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Mānawatia a Matariki/Maori New Year
During July at BestStart Willowpark we have had lots of fun celebrating Matariki, we have enjoyed lots of star-related art activities including painting, drawing, and playdough as we created our own night sky paintings as well as learning about the names of the stars in the Matariki cluster.
We have been reading and listening to different stories such as “The Stolen Stars of Matariki”, “Flit the Fantail & the Matariki Map”, “Tiny Eyes: The Story of Matariki”, “Te Kāhui o Matariki” and “Tawhirimatea - a story of Matariki”. We also had fun moving our bodies and grooving to the Matariki Macarena. We celebrated together with Whānau enjoying a delicious hangi, ngā tamariki performed waiata and we had fun spending time together.
In preparation for our whānau event ngā tamariki helped to prepare the vegetables for the hangi and they even "practiced" making a hangi in the sandpit - first, we dug the hole, filled it with our rocks, and added the wood for our fire. Israel cautioned us and decided we shouldn’t really light it but that we should just pretend. Ka rawe e hoa, thank you for keeping us safe! At BestStart Willowpark we value celebrating each other's cultures with whakawhanaungatanga being one of our centre learning priorities.