These interconnected mātāpono aronui provide rich contexts for teaching and learning about pattern and relationships in the early years.
Whatumanawa is the mauri/essence of the emotions of children. Nurturing mauri supports children to be open to learning.
We nurture mauri when we create environments that respect the ways children explore pattern and relationships through play, routines and everyday experiences. For example:
- interactions encourage children to notice sameness and difference, and introduce maths language to describe the patterns they create,
- materials enable children to create culturally familiar patterns such as kōwhaiwhai or tapa, and
- routines highlight daily rhythms. For example, children might beat a pahū to signal the beginning and end times of a rolling morning tea period.
Whare has a dual meaning: the home of children and ‘house of learning’. These are not necessarily physical buildings but are ‘houses of knowledge'. Maths has a distinct whare of both Pākehā and Māori knowledge, and it is our role to support children to enter into and explore this whare.
We can support children to explore this whare by creating purposeful environments that encourage children to learn about pattern and relationships through play, daily routines and other activities. For example:
- interactions intentionally highlight and describe related patterns among people, places and things, e.g. commenting that Alex and Jane arrive every morning before Tia arrives by car.
- materials invite children to create patterns through weaving, drumming, or painting, and
- routines use regular cues to help children predict time (daily patterns).
Whānau speaks to the important interpersonal relationships of children. Children develop tuakana teina relationships with people at home, within the early learning centre and in the wider community. Maths connections and relationships also work together as a ‘maths whānau’ such as matching, sequencing and predicting. The mātāpono aronui ‘whānau’ provides a context for children to recognise these connections and relationships.
We can strengthen this context by creating environments that help children to learn about pattern and relationships through play, daily routines and other experiences in relational ways. For example:
- interactions encourage children to look for relationships between pattern concepts such as sequence and repetition,
- materials and space enable children to work together when creating patterns, such as building long constructions with blocks, and
- routines include regular practices (patterns) that encourage tuakana teina relationships to flourish.
Whenua refers to land and also means placenta. Returning the placenta to the whenua when children are born connects them to their land, to Papatūānuku, and to their whakapapa back to atua Māori. The mātāpono aronui ‘whenua’ provides a context for children to make connections to natural areas of collective belonging.
We can strengthen this context by creating environments that encourage children to use the natural world to learn about pattern and relationships through play, daily routines and other activities. For example:
- interactions support an awareness of patterns and relationships found in nature,
- materials from the natural world are available for children to make patterns or prints, and
- routines respond to seasonal shifts.
