In Miro we celebrated Matariki together by challenging ourselves to complete an activity based around the meaning of each star. Our mission was to colour in all 9 stars by home time last Thursday. 

To celebrate Waiti & Waita we completed an activity to see which plants & animals only live in freshwater, which only live in salt water and which, if any, live in both! We were surprised to find out that Bull Sharks live both!! 

We celebrated Tupuānuku by making our soup. Each child brought in and cut up their own vegetables and added them to our soup. We had so many different vegetables come in; pumpkin, yams, celery, broccoli, carrot, potato, onion & cauliflower. We made 3 crockpots full of soup and every single drop was eaten! We were so impressed at how many who didn’t want any at first kept coming back for more! 

To acknowledge Matariki & Hiwa-i-te-rangi we looked back at the past year and reflected on what we had learnt & enjoyed, who we had made connections with and looked forward to the year ahead by making a wish/goal for the coming year and wrote them on stars to hang up in the classroom. 

Waipuna-ā-rangi & Ururangi were acknowledged by creating a wind and rain model to hang in the window. Each child chose to either colour a small sheet of paper in blue or grey and then it was laminated. They then cut out raindrops or korus to represent the wind and then the teachers hung it in the window. 

Tupuārangi is the star linked with food from the sky/trees. We looked at the trees in our school that produce food and tried to sketch them. 

Finally, to acknowledge Pōhutukawa, the star that is connected to reflection and those who have passed, we created the Matariki constellation. While we were making our constellation we talked about family members who we missed and remembered some fun times we had with them. We used our cardboard roll, cellophane, rubber bands and torch to create a projection of the Matariki cluster and had lots of fun seeing it on the classroom walls and tables. 

Student voice: 

Lincoln - I enjoyed the soup! I’m not sure how much I actually had but it was more than four bowls! 

Eli - definitely the soup! It’s healthy and it’s good.

Liam - the soup was my favourite part! 

Ella R - I liked the torch activity, it was really cool. 

Charlotte - I liked the torch activity. 

Iona - The soup was good because it tasted nice. 

Isla - I liked how we made the star spotter. 

Amy - I liked the soup.