The sand is home: Playing the ways of Kiribati

Abstract

Children draw on their familiarity with the everyday practices of their families in play. In this article, we explore family interpretations of one child’s (Mee) play from a larger qualitative study of the everyday experiences of newly settled families in an Aotearoa New Zealand playgroup. Mee’s encounters with sand and flowers in the playgroup connected to her early experiences in Kiribati, where she lived with her grandparents during her first year. Mee’s mother, a participant-researcher in the study and co-author of this paper, and Mee’s grandmother, Tane, informed the research process with their intimate knowledge of Mee’s lived experiences, the Kiribati language and their family’s everyday practices. We share two key moments in our research collaboration, one during data collection and another during data analysis, that illustrate the power of family expertise to better understand the meanings children negotiate in play.