Matariki in Room 3

This week in Room 3 we have been learning about and celebrating Matariki.

We read about Little Kiwi who wakes up the whole forest by running and telling them he can feel "it" coming. All of the forest animals don't know what Kiwi means but at last they come out of the forest and all gasp as they look up into the night sky to see the seven stars twinkling.
They each tell us why Matariki is important to them. It's important to Ruru because of whanau as all of her mokopuna come home to her. Tui enjoys singing and dancing to celebrate matariki. Weka has a feast of huhu grub to celebrate, and the Katipo celebrates by throwing her silk kite into the sky.

We enjoyed reading about Kiwi's matariki.

We've been celebrating Matariki by listening to all the legends as to how the stars got there, reading lots of books, as well as practising our Matariki dance, which helps us remember all of the stars names.

Room 3 singing Matariki star names

We have also been making our Matariki stars.

To make these we started by drawing in crayon, and pressing really hard. We made patterns and made sure there was no white paper showing.

Then we painted over the top of the crayon with black paint, which we left to dry over night.

Once the paint had dried we scratched out our seven Matariki stars. We have each made our own Matariki stories based on the ones we have read which we will put up with our stars!

Happy Matariki everyone!