Last week I set up a creative experience for the children to create star mobiles representing the Matariki new year. It incorporates the seven stars, also know as the Seven Sisters.
Following our Matariki teaching guide, I showed the children the activity in the book and we began collecting the things we needed, including coloured paper, cut outs of stars. string, pieces of cut up straw, glue, glitter and the laminator. Zoe, Donnagh, Mollie, Hannah and Ruby W all chose what colour they wanted each size star to be and began decorating them with glitter. We did this part before lunch, as our stars needed time to dry before we could laminate them. After lunch we continued creating our star mobiles. It was a long activity that needed concentration and careful attention. The children worked brillantly to create their mobiles and put their own personal touches on it. What Donnagh enjoyed the most was cutting his stars out. He had mastered a great cutting technique with the scissors. Ruby wanted to laminte everything she could get her hands on, including the string! She confidently fed her stars (and others) into the laminator. Mollie was focusing more on her fine motor skills with threading the hole punched star on to the string, followed by a tube of straw then another star, and so on. Hannah enjoyed putting a range of coloured glitter on her stars and talking about the different colours. She enjoyed feeling the little bumps the glitter made after they were laminated. The mobiles were a huge success and the children were very proud of what they made. I have displayed them in the art room, above the kai tables if you want to check them out!
The children were engaged in a project that had many different learning outcomes, including: exploring astronomy with a bi-cultural focus, creative arts and expression, perseverance, fine motor skills, using a range of medias, working individually along side a small group of peers etc.
"Matariki is a celebration of culture, language,spirit and people"
Ainslee
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