Matariki kites and telescopes

When we read the book, Matariki, we found that people traditionally make kites at this time.  We made our own kites and decorated them in traditional Maori colours of red and black.  Once they were finished we had to wait patiently for the field to open so we could test our kites.  Eventually the rain stopped, the sun and wind dried the field . . . and we were off!  We had to run as fast as we could to make a slip stream for our kites to fly in.

The telescopes worked best when we looked up towards the light.

The whole class read the book, Matariki.  We compared the things we do at Matariki and New Year; some reading groups used Venn diagrams and some groups used Tcharts to make their comparisons.  We made the constellation of the Seven Sisters on black paper using a drawing pin when we made our telescopes.  Next we researched a suitable Maori design to decorate our telescopes online. When they were finally finished, we looked through our telescopes to see what we could see.