Rapanui

Over the last few weeks we have delved deeper into the meanings and stories behind our Cultural Narrative, including Rapanui (Shag Rock) and Tuawera (Cave Rock) as part of our Aotearoa NZ histories inquiry. The students in Rapanui iti (Years 0-1) have been learning about Rapanui and have started to create some lovely artwork of the Rapanui landscape. The students in Rapanui Nui (Years 1-2) have learned about one of the stories about Tuawera. They worked in groups to create a story book about Tuawera with great illustrations and shared these stories with our Rapanui iti students. We are now continuing to look at our school cultural narrative and look further into Te Onepoto (Taylor’s Mistake) and Awaroa (Godley Heads). We have also been creating art for our Inquiry learning. We have created some Rapanui silhouettes and Tuawera pencil drawings. These are linked to the learning we have done about the Sumner School cultural narrative. Next week we will begin to look at the story of Tamatea Pōkai Whenua. 

Tuawera

In our Aotearoa New zealand Histories Inquiry we have been learning about Māori adornment for special ceremonies. We are making our own taonga -necklace adornment. We have chosen and sketched our design and are making this out of air dry clay and then painting it to look like pounamu. One of our teachers Emma Harris also shared her own jewellery making process with the children. Continuing with Māori adornment we are making our own Māori cloaks and have Alice Spittle Artist visit to share her work with our children.

In our Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Inquiry we went to Tūranga library where we had two workshops with the Te Ao Māori staff about the Aoraki creation story and Kāhui Whatu- a sculpture by Fayne Robinson. We also learnt how to use the digital Discovery wall, using our time to look up Rapanui, Cave Rock, Tuawera, and Sumner School. As part of our day we also completed a scavenger hunt to learn about the Tūranga Cultural Narrative art and sculpture in the building. Information on the Cultural Narrative can be found on the Tūranga library website. Following up from our trip and looking at the sculptures where we learnt about rocks that early Māori used, we have a school rock collection that we are sorting and learning about.

Te Onepoto

We have had a fun day creating our Waka Hourua, which are the waka Early Polynesians travelled over to New Zealand in. This is linked to the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum which is our focus for the term. The tamariki were so engaged, using their problem solving and collaboration skills to create amazing Waka Hourua which floated and sailed through the school pool. We are also creating stop motions of the New Zealand origin story and two other Maui myths.

Awaroa

Before we embark on our end of term creating and sharing of what we have learnt so far, we have just completed a rotation of three lessons looking more deeply at aspects of navigation that were undertaken by early Māori explorers. The first lesson looked at using the stars, moon and planets to navigate by. In the second lesson our tamariki looked at how the wind, sea and clouds were used to cross by the early voyagers to cross the Pacific. The third lesson looked closely at how early Māori used wildlife such as migratory birds and sealife to navigate by. We have continued to use our reading lessons as a way of filling our knowledge ketes. Reading texts and follow up tasks this week have been on the subject of Māori Clothing and Adornments and Pre -European Māori Shelters, next week’s reading texts focus on Mahinga Kai. We are excited to see what aspect of our term’s learning that our ākonga choose to use as a focus for their creative projects that we will be sharing at our end of term open morning.