Bright Beginnings Glendowie

What is happening? 

We were curious about our children, kaiako and whānau thoughts and perspectives regarding respect and how it relates to ‘Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds’. We asked them the following questions:-

How do you encourage your child(ren) to respect their own well being?

How can we look after and respect the well being of our team?

How can we respect our own well being and look after our bodies and our minds?

Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds

Looking back to our last two centre wide projects:- ‘Kaitiaki for our World’ (2017) and ‘The Leader in Us’ (2018); it is interesting to note a common thread with the inherent values found within each project. ’Kaitiaki for our World’ focused on sustainability and looking after our environment; whilst ‘The Leader in Us’ centred around how we support, encourage and motivate others. Within these two projects, persistent themes continue to emerge surrounding responsibility and most importantly, RESPECT!

With this in mind we proposed the value of ‘RESPECT’ as an umbrella concept for further exploration and inquiry. As a team, we realised that this would be a perfect opportunity to investigate ideas surrounding the value of Respect and how it applies to our personal well-being.

It seems that we have been investigating from the outwards in:-

Respect for the environment

Respect for others

And now…

Respect for ourselves!

This reflects Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of development where the child develops and forms understandings through their relationships and interactions with the communities and environmental systems surrounding them (Berk, 2013).

According to Te Whāriki (MoE, 2017), the individual child, at the heart of the model is shaped over time and is nested within “contexts and relationships of family, community and wider local, national and global influences. Kaiako participate in, and may influence, some or all of these contexts” (p. 60).