Establishing a certificated puna kōhungahunga (Māori language playgroup)

"Te piko o te māhuri Tera te tipu o te rakau - The bow in the branch is indicative of how the tree will grow."

'Establishing a Certificated Puna Kōhungahunga' is a guide for whānau who want to set up a puna kōhungahunga.

Ministry of Education staff are available to work with whānau to set up a puna kōhungahunga and to get certification. Their focus is on quality early childhood education programmes for children.

If you are interested in setting up a certificated puna kōhungahunga contact your local Ministry of Education office.

What does it take to run a puna kōhungahunga?

Running a puna kōhungahunga is like running other community events or groups. The puna kōhungahunga will need enough people to share the workload and make sure all the jobs are covered. Identify the strengths and interests of the people within your group.

All certificated puna kōhungahunga will need to give the Ministry of Education the name of someone who can be contacted about anything to do with the puna kōhungahunga. The Ministry will also need a person to contact about funding matters. This person will receive funding claim forms and information.

The same person can be the contact for both jobs.

Things to ask yourself and your group about running a puna kōhungahunga:

  • Have we got a group of people who are interested in meeting and making decisions about what happens at the puna kōhungahunga? For some puna kōhungahunga this will be all the whānau who attend and for others this will be a small group of whānau
  • Have we got people to keep records of enrolments and attendance?
  • Have we got people to take on different roles such as equipment librarian, and roster secretary?
  • How can we create and run a programme that offers tamariki interesting and stimulating learning opportunities, and have we got people to take responsibility for the learning environment?
  • Who will do cleaning, morning teas, rosters and other day to day running tasks? How will we organise the finances and funding to make sure sufficient funding and the required documentation is in place?

More information about funding and managing finances is on Managing the Finances.