At Matata Early Learning Centre, we began working with Building Blocks in 2017. For our Smile Block we focused on what we could do to impact the oral health of our tamariki.
Manager, Ronda says; “Our kaiako completed a self-review to look at what they were currently doing and what they could do to improve. This inspired us to update our policy.”
“At our service, tamariki bring in lunchboxes. A major change we put in place was around sugary drinks or lollies brought in from home. We used this as an opportunity to support whānau around the impact of these ‘treats’ on the health of their tamariki. After consultation with whānau, if these items came along in a lunch box we would have a conversation with whānau and return the ‘treats’ to them when they went home. Alongside this policy change, we also created a sugary drink display to raise awareness with tamariki and whānau about just how much sugar there is in these different drinks. We also participated in the BOPDHB Annual Oral Health challenge, providing a portfolio of evidence to show the activities we were doing to promote oral health.”
In our environment, we made further changes by purchasing a water cooler. We saw that our tamariki enjoyed being able to get chilled water to drink. Their interest in the new water cooler provided opportunities for our kaiako to talk more with the tamariki about drinking water and eating healthy kai.
Our kaiako were also encouraged to be active role models in modelling healthy eating. One staff member took a more in-depth look at healthy eating and oral health following a line of enquiry for her teacher registration portfolio. We had staff and whānau doing healthy cooking demonstrations with tamariki. We also found some great information about healthy lunchbox ideas that we could share with tamariki and whānau. We noticed that some of our tamariki didn’t have enough kai in their lunchboxes. So we have now made sure that we always have a supply of healthy kai available, like fruit and crackers, that we can give out to those tamariki who need it.
Building Blocks was a great tool to help us look at how we could made changes in lots of ways. After changing our policy, it brought about a change in our environment as we started removing sugary drinks and lollies, and installed the water cooler. We saw kaiako, whānau and tamariki given opportunities to learn more about sugary drink and healthy kai and become advocates for their own health. All of these changes have helped to embed a new culture for our centre that we hope will be more sustainable and create some great healthy habits.