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.