Learning our Mihi

Learning and Creating our Visual Mihi

As you know we have been working on creating our Mihi.  Each morning, at the start of the day we practise introducing ourselves and then we have been building onto our Mihi by introducing our family members, starting with Mum and Dad.  We have also been drawing visual versions of our Mihi during discovery time. 

We have chosen to start to learn these now because part of Matariki is about learning about your whakapapa and making connections to our ancestors.  So in this time we are connecting with our families and acknowledging them through our Te Reo learning. 

Here we are adding in our Mums and Dads.  We will be adding our grandparents soon. 

We have started to share our Mihi at Rinsing 5s as a way to welcome newcomers into the class.  This is something we are working on embedding, so that all children know their Mihi and can confidently introduce themselves when we have visitors.  

We have been talking about how we are kaitiaki of Te Reo and Tikanga and how it is our job to make sure the culture and language is preserved.  

This week we had 3 students use their bravery and leadership to stand up and say their Mihi (the parts we have learned so far) in front of the class and the Rising 5s.  They spoke with confidence, clarity and pride.  This sense of positive accomplishment was very inspiring for others and we promptly had many more volunteers for next week! We are so impressed with the enthusiasm towards our Te Reo learning and the manaaki that the class is showing.  

Stay tuned as we finish learning our Mihi and connect to some beautiful Matariki art!

Emotions!

Emotions are a tricky thing. They can sneak up on us and they sometimes get the best of us.  In Autahi we have been exploring emotions so we know what they are, how we can spot them, what it's like when we are feeling one and what we can do for ourselves and others when they are feeling certain ways.  

We painted portraits looking in the mirror and seeing what our faces look like when we feel different ways.  We noticed lines in our foreheads and wrinkly eyebrows when we are mad and lines around our mouths when we smile and are feeling happy.  

                        
                     

Then we did some writing about what things make us feel the way we painted. 

We also have been reading the story Kei te Pehea Koe and have been exploring how we can say our emotions in Te Reo Maori.  

We also thought about what things make us happy, sad, angry and proud and we created these posters.

We had some language practise where we practised asking,

"Kei te pehea koe?" 

We also practised responding,

"Kei te pukuriri au!" 

We have some gumboots in our class that our called our "Empathy Boots" because they help us figure out how others are feeling while we literally "put ourselves in someone else's shoes!"

We had to design our boots, so we all did some drawings and Tori helped us decorate them.

Then we had some practises putting ourselves in the Empathy Boots to trial out how we might feel if certain things happened.  We practised being actors and acting out what the different emotions would look like. 

We are working hard to show empathy in Autahi, but first we need to sort out how others are feeling and what we can do to help!

Watch this space for more because this is definitely something we'll be coming back to quite a lot!