Entry Two

In the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) for Social Sciences, one of the achievement objectivities is Identity, Culture and Organisation.  This is when the children learn about society and community; it focuses on teaching the children about different cultures and identities within the community. In my centre we teach the children about different cultures and diverse families. We do this by bringing in all the languages that the children may speak at home, talking about what they do on significant events such as Christmas, birthdays and Easter and trying different ‘home’ foods when we celebrate a culture or country’s own event.  I feel like we allow the children to see that everyone comes from a culture and a diverse family. One thing that I have noticed about the children is that they are accepting of everyone that walks through the crèche door.

Linking to Te- Whāriki, one of the links with the Social Sciences Essential learning area is that “children’s understanding of themselves in their family and community is affirmed when children know that their families and cultures have a place and are respected.” (Ministry of Education, 1996) I can fully say that in our centre the children know who they are, and that their families and cultures have a place in our centre. An example of this is that we have a family who is diverse and has two mums instead of a mum and a dad, the child knows that their family is not the same as the other children who have a mum and a dad but they do not care. This child talks about both mums and if they are questioned about having no father then they feel comfortable to explain that they do not have a dad.

Myself as a teacher feels that in our centre we could be promoting the Treaty of Waitangi a little bit more, such as when the Treaty of Waitangi day comes around then we should be talking more to the children about it as it is part of New Zealand’s history.  As a teaching team I believe that we do promote and allow the children to explore New Zealand’s unique bicultural nature (Ministry of Education, 2007). We do this by incorporating Te-Reo in our centre both verbally and in documents. Both the parents and teachers talk to the children about events and the nature that is important to Maori.  

Place and environment is when the children learn and understand relationships that exist between people and environment.  I feel as if my centre is lucky as we over look a great huge park, that gets a lot of people in and the people who are regulars now come and talk to the children. It is lovely that the children get to outlook the park to see the interactions between people and the environment.

 As a teacher I love to sit with the children and we observe what is going on in the park then talk about what we can see and our thoughts about it. Our teaching team uses mat times as a time to talk about what they have seen in the park and how people treat the park when they are observing. We also allow the children to go out into the park to interact with the environment themselves, the older children seem to take in what we have seen and talked about and often I have noticed that they will not be impressed by the amount of rubbish that is left there.

 One example is that one day we went out into the park for a walk and two of the older children put gloves and plastic bags into their pockets so that we they were walking and saw rubbish, they could pick it up. I asked them when I saw them doing this ‘why are you picking up the rubbish?’ one child turned to me saying ‘we need to look after our park because the ducks might get hurt by the rubbish.’ The other child said ‘my grandpop said that we need to respect our environment.’

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media. 

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.  

Entry One

People, place, things and events, all go hand in hand with a child’s experience or learning about something that is happening or happened to the community, family, and friends or in their centre. An event would not happen without a place or people to attend, nor would an event happen without objects such as a rugby game would not happen without a rugby ball.

The significance of social studies in a child’s life is to help the children to develop the ability to make decisions for themselves, family, friends and people around them. (NCSS,1994) People, place, things and events are all under the curriculum that is called ‘Social Studies’. Social Studies is just as important as mathematics and literacy, as social studies teaches children to learn more about the outside world and what is going on around them in the present, what could go on in the future and what has happened in the past.

In the New Zealand curriculum Social Studies is taught from the Early Years until High school then even some people go on to study in more depth in University. Although my school journey, every year we would have been taught about at least one significant world event. When talking about this world event we were taught about the people who were involved or affected by it, where it took place, what things were involved in order for this to happen and why was it such a significant event in history. Social studies also covers important areas that include children in assisting to their emotional/social growth, making and understanding values and helping children to foster their development of reliability when working in a group or on their own. (Mindes & Donovan, 2001)

One example of a significant world event that impacted on a child that I knew was when Barack Obama was elected to be the first African American president of the United States of America. The child who was affected by this event loved and knew everything about the presidents of the United States of America and one day wants to become the president of the USA. It affected this child because he is African American and was worried that he would not be able to become president because of this. This did not only have an impact on him but everyone in the world as it showed that America does not define roles by ethnics.

Popular culture is when something is in ‘fashion’ and everyone is wearing or doing it. For children in Early Childhood this could be all the children wearing harlem pants or wanting to be Elsa or Hulk. These are just a few examples that are popular culture in my own centre.

The impacts that popular culture can have on children are huge, especially to the children who play, watch or read about violence.  We cannot ignore that violence comes under popular culture or that it is impacting children’s lives. Parents can be exposing their young children to the violence by allowing toddlers to play on an iPad which could not have any advert blocks or safety blocks. If the child is not being supervised then the child could simply click a few times then be watching a violent video clip? (Helfgott, 2008) And the parent may not even notice that the child is watching a violent clip because iPads are in popular culture now not only because the child may want it but also parents love to use it as a ‘babysitter’ for when they need some time out.

Helfgoot, J., 2008. The Influence of Technology, Media, and Popular Culture on Criminal   Behavior. SAGE Publications. Seattle University, USA.

Mindes, G., & M.A. Dovovan. 2001. Building character: Five enduring themes fir a stronger early childhood curriculum. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies). 1994. Expectations of excellence: Curriculum standards doe social studies. Silver Spring, MD: Author.