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Manaakitanga
A Culture of Manaakitanga/Kindness in the Under 2’s In term one in our Under 2’s Tuatara Room at BestStart North Road – we had a group focus on Manaakitanga – developing a culture of kindness and helping Tamariki develop social skills and strategies for playing and learning alongside others. We chose this learning focus as we noticed friendships naturally starting to develop in our room, a love for group play – and social skills being a common aspiration from our whanau for their Tamariki.
We provided Tamariki with a variety of group experiences, including messy play, table top resources, Kaiako led games and setting up the environment in ways that encouraged group play (like a see-saw that requires more than one person to play!). We found that this created lots of great interactions between tamariki and relationships continued to flourish and grow. While on this learning journey we have been providing the Tamariki with lots of encouragement, praise and positive guidance.
Kaiako stay close by group interactions to observe and provide support where needed, including through positive reminders and modelling words they may be looking to say. We also modelled kindness through our actions, offering Tamariki support through caring words and cuddles when they were sad – soon we found the Tamariki doing the same, offering their friends cuddles, rubbing their back and checking on each other when they would fall down. How awesome is that!
Through this journey we have now also noticed our tamariki’s love for helping out around the room. Heading into term 2 we are now focusing on Whakamana – one of our Best Start North Road Values. This will be a focus on empowerment for our Tamariki, including empowering them to express themselves, and to help take care of our environment. We would love to have some more friends join us on this journey – so swing by Best Start North Road to check out the mahi in action