Matariki

In Week 8 we celebrated Matariki.

We learnt that Matariki is the Maori name for a group (or cluster) of seven stars. In New Zealand, these stars can be seen in winter from late May or early June. Matariki happened after the harvest was finished. Maori celebrated Matariki by telling stories, dancing, flying kites and feasting.

For our celebrations we read, discovered, illustrated stories, made leaf art depicting the night sky, made lanterns and had our own feast of pancakes.

To make our leaf art, we looked at pictures of the night sky. We saw that the sky is not just black. It has many other colours like purple, pink, dark blue, light blue, orange and red. We used these colours to paint our leaves. It was difficult because when the paint dried it got got darker and darker. and we couldn't see the difference between the purple. blue and black.  After we painted our base we added glitter. Then we painted the seven Matariki stars.
 

To make our paper lanterns we had to read and follow the instructions in our booklets. This was a good test of how carefully we can read.


Another good test was when we made pancakes on Friday. First we had to read the recipe and decide what ingredients Mrs Arnold needed to buy. Then we had to read the instructions to make our pancakes.

There was lots of maths involved. We needed 1 tablespoon of oil and 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 2 teaspoons of sugar. We had to know the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Our parent helpers were great at showing us.







We also needed one cup of milk and 3/4 cup of flour. Our cups didn't have markings on them so we needed to work out how much 3/4 cup was. We've been learning about fractions this term, so at maths time we estimated how much 3/4 was. We compared our estimates with a strip of paper the same height as the cup that was folded into quarters. Some groups were very close with their estimations.