At times, learning just comes from nowhere!
We were talking about the name of our city (Christchurch) and some Weka learners were confusing it with of the name of our country (New Zealand). So we looked at a map of New Zealand and pointed out where our city, Christchurch, was on the map.
The map we used happened to have the names of the North and South Island in Maori (Te Ika a Maui and Te Wai Pounamu). We talked about what these meant in English (The fish of Maui and The Waters of Greenstone). I remembered that we had a special piece of Pounamu in our office foyer which was gifted to the school when the new office was officially opened many years ago.
The children in Weka were interested in seeing the piece of Pounamu, so we all tramped across to the office to have a look at it. While we were there, we read a book about Taonga (precious things) and we talked about the fact that Pounamu is taonga.
When we returned to class, we found a book containing the legend of 'The Fish of Maui'. The Weka learners were really into finding out more about Maui. Over the next few days, we read lots of stories about Maui.
To celebrate our new learning about Maui, the children created amazing paintings of some of the characters they had discovered and learned about.
Here are pictures of them being created. I will take photos of the finished products which look really incredible.
