Working together as a community of learners. Bear Park recently invited parents into our centre to experience and gain a deeper understanding of our current investigation: “Nurturing our Ecological Future”. This was an opportunity for parents to explore their child’s learning environment, to deepen their involvement and interest in their child’s work, and to provide a rich basis for parent-child discussion.
Our current investigation helps children discover the value in an object or material and understand its potential for multiple purposes. An experience was created by our teaching team and extended to parents to involve them in the notion that reusing and repurposing materials could result in unlimited possibilities—including the creation of new objects such as musical instruments.
“A determining contribution to children’s construction of knowledge, we believe, is the involvement of the adult, not only because the adult legitimizes children’s knowledge and curiosity, but also because the adult values and addresses children’s investigations with supports and suggestions.”
— Roberta Badodi, The 100 Languages of Children
Parents were encouraged to repurpose recycled materials into musical instruments that would eventually become part of the library of resources their children would use within their learning space. By working together, our teaching team discussed the principles of the current investigation and encouraged parents to offer their own ideas and thoughts into the creative process.
We documented the whole process with photos and when we showed the photos to our tamariki, they expressed great excitement in seeing their parents/whanau creating the very items that they are now using in their learning environment.
This experience nurtured the close relationship between the parents/whanau and the centre by providing parents/whanau with the opportunity to take a new and more inquisitive approach toward their child’s learning experience.
Similarly, our tamariki became even more curious, interested, and confident in their achievements with the “Nurturing our Ecological Future” investigation from the active support and engagement of their parents/whanau.
