Regulars at a Papamoa early childcare centre don't make a big deal about the advanced age of one of their part-time teachers.
Former maths teacher Mike Carter works part-time at The Blue Cottage as part of a teaching course.
Mike Carter - a Bay of Plenty man studying early childhood teaching at 86 Photo: Supplied
He sees his job there as not to educate kids but to show them it's fun to socialise.
"I'm here, I'm somebody who has fun with them, who will sit in the sandpit and say 'Yep, I'd like a cup of tea, please'."
For over 40 years, Mike was a mathematics teacher in schools around the Waikato and South Auckland.
Since retiring to the Bay of Plenty with his wife Barbara, he now spends time with children under five - usually in two or three-hour stints that leave him feeling "refreshed and energised".
In the first five years of life, children experience enormous change, Mike says, but in a different direction than the one he finds himself facing.
"We're going downhill but they're going uphill."
Apart from tooth problems and incontinence "hovering in the background", Mike reckons he has more in common with his young charges than you might think, though.
He brings his ukulele along to the Blue Cottage and has taught the kids to appreciate singing old classics like When the Saints Go Marching In, Rock Around The Clock and She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain (with properly timed 'yee-ha's),
"You get them to enjoy socialising - putting lego together, painting, singing 'yee ha!'"
