Harakeke and Weaving

This lesson followed on from our lesson on Rongoā (Māori medicine).

We looked at the importance of Harakeke (Flax) to Māori and the customs and beliefs that go with it. 

We learnt that Karakia (prayers) are said before cutting the outer leaves (tūpuna- grandparents). That you never cut the rito (child)- the inner small new growth leaves. You also never harvest harakeke when it is raining.

Māori believe it will bring bad luck if  the correct protocol (custom) is not followed.

During our lesson we learnt lots of Māori words to do with Harakeke and weaving. We worked in pairs/small groups to match sentences with key words. 

But the fun really began we we got to do some weaving of our own. We used black corrugated card, plastic needles and twine. 
Look at our creations. 
'This has been the most fun ever' -Cohen Room 17
'This is the most fun thing you've done with us, even better than Kahoot'- Jose Room 17








     

Room 16 Maori Learning- Friday Week 7

Today Room 16 were learning how to weave. Mrs Hood gave us all a piece of corrugated black card and we glued some white grid paper on the back. We got a plastic needle and poked all the grid holes through. Then we chose some red or green thread. We threaded our needle and poked it through the holes. On the back we made a vertical pattern and on the front a diagonal pattern.

 Some of us found it a little tricky. We asked each other for help and Mrs Hood also helped us. 

We all had lots of fun. Look at our weaving.  

By Mahalia

 

Māori lessons

In the first few weeks this term, the Middle School classes have had lessons on Rongoā (Māori Medicine). These lessons were planned to give us information before our trip to Mangere Mountain in Week 7. We will be going to a workshop on our trip that takes us into a Māori Medicinal Garden.

We learnt that many NZ Native plants have great healing powers.

Some plants can be used in many different ways to heal all sorts of problems. 

In small groups, we worked on a scavenger hunt to find information from text. For example, we looked at key words, like toothache, and found all the Native plants that can be used to fix toothache. We also identified what part of the plants were used.

We went for a walk through our Native Walkway and tried to identify which of these plants we have growing at school.

We had lots of fun doing a Kahoot quiz to test our knowledge on what we had learned.