The Growing Minds Hub

A lot of us worry we're not doing enough "proper" learning at home, and then can't work out where they'd even fit it in. Between school, extracurriculars, dinner, and just getting everyone through the day, there's rarely a spare hour for worksheets and sitting at a table.

But I Spy in the car, car cricket on the drive to training, Bananagrams on the weekend, your kid discussing with you about why the tower fell down. It's all going in. And honestly, a question does just as much as any game. "How do you reckon they built that?" in the two minutes you've got is plenty.

You're probably already doing more than you think.

Read the full post on our blog: https://www.growingmindshub.co.nz/blog/post/166763/youre-already-doing-it/

At Growing Minds Academy, the activities are always in service of something bigger, the lifelong skills we're actually here to build: connection, confidence, curiosity, creativity, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and resilience. The different way of learning is just how we get children practising them in real situations.

It's been a full few weeks with that in mind. We settled back into term, picked empathy as our new focus, and had the children draw somebody else's shoe as a way of thinking about things from someone else's side. Since then there's been a chat about what makes a good friend, and an SPCA webinar that turned into a proper deep dive on what makes an animal warm or cold blooded, plus one unforgettable question from the group: do chickens have tongues? There was also a Bird Beak Challenge that chopsticks and sesame seeds made surprisingly tricky, and a day out at Lake Ōkāreka with Landcare, birdwatching from the hide and getting to see a predator trap in action.

A massive thank you to Landcare Okareka and the SPCA New Zealand for giving their time and knowledge to the children over these past few weeks, and to Waiariki FC for sharing their clubrooms with us.

PS. Yes, chickens do have tongues, small and pointed, and they use them to help move food around.

Meet Anita, who's supporting Abby with our tamariki at the Growing Minds Academy this term.

She's a Rotorua local with 14 years of primary teaching experience in Wellington and here in our own community, and she's good at helping kids build confidence and figure out what they're capable of. She's got a Bachelor of Science, a Postgraduate Diploma in Primary Teaching, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Digital and Collaborative Learning.

Nicole's on maternity leave but still involved behind the scenes with the educational psychology side of things. While she's away, Anita will be with Abby on Thursdays, helping lead the kids in their learning.

There's a lot of research now on what happens when kids learn in smaller, more flexible environments, and it's stuff we keep coming back to at Growing Minds Hub. Basically, when a learning environment feels safe, kids stop spending their energy on self-protection and start spending it on actually learning, so anxiety settles down and behaviour that looked like a problem often sorts itself out once the underlying stuff changes.

The bit that sticks with us most is that alternative learning doesn't pull kids away from mainstream school, it actually tends to draw them back toward it, because kids who get real, hands-on learning develop a stronger sense of why school matters in the first place, and that sticks with them long after. We've written up the full thing on the blog, linked here: https://www.growingmindshub.co.nz/blog/post/162412/skills-for-life/

This week we went to the supermarket and challenged the GMA kids to find the best value for money across the aisles. We'd spent time beforehand learning that barcodes are actually a kind of language, just lines instead of letters, and that the same logic that organises a library organises a supermarket too. Then we got into the aisles and challenged them to find the best value for money, which sounds straightforward until you're standing in front of a shelf realising the lowest price doesn't always mean the best deal. A huge thanks to the generous checkout operator for letting every single kid have a turn at the till.

We've also been adding a new tool to the thinking skills we've been building over the last few weeks: instead of labelling thoughts as good or bad, we ask whether they're helpful or unhelpful right now. Try it on something low stake first, maybe they're nervous about a sports game or frustrated with homework, and just ask "is that thought actually helping you right now?"

Something we've been thinking about lately is how much of daily life has had the wait quietly removed from it. You can skip the ads, stream whatever you want whenever you want, get an answer to almost anything in seconds. For the most part that's genuinely great, and we're not here to be nostalgic about the days of rewinding a VHS tape.

But it does mean that when something actually requires patience and persistence, the discomfort can hit harder than it might have for us growing up. We see it all the time, that moment where things aren't going to plan and every part of a kid wants to bail on it.

But we also get to see what happens when they don't, and honestly that's the good stuff. Rockets getting rebuilt after they didn't fly, artwork that took way more patience than anyone bargained for, kids quietly noticing when a mate is struggling and just showing up for them. That ability to push through, adjust, and have another crack is one of the most valuable things a kid can build, and it only comes from actually being in those moments, not having them smoothed away.

Next time your kid hits a wall with something, try asking, "What could you change or try differently?" instead of fixing it.

It's usually easier to just do it yourself.

But this week at Growing Minds Academy we handed the challenge over to the kids. Catch a bus. Work out the timetable, figure out the fares, get everyone to the stop in time. The destination was the library, where the kids used the Dewey Decimal System to research their dream destinations and presented clues to see if the group could guess where they'd chosen. One kid didn't pick a country at all but a trip back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. 😄

Kids are more capable than we give them credit for, and every time we do something for them that they could figure out themselves, we take away the chance for them to find out what they're capable of. The supermarket with part of your list. Planning and cooking (or helping cook) dinner. A budget and a job to do. Real responsibility builds that "I can actually do this" feeling.

We've all seen it. A kid puts everything into something and then it doesn't work, and they just shut down. Don't want to try again. Done.

This week at Growing Minds Academy the decorated rockets came straight back down. After weeks of testing, that one stung, so we stopped and just talked about it.

What does your brain say when something goes wrong? The kids wrote it all down in red. "I give up." "It won't ever work." "I'm a big failure." Then in green, what you can say back instead. "I can try again." "Never give up." "I can think of a new idea and improve it."

Worth having that conversation with your own kids sometime. Ask what their brain tells them when something doesn't go right, and share a few of your own stories too. Kids don't often get to hear about the times adults got it wrong.

Every brain has a battery. And by the time most kids walk through the door after school, it's already running low.

When it hits empty, what you see might look like attitude, defiance, or a kid just being difficult. But there's almost always something underneath it. Understanding that doesn't mean letting it slide. It means knowing what you're actually dealing with, which changes everything about how you respond.

Read about the signs to watch for, what to do mid-meltdown, and how to tell the difference between a dysregulated kid and one who's learned that big behaviour gets results.

https://www.growingmindshub.co.nz/blog/post/162411/the-battery-analogy-everyone-needs-to-know/