make this such a special day. We also want to acknowledge Glen Davidson (our local library bus driver and musician  extraordinaire) for supporting us again this year with our fireside sing-along and lantern parade.

 Once again, Christine has created a wonderful video that truly captures the essence, care and energy of this wonderful day of social interaction and celebration, enjoy!

 E hoa ma, ina te ora o te tangata

My friends, this is the essence of life

Noho ora mai
Kim