Sea Week at Buckle My Shoe (Part One)

Recently we celebrated the beginning of New Zealand Sea Week, with a focus on connecting with our seas. To begin, we engaged in a discussion about the sea and the different types of sea creatures that live in the oceans. It was wonderful to hear the knowledge our tamariki have on the types of sea creatures, kai moana, fish and mammals living in our local sea and oceans around the world.

During our discussion, our little ones were shown an image of Tangaroa. 'Who is that?” they asked. “Tangaroa, he is the Maori God of the sea and cares for the well-being of all sea creatures”, one of our wonderful kaiako explained. She then read our little ones the Maori myth called Tangaroa and the Paua, after which they sang some waiata (songs) relating to the sea – “Slippery Fish”, “Kina Kina”, and “5 Little Fishes”, just to name a few.

During the mat time gathering, our tamariki observed some images of all the man-made rubbish that is polluting our sea and harming sea life here in New Zealand and around the world. Our tamariki were surprised to see the amount of and types of rubbish that are being dumped/thrown or blown into the sea - including plastic bags, plastic bottles, drink cans and fishing nets.

This provoked our little ones to think about the activities they love doing at the beach and the impact rubbish would have on this. "We couldn't play in the sand and build sandcastles or swim in the water and that would be really really sad", one child shared. “Where does our rubbish need to go then?”, questioned our kaiako and they responded by saying, "Take it home with us and put it in the bin or put it in a rubbish bin at the beach". Ka pai tamariki, that's right!

Our little ones also enjoyed participating in a recycling game at mat time where the recycle bins all had a different symbol such as glass/cardboard/plastic rubbish, used clothing, food scraps, and books. Each of our tamariki had a hand full of cards and as a group, they worked together to see which recycle bin the items belonged to. The communication between our little ones was awesome to hear, and as they found some of the items a bit trickier than others, they had to have discussions to come to a decision about which recycle bin it belonged to.

To further support our tamariki's emergent learning on being kaitiaki/caretakers of the sea, a lovely lady from the Tauranga City Council came to speak with us about recycling rubbish and caring for our waterways and the sea. She is part of the Resource Wise schools program, which is a great program that we at Buckle My Shoe are part of and have achieved a silver ranking in.

Her visit involved our tamariki engaging in a fantastic game called the 'Great Waste Race'. She began by capturing our tamariki's attention with a range of images relating to the rubbish in our sea and oceans around the world. She also spoke with our little ones about how the rubbish made the fish, sharks, whales, dolphins, turtles and other sea creatures really sick.

She showed our tamariki a couple of images of drain tops; one had a picture of a blue dolphin and the other a blue fish and asked them if they had seen these before. Some of our tamariki responded by saying 'Yip, I've seen them, they are along the road and in the car park at the supermarket". She asked our tamariki if they knew what went down these drains, and they responded "Yip water, rainwater". Tino pai tamariki, well done!

The next question was where does this water go to? Well, that was a little harder to answer, so the lovely lady explained that only clean rainwater should go down these drains as they go straight out to sea. She then asked our tamariki another question, 'What do you think would happen if we put dirty, soapy water or rubbish down these drains"? Our tamariki responded by saying ,"The fish and the other sea creatures would get all sick and die".

It was then time to play the Great Waste Race. Hooray! Our tamariki created two teams and raced against each other, putting their newly acquired and prior knowledge to the test as they sorted the different rubbish items into the right recycle bin. There were plastic straws, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, paper, tin cans, empty bottles with an image of a skull and cross bone on (our tamariki thought the pirates had left their rubbish behind) and food waste (apple core). Our teams had finished sorting their piles of rubbish, and there were only two buckets left in front of each team - one containing clean water and the other dirty water.

Grabbing the buckets was the easy part, as our tamariki discovered they had to stop in front of the recycle bins and think really hard about which bin they were going to tip their buckets of water into - was it going into the clean water bin or the dirty water bin? The lovely lady suggested that they look at their buckets again to see if it was clean - okay to go into the fish drain and out to sea. Or, really dirty and needed to be treated first. With a little bit of time to think, our little ones chose the correct bin and poured their water out. Our little ones also discovered that when they help their mummies and daddies wash the family car, this should always be done on the grass, so the dirty soapy water doesn't end up going down the drains and out to sea.

These discussions and activities are only the start of Sea Week for our little ones. Stay tuned to see what other fun experiences they get up to! 😊