Creating belonging with the local maunga

We have lots of new families just starting in our centre. We don’t know them much, and they don’t know us too. And we decide to maybe collect about, collect the pepeha from the family to start maybe give us an idea about where they come from.

We collected the children’s pepehas. We used that as our starting place, and we began to research with the children the places that they come from.

Then we ask the children to come together and have a look the mountain that they belong to and have a look the river that they belong to. And for me, it’s like, oh they bring me to somewhere different in their home country. I not only know where they come from, I know the land they have a strong relationship with. They talk about what’s the mountain for and why do we have mountains and river? And the children draw the picture of their mountains and talk more about the details of the mountains and their home country as well. Honestly, we couldn’t go back to their home country and walk on their lands, but we can build a sense of belonging in New Zealand as well.

As we were out walking one day, the children spotted Maungarei/Mount Wellington. And there was a little buzz about it, “We can see our mountain.” And for the children from somewhere else, they called this “our mountain”. And it was quite an inclusive “our mountain”. It was all of ours. So we wanted to learn more about it. So we planned to go and visit our mountain.

Before the trip, we asked the children to put the green fabric on the carpet and the children stand on it and close their eye and imagine what can they see and what can they hear? They talk about they can see kindergarten, they can see their houses, they can see the river.

When we went to visit Maungarei, it was one of those days where nothing quite goes the way you plan, but the outcome is something that’s also rich and beautiful.

So we arrived at the mountain to find that it was closed. So you leap – as early childhood teachers are quite good at doing – to what shall we do now? And we decided to go and visit Pigeon Mountain/Ōhuiarangi. This led to all sorts of wonderful kind of complications. We had done a lot of predicting about what we might see when we go to the mountain. Each of the children were provided with an opportunity to use a camera to take pictures of things that were meaningful to them. We looked at the photos with them. We talked about what we thought we might have seen at Maungarei.

So it’s about unpacking children’s ideas about things and then enabling them to modify their theories. So that was kind of interesting, because it led to this whole other journey of stories they collected. They thought about Maungarei was perhaps a mountain who didn’t like children, who didn’t want us to come and visit him, and that Ōhuiarangi had called to the children and teachers and said, “I’m lonely, come and visit me.”

They really want to show – you know, show their families about the mountain, tell them about the friend. The mountain is their friend now.

We have more than 100 language to share – like drawing, art and drama. And sometimes when I work with the children, I feel like, wow, this is who they are. And they’ve got lots of story to tell. And this is the thing I enjoy so much. When the children are working alongside together and they talk about their story to each other as well. It’s not about my mountain – it’s our mountain. We’re not looking at, “I’m Chinese,” “I’m Indian,” “I’m blah blah blah” like that. We are as a group in New Zealand to work on something together.