📚 Unit Plans → 🎒 Starting School (0-3)
Years 0–3 Cross-curricular

Nau Mai ki te Kura — Starting School (Y0-3)

A playful, safe, and warm introduction to the magic of learning together.

Settling In

For our youngest learners, the first week is all about belonging. We focus on play-based activities that help tamariki feel safe, loved, and curious about their new environment. This pack includes simple routines, stories, and collaborative art projects.

Little Learner Goals

  • 🏠 Belonging (Tūrangawaewae)
  • 🎨 Playful Discovery
  • 🤝 Learning Names & Stories
  • 🧸 Safety & Care

Playful Activities

1. Our Home at School

Drawing our whānau and our favourite things. These are used to decorate the room and show that everyone's story is valued here.

  • Tool: Blank paper and colourful crayons!
  • Focus: Every child shares one thing they love about their home.

2. The Name Game Waka

Let's learn names through songs and movement. We imagine we are all on a waka together — how do we help each other row?

  • Activity: Roleplay helping a friend who is feeling shy.
  • Goal: Feeling happy and excited to come back tomorrow!

📦 Junior Resources

📕

My Starting School Adventure Booklet

The five-page keepsake this whole pack is built around — one page per lesson, bound and taken home on Friday. Print single-sided and punch the holes before Lesson 1.

🎵

Waiata for the week

Not supplied here, deliberately. Lessons 1 and 4 use a morning greeting waiata and a pack-up song — use the ones your kura already sings, so tamariki hear the same waiata in the classroom as they do at assembly and pōwhiri.

Kaiako Planning Snapshot

Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions

  • Help tamariki build a sense of belonging by learning names, routines, and classroom expectations through play.
  • Use talk, song, picture books, and collaborative art to strengthen early oral language, confidence, and school readiness.
  • Connect whānau stories, classroom routines, and shared care practices so children can see school as an extension of their relationships and identity.

Paearu Angitu — Success Criteria

  • I can name people and places in my classroom and show what helps me feel safe here.
  • I can join songs, circle time, and shared play activities with support from my kaiako and friends.
  • I can share one thing about my whānau, my interests, or my day using words, pictures, or gestures.

Teacher Planning Snapshot

  • Year level: New entrants to Years 0-3 | Duration: first-week starter sequence | Transition-to-school support
  • Curriculum alignment: Te Whāriki transition practices with strong links into Te Mataiaho Phase 1 oral language, belonging, and wellbeing. This pack foregrounds routines, relationship-building, and communication so tamariki can enter classroom learning with confidence.
  • Mātauranga Māori: Manaakitanga and whanaungatanga are the centre of this pack, not an add-on. Tamariki arrive with whakapapa, whānau stories, and ways of relating that should be welcomed into the room, while tikanga-based routines such as greeting, turn-taking, waiata, and caring for shared spaces teach belonging through practice.
  • Entry support: Keep the first sessions short, visual, and repetitive. Model each routine with a buddy, use photos or symbols for key spaces, and let children respond through movement, pointing, or drawing before expecting extended speech.
  • On-level: Most learners can rotate through the settling-in activities with whole-class modelling, short mat-time discussions, and plenty of teacher narration. Revisit the same songs and routines daily so confidence builds through repetition.
  • Extension: Children who settle quickly can help welcome others, lead a song action, or create an extra classroom-helping job card with an adult. Extension stays practical and relational rather than academic.

Inclusion and Accessibility

  • ESOL / ELL: Use picture cues, gesture-rich songs, first-language support from whānau where possible, and simple repeated sentence frames. Let tamariki show understanding through action before expecting English output.
  • Accessibility: Keep pathways clear, seating flexible, and materials reachable at low height. Visual schedules, sensory-calming options, and hands-on resources help children who are still learning how to navigate the space safely.
  • Neurodiverse learners: Predictable routines matter most for children with ADHD, autism, sensory needs, or separation anxiety. Give warnings before transitions, offer a quiet reset space, and use a consistent adult check-in so readiness and regulation are scaffolded gently.
🔗 Unit Progression & Next Steps

The 5 lessons in this unit, in teaching order:

Pedagogical Foundations | Ngā Tūāpou Akoranga

Starting school is one of the most significant transitions in a child’s life. Three researchers explain why the relational, play-based, and identity-affirming work in this starter pack is as important as any subject content.

Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget
Children aged 5‑7 are in Piaget’s preoperational-to-concrete-operations transition — moving from symbolic play and intuitive reasoning toward logical, object-based thinking. Play is not a break from learning at this stage; it is the cognitive work. The structured-but-playful activities in this unit are developmentally appropriate precisely because they meet children where Piaget’s stage model says they are.
Early Childhood Continuity
Tilly Reedy
Reedy’s Te Whāriki framework emphasised that the transition to school should extend — not rupture — the belonging, wellbeing, and learning relationships built in early childhood. This starter pack’s emphasis on warm relationships, predictable routines, and identity-based activities is a direct application: school begins by honouring who the child already is.
Play as Leading Activity
Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky argued that play is the leading activity of early childhood — not because it is fun, but because play creates the Zone of Proximal Development where children voluntarily operate above their current independent level. The classroom community built in this unit is the social scaffold that all subsequent learning will rely on; the warmth of the class culture is not decoration, it is infrastructure.

→ Explore all theorists at Te Whare Ako — Teaching Theory