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Matariki at Te Papa
Matariki, the Māori new year, is a time to gather with whānau (family) and hoa (friends) to reflect on the past, celebrate the present, and plan for the future. We have been talking about Matariki and over the next two weeks, we will be doing a lot of activities to celebrate it. In July, we took our tamariki to Te Papa for a Matariki tour. They were so excited! Ihaka talked to us about how to find the Matariki whetu (stars). Matariki rises in winter. From early June, before sunrise, look to the North-east horizon. Find the constellation Tautoru or Onion's belt (sometimes also called 'the pot'). Trace a line northwards from the three stars of Tautoru and look for a faint sparkle of tiny dots, about the same width as Tautoru is long. This is the Matariki star cluster. It can also be seen during the summer months in this location of the sky after sunset. After Ihaka's Matariki tour, we had a look at the three whare upstairs, used for sleeping, storing kai, and holding a gathering. The first whare is for sleeping. The Maori use special materials to build the sleeping whare and hot stones to keep the space warm. Our tamariki also got into the whare to see what it looked like inside. We were so lucky! In the end, we watched a short show about the Pacifica people coming to Aotearoa on their Waka - the tamariki loved the way the show was presented, holograms would show up on the boat and act/speak, it was quite clever and it gave the tamariki a sense of what it would be like to be on a waka for a long voyage. Some tamariki made connections to the Moana Movie :)