Whakanuia Te Wiki o te Reo Maori – Celebrating Maori Language Week
This week, we have been celebrating Māori language week at out childcare centre. One of our parents came on board with this and has made signs in Te Reo for all areas of play and has also been helping staff with correct pronunciation.
The staff have been teaching basic words in Māori through the use of books, song and dance. It’s amazing how fast the children have picked up colours, numbers and basic greetings in Māori. We have a book about fruit salad that the children love and can now name all the colours and names of the fruit in Māori! We have also been writing up our daily menu and noticeboard in Te Reo as well.
We’ve had a lot of fun learning the parts of our body in Te Reo by singing “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” in Māori…”Mahunga, pakihiwi, puku, hope, waewae”. The boys have really enjoyed participating in the “haka” and put all their energy into stamping their feet to the beat.
We are still looking at all cultures of the children at our centre and in a month’s time to round off this learning, we will be visiting a ‘Puna Reo’ and a local marae where the children will participate in haka lessons and try some different kai…yum!