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Matariki 2022 at BestStart Warrington
This year I had the joy and privilege of designing the Matariki wall for my classroom and I was super excited to get given this opportunity. Knowing where to start was the initial challenge as there is such a wealth of information out there and also so many different ways of approaching the topic of Matariki.
I found an awesome website called The Kiwi Conservation Club (kcc.org.nz) which had a very clear explanation about each of the nine stars and I used this as the basis of my design. First of all, the tamariki and I made star outlines and decorated these with lots of glitter (of course!) and then we glued a picture of what each of the stars represented in the centre of each star. This gave the tamariki a very clear visual representation of the meaning and purpose of each star to look at on the wall.
Next, in the lower part of the wall, I created a star background and photographed the tamariki standing against it. I then cut out their photos and glued them onto the background to give the appearance that the tamariki were part of the stars, which of course they are. The tamariki absolutely loved posing for their photos against the wall and they still love to look at it and point out themselves and their friends, and they came up with some very creative poses without any staging from me. Even now, they often pop against the wall and ask me to take a spontaneous photo of them or take me by the hand and point out their photo to me. To finish the design the tamariki and I made stars out of ice-cream sticks which we painted and decorated with lots and lots of glitter (of course!).
The tamariki also designed some star pictures using some of the left-over resources and pictures from the design and this turned into a separate wall display. They also added little embellishments to the main wall, such as a castle, a ghost and a moon.
The tamariki and I had so much fun and learnt so much making this wall display and we can’t wait until Matariki 2023!