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.

Turangawaewae Work

For the past couple weeks Room One and Room Eight have been learning about what our turangawaewae's are. When we did this we were trying to show a place or places you think you stand or feel belonged or good at.  

What our classes had to do was to pick two places or one we thought we belonged at or we thought we stood or even one place. We had to draw these on paper then on a type of thicker paper close to card.We sketched them out and Ms Kemp (Room Eight's teacher) checked our work then we could move onto painting. I started painting my artwork but I wanted to add something cool to my artwork so I decided to add real Kaiteriteri sand to my art. 

On the left in this picture is a painting of Kaiteriteri Beach close to Motueka. My family and I love to come here it is a really nice place to go and we go here every year. I also have family there and we love to see them once a year or even more.

On the other side of the Kaiteriteri painting on the right is a painting of the Greymouth hockey turf. I chose this as one of my turangawaewae's because I have been playing hockey since I was allowed and I could. I loved to play small sticks when I was little with my little brother Jack and I am still playing hockey now in collegiate.  I enjoy hockey and I love the sport and I feel like I belong in this certain team  I am in.

Maui legends

As part of Matariki we re- read the legends of Maui. We then retold a legend and created artwork. Below is my work. 

Jennae: How Maui Slowed The Sun

Maui and his four brothers had no time to do their crops or to do their garden, or even when they have done their hard work they didn’t even have time to play. Maui wanted to do something about it because the sun was just going too fast. Maui and his four brothers made a plan to try and slow down the sun. Maui and his brothers decided to make magical platted ropes to capture the sun and make it slow down. Maui and his brothers had set off to find the sun at night, paddling for miles. When they got to where the sun was  it  was coming out of its hiding place. When it had arose more out of his hiding place Maui and his four brothers threw the ropes over the sun and pulled it down. Maui had caught  the sun and slowed the sun down. The sun had agreed with Maui to slow down.

Retold by Jennae