Te Manawa offers free Biodiversity Play and Dino Dig programmes for under-5s

Te Manawa educators Kirsty Porter and Adam Soteria invite you to learn the secrets of the overgrown garden. Photo / Te Manawa

The Te Manawa green space has been busy growing for months, plants and bugs alike thriving, untroubled by the concerns of the human world. A gardener's instinct might be to reach for the weedwhacker, but our learning team has other things in mind.

This month they're running two special programmes for children under 5.

"There are a lot of holiday programmes out there, but there aren't many for parents of younger kids," Te Manawa educator Adam Soteria says. "This was a nice opportunity to cater to them."

Biodiversity Play, on January 18 and 25, is a fun romp in our overgrown garden, disguising what's really an opportunity to learn about biodiversity in our green spaces.

"The garden changes every week," Soteria says. "It's going to be a really nice place – especially in summer – to come and discover how much life is just under our noses."

Kids will take a bug census and see how different kinds of grass strive to outcompete each other.

The idea grew out of the school learning programmes Soteria and the team have been teaching during the year.

"It was a simple matter of adapting them so they can be drop-in and accessible to everyone," he says.

The second programme runs on January 20 and 27, and takes kids into the Dino Dig, which was closed for half of 2021.

"It hasn't seen much use because of Covid, but the Covid Protection Framework and the My Vaccine Pass lets us open the space up again and develop it afresh for a different age group," Soteria says.

Inside the Dino Dig, children can imagine they are archaeologists and dig up real fossils a million times older than them. Shells, teeth and some surprise artefacts you'll be able to take home await beneath the sands.

Each of these programmes runs 10am-11.30am, is free, and no booking is required – you can simply join in. A valid My Vaccine Pass must be shown to enter Te Manawa (children under 12 are exempt).