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At Northland Kindergarten Association, we know how important communication is in our tamariki’s early years. That's why we created Talk With Children, a Northland-wide movement encouraging adults and tamariki to connect through everyday conversation,
At Northland Kindergarten Association, we know how important communication is in our tamariki’s early years.
The conversations children have, the stories they hear, the questions they ask and the time adults spend listening all help shape how they understand the world and connect with the people around them.
That's why we created Talk With Children, a Northland-wide movement encouraging adults and tamariki to connect through everyday conversation, play and shared moments.
The idea behind Talk With Children is simple: when we talk more with children, their language, confidence and connection with others grows.
The new Talk With Children website is designed to be a resource hub for parents, whānau, educators, early learning services, and community organisations, where you can find a collection of practical tools, games, prompts and ideas to support more talking, playing, reading, and connecting.
Through our work across 25 kindergartens, we see every day how much children learn through conversation and connection.
Our Speech and Language Therapists played an important role in shaping this initiative. They wanted to help strengthen Northland children’s language skills and give all tamariki the opportunity to develop strong communication foundations.
Early childhood is a critical time for language development, but supporting children's communication doesn't need to involve complicated activities or add more pressure to busy families.
Some of the most valuable opportunities happen naturally – like chatting while making breakfast, singing together in the car, sharing a book, listening to them explain their latest game and joining in with their play.
These everyday interactions give children opportunities to hear and use language, share their ideas, ask questions, listen and respond.
We created Talk With Children as a movement for Northland, shaped by the families, communities and organisations that support tamariki across Te Tai Tokerau.
We want to make everyday communication feel simple and achievable for everyone.
Talk With Children encourages adults to:
At the heart of the movement is something we believe is incredibly important: every child deserves to feel heard, understood and included.
Talk With Children was created by Northland Kindergarten Association as a way of sharing what we see and value in our kindergartens with whānau and communities across Northland.
NKA is a not-for-profit organisation with 25 kindergartens throughout Northland. We provide quality, fees-free early learning for up to 30 hours a week, 48 weeks of the year, with 100% qualified and registered early childhood teachers.
Our kindergartens also have access to specialist support, including Speech and Language Therapists and Early Intervention Advisor services.
While Talk With Children began with NKA, it belongs to the wider Northland community. We want to work alongside whānau, early childhood services, health providers, educators, libraries and community organisations to help make everyday communication a natural part of family life.
We don't need perfect conversations, structured learning activities or lots of extra time.
Sometimes, it's simply about putting down the phone, joining your child in their play, asking a question, listening to their answer or sharing a story together.
These small moments help children grow their language, confidence and relationships, while building the foundations for a lifetime of communication and learning.
That's what Talk With Children is all about.
Learn more about Talk With Children here.
