The tamariki at Mission Bay Kindergarten were visited by Madeleine from Deaf Aotearoa who taught them some New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). She shared her wealth of knowledge with us, demonstrating how to communicate using our hands, fingers, and facial expressions. 

First, we learned how to greet each other by saying “Hello” and then “Kia ora”. What a surprise it was to learn that te reo Māori words have their own signs apart from their English translation too! Then, we learned how to sign different feelings such as: “happy”, “excited”, and “tired”.  We also learned how to make “hand waves” (shaking our hands up in the air) to signify claps. Next, we also learned to count from one to ten. This was a bit tricky for us since the sign for the numbers were a little different from when we normally count using our fingers. 

As a sign of our gratitude to Madeleine for taking the time to teach us, we sang our “Te Aroha” song while also communicating the words “aroha”(love), “whakapono” (trust), and “rangimārie” (peace) in sign language. 

Learning NZSL has many benefits:

–Children have the opportunity to experience and broaden their understanding of other languages and cultures. 

–Children are using different facial expressions to communicate which are accompanied with a wave hello, a head nod, or a head shake. This will grow their awareness of others’ social gestures as well as their own.