Jacaranda trees!

The beautiful Jacaranda tree in our bark area is an important part of our lived environment. It supports one of our favourite resources, the monkey bars, provides valuable shade and shelters visiting birds. It also offers us resources in the form of beautiful fallen flowers and mature seed pods, which our tamariki love to open up to find the featherlight seeds resting inside.

When we returned to kindergarten after the summer break, we discovered a surprise waiting for us beneath the tree. That quiet period of time had given Papatūānuku and Tane Mahuta time to work their magic, and we found that lots of te seeds that tamariki have enjoyed blowing to ngā hau e whā had found their way into the soil beneath the bark, and with a rest from the trampling of busy feet, lots of tiny Jacaranda trees had begun to grow!

It was so exciting to see the life cycle of the Jacaranda happening naturally within our own environment, but we needed to talk about what we could do to help, as we knew that the little trees would not be able to survive and grow in our bark area!

Te Whāriki explains the importance of students developing their knowledge and understanding of people’s interactions with places and environments and how people can sustain their environment

Back on the 24^th of January, Cadence, Zoe, Aki, You You and I decided we would rescue some of the little trees and see if they would grow bigger in pots. Then if we succeeded, we could see if any of our whānau would like to grow a child of our tree in their own garden – continuing its ‘family tree’!

We found some compost beside kindergarten, and some seedling pots and trowels in the shed, and headed off to the bark area. It was a tricky job extracting whole baby trees with their roots still intact from the bark, and unfortunately there were a few casualties along the way, but all of the girls were so careful, and they persevered until they succeeded. Luckily there were lots of little trees to find, so everyone was able to successfully transplant at least 2 of the seedlings into a pot.

Then we needed to water them and find them a place in the garden were they would get rainwater in the weekends if it rained, and where they would not be knocked over! What a wonderful demonstration of Kaitiakitanga. I loved the way the tamariki all wholeheartedly engaged with this project – I had the sense that some of them already had some great knowledge about how to manage the tools and the delicate plants, and it was great to see this hands-on experience of our lived environment occurring not just as part of our Nature Programme, but also within our own kindergarten environment. It was also so cool to observe the way they supported each other with physical assistance or helpful suggestions as they worked.

Kaitiakitanga has a strong focus on rights, responsibilities, relationships, and the role of kaitiaki (guardian) over the natural environment. An important aspect of this is reciprocity between the kaitiaki and the land. The kaitiaki cares for the land ensuring its sustainability and the resource sustains the kaitiaki (Miller, n.d).

When young children learn kaitiakitanga, they learn to respect, care for, and protect people, places, and things. When they care for the natural environment, in the daily flow of centre life, they develop skills and knowledge that support them in caring for nature throughout their life (Ritchie, Duhn, Rau, & Craw, 2010). The role of kaitiaki is found within the Belonging and Exploration strands of Te Whāriki, where teachers are required to support children in their love, care, and guardianship of the land (MoE, 2017). In Aotearoa/New Zealand, there is an emerging interest in children’s experiential learning through engaging with nature in their local bush and forest. This facilitates deep learning through real time connections with nature while building on children’s dispositions of curiosity, playfulness and exploration. Place based learning, within the child’s immediate environment, also supports their sense of connection, relationship and responsiveness to the land (Vincent-Snow, 2017).

A week on, not all of the trees have survived (I think a snail may need to be talked to about that!) But we do have a number of happy healthy looking baby Jacaranda trees growing – we now watch and wait until they are big enough to make their way to new homes!

Toitu te marae a Tane, Toitu te marae a Tangaroa, Toitu te iwi

If the land is well and the sea is well, the people will thrive.

Ngā mihi mahana, 

Anne