Our Kowhaiwhai Pattern

Our Kowhaiwhai Art

In He Kakano ( senior Māori group) this year we have been learning about different kowhaiwhai patterns and what their meanings are.

This term our He Kakano group had to choose a kowhaiwhai pattern to draw and paint or create our own kowhaiwhai pattern. We have chosen to work together to create our own kowhaiwhai pattern. We figured doing an animal in the middle would be a good ideawith koru patterns as a border, then we painted it.

To the left we have our full traditional design. The honu or turtle symbolizes a navigator in the moana with the traditional pattern around the edges which represents the waves.We chose this pattern because the traditional colours pango, whero and māare known to work together to get the job done. The blue paint isthe blue moana. Our whole design means, the turtle in our moana  helped navigate waka to Aotearoa.

We enjoyed doing this task of painting and creating our own design for our kowhaiwhai pattern. We believe that we did a good job of our mahi toi and took our time with it, with a great outcome.

This is an image of our kowhaiwhai art Mackenzie and I designed, created and displayed.