Nature's Gift - By Laura Bates

The kindergarten was recently donated a large heap of soil for growing veggies and we needed all hands on deck to help transport it to our newly built raised garden beds. The kindergarten became a hubbub of busy activity, we had a serious job to do! 

Children gathered with buckets, spades, and ‘lorries’ (garden carts) and enthusiastically moved the load from the gates into our garden. They engaged their physical strength as they hauled the carts and buckets, and involved their senses as they felt the warm earth beneath their feet and between their fingers. Many children imitated adults hard at work, and through their imaginations, they were transformed into lorry drivers, builders, and landscape gardeners. 

“Look out lorry coming through,” They said as they carefully manoeuvred their cart around other children.

“We need to back it up mate, then back it in,” one child exclaimed as they problem-solved the best tactics for getting their carts to the garden beds.

“Hey mate, you’re trying to palm it off onto us, we’ve got our job to do,” one child said to another as they were asked if they could finish unloading their ‘lorry’.

“This is hard work,” one child said as they wiped their brow. 

“We are doing a great job, mate,” said with a look of approval, whilst they worked together seamlessly. 

After a busy afternoon, the children sat down for a picnic and tucked into the fruit crumble, which they prepared that morning with fruit gathered from the garden. It was a much-deserved feast after all that hard work.

Some of the best resources for children’s imaginations are those found in nature. We see the children at Fossil Bay Kindergarten transform earth, sand, and water into endless possibilities using the power of their boundless creativity.  We are fortunate that our garden has so much space for them to explore and hosts wood chips, trees, logs, branches, sand, soil, and water as well as beautiful bugs, birds, and butterflies.  We carefully tiptoe around their imaginative play, to keep it free from our adult questioning and agendas and let them delve deeply into their own stories and characters. It is a joy to see the children turn sand into cakes, or work together to carve it into valleys, before gleefully filling it up with water and marvelling at the wonder of creating a stream. 

As well as supporting imaginative play, the kindergarten outdoor environment gives the children an experience of being kaitiaki, guardians of our natural world and the plants and animals that live within it. After we transported all of the soil the children were given a broccoli seedling to plant in the earth. They each dug a small hole and carefully placed their seedlings, before gently patting the earth around it. The same care was taken when they tuck one of the dolls into a bed or attentively place a block on top of another when building their ‘boats’. We then said a special blessing and thanked Papatuanuku for her gifts. The children eagerly said, “Can we water them now?” and they ran into the sandpit to locate our watering cans, teapots, saucepans, and any other vessel that was equipped for the job. Since then, many of the children have taken such joy in seeing the plants grow and the tuakana have helped the younger children to remember to tread carefully to not damage the growing plants “we look after nature” they say, assertively. 

This experience doesn’t just teach compassion for nature but includes scientific lessons around how plants grow, ‘taught’ through hands-on sensory experience. The children gain an understanding of mathematical measures as they feel different weights and volumes, compare sizes of buckets and count out the plants that they have put in the soil. The songs we sing at circle time and blessings further embed these concepts and ideas. 

A little seed for me to sow, a little earth to help it grow, a little wish, a little pat and that is that, a little sun, a little shower, a little wait, a lovely flower.

10 little seeds in the dark dark ground out comes the warm sun, yellow and round, down comes the rain, slow, slow, slow outcome the little seeds grow, grow, grow…

Earth who gives to us this food, sun who makes it ripe and good, dear earth, dear sun, by you we live with loving thanks to you we give.

At Fossil Bay we spend so much time in our garden, which offers endless opportunities for the children to be creative, to problem solve, and to develop their language as they communicate their ideas with each other and their teachers. It offers a chance for the children to care for the natural world around them as well as develop scientific and mathematical concepts through experiential hands-on learning.  Perhaps most importantly the natural environment of the kindergarten brings a sense of wonder. Wonder as they delight in seeing the seedlings grow each week to eventually reveal vegetables, which we will dig up together and taste in our veggie soup. Wonder as we hear the tui and piwakawaka visit our garden every day, and we ponder if this will be a year they will lay their eggs in the nests above our deck. Wonder as they explore the natural world through their play, with joy and satisfaction. We are so grateful for our wonderful natural environment at Fossil Bay and of course, for all our wonder-filled Tamariki!