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Rūaumoko's walk
The earthquakes and tsunami scare that we had recently has provided us with a wonderful opportunity to learn a little bit more about our Maori legends, investigating these natural phenomena through a bicultural lens.
The children were full of discussions around the recent earthquakes and the possibility of a 'big wave', so I set to work researching how I could explain these in a simple and understandable way and 'Rūaumoko's walk' by Rawiri Andrews, James Graham proved to be the perfect book.
What a wonderful story that identifies Papatuanuku and Ranginui's unborn child! Rūaumoko, yet to be born, twists and turns inside his mother's tummy and it is his movements that causes the earths rumblings. Maori legend says that Rūaumoko is responsible for all the stirrings beneath the earth, the rumblings of earthquakes, the molten hiss of volcanoes and the inevitable rolling change of seasons.
The children were very confident in sharing their earthquake knowledge, confidently showing me how they could DROP, COVER & HOLD! What a great opportunity to practice our earthquake drill!
Our discussion naturally moved to how an earthquake can cause a 'big wave' (tsunami) and as always, we just had to test out our theories so we headed outside to fill up the water trough and create some tsunami waves!
Some of our BestStart whanau live close to the ocean and already knew that if an earthquake was big and long then they should move to higher ground, up a hill or as far away from the sea as possible...just until it was safe and Rūaumoko is calm again.
I love how inquisitive our children are, how eager they are to learn, test out their working theories of the world and to share their cultural knowledge with each other.
We are truly a community of learners!