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.