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Earlier this year, we thought – wouldn’t it be great to teach the children how to make paper that they can re-use in their creative play.  Well – this just opened up the flood gates on what else we could do. 

We had bought guinea pigs [pets are fantastic for teaching children about empathy and caring for the needs of other beings besides themselves] and we had a vegetable garden that was used once a fortnight for our gardening programme – how could we integrate this into our everyday practice?

So what have we done?  We have created an instruction chart for children to make their own paper independently – after buying the paper-making kit of course.  We also grow and press our own flowers and leaves for art design and have just started making ‘confetti’ using hole punches.  This has also been incorporated into the paper-making process for some funky designs.

But wait.  That’s not all. 

We have bought a compost bin which the children add to each day – this complements the worm farm we already had but was not thriving as we really didn’t know what we were doing.  Guess what?  Now we do!  The children bring food waste in from home [yep we have a compost station at the front door for parents to donate their food waste from home] and we sort that with the children for ‘worm food’ and ‘compost food’.  Our worms are now producing worm tea which is a first in 2 years!

We have also removed paper towels from the bathrooms and are now using small hand towels for drying our hands and washing faces.  We have different coloured cloths for food and art to ensure we are retaining strong tikanga practices.

We have so many ideas for where this journey will take us and we know that this practice will become an embedded part of our every day life throughout the centre.

Come and join in the fun of this journey – or contact us if you want to know more about what we are doing to promote strong kaitiaki practice for our children.