Celebrating Maori culture

As part of our committment to our Bi-cultural strategic plan which we formulated at the beginning of the year we have continued to take up and make opportunities to extend the children's knowledge of Te Reo and Tikanga Maori as well as our own (the teachers).
The kindergarten celebrated the coming of the Maori New Year - Matariki with waiata (song), reintroduced a haka that we had learnt last year, provided art activities with a Maori focus and we were fortunate to be able to visit Long Bay College to watch a performance by their Kapa Haka Group. The children who went (20 of the 6 hour group) were enthralled by the performance which they all felt was not long enough and they would have liked to see more.

The end of the week saw us all head off to the Auckland Museum to see the Maori Cultural Performance and the Maori Galleries. Travelling over the harbour bridge on the bus was great fun for the children but the real highlight was the performance and being able to meet the performers after the show. We were also able to sing our special Pungawerewere song which we had learnt the previous week for them. What a marvellous way to end the term.

Term two

This has been an extremely busy term with lots happening for the children. The weather has not been so pleasant so favourite activities such as carpentry have not been so readily available and we have had to think outside the square to provide other activities. For a while we moved the train set outside and set it up in a variety of ways which proved very popular.
We continued to support the children's interest in sword making and set up a special sword making box which was well used. the children made a huge variety of swords, some extremely long and more like jousting lances so we also held tournaments for those interested.
Some of the girls were extremely interested in the kind of head wear that women wore during the mediaeval times and made some fantastic hats which proved quite challenging to keep on.

The children's skills in screen printing continued to grow and those that are very competent became the teachers for those who were just learning which was fantastic to see.
A mini project of making clay bead continued on and off throughout the term and we have finally had some threaded onto string alternating with colourful plastic beads. The goal is to use these to make a curtain to hang over the windows by the art sink.
At the end of the term there was a flurry of making going on with children cutting materials to make clothes for themselves or their pets/dolls.