Future Focus - Early Learning

A little garden, with a whole community behind it! 🌱🤎

For Johanna, creating a baby-safe garden within our Kirikahurangi space has been a vision for a long time! And seeing that vision finally come to life has become something even more special than first imagined.

This is a space designed for our pēpi to be completely immersed in. To reach out and feel. To smell the herbs growing beside them. To taste what they grow. To dig, water, notice changes and eventually experience the pretty incredible process of watching something they have helped care for grow! 🌿

There are so many possibilities for where this learning can go. Vegetables grown from garden to table, herbs making their way into sensory experiences, produce being shared back with our wider community, and plenty of opportunities for our pēpi to begin building a relationship with te taiao through real, hands-on experiences.

Through a Te Whāriki | Mana Aotūroa lens, this is exactly the kind of environment that invites exploration. Our pēpi are learning through their senses, discovering cause and effect, noticing change and beginning to form their earliest working theories about the natural world. And through Mana Whenua | Belonging, they’re also beginning to understand what it means to care for a place that belongs to them, and to be part of something alongside others.

But perhaps the coolest part of this project for Johanna is that our Terrace Views kaiako have jumped in to help bring it to life, and our whānau have generously donated pieces to help build the space too. What started as one person’s idea has become something created by our whole little community! 🥹

And now, just like the garden itself, we’re excited to see where it grows next!

A space that will grow alongside our tamariki, shaped by the hands, curiosity and people who care for it. 🌱🤎

Some of the best professional development happens in the passenger seat! 😂🎤🚗

Welcome to Future Focus Carpool Karaoke! Our slightly less conventional way of bringing our teaching teams together.

The idea is pretty simple. We hit the road, visit all five Future Focus centres and pick up a kaiako along the way. Together, we tour each of our centres, step into different rooms and see firsthand how other teaching teams are bringing their curriculum to life!

Across five centres, there is a huge amount of knowledge, experience and creativity within our own people, and we want to make the most of it.

It might be seeing an environment set up in a completely different way. A routine that’s working brilliantly. A teaching approach that sparks an idea. A resource you hadn’t considered. Or even just having a kōrero with another kaiako that makes you think, “We could try that.” It’s about learning from one another, sharing what works and taking new ideas back to your own whare and teaching team.

And just as importantly, it gives our people the opportunity to build relationships beyond their own centre. To connect, laugh, share ideas and remember that although we work across five different locations, we’re one big team.🤎

A little bit of professional learning. A little bit of whakawhanaungatanga. And a lot of singing 😂🎤