Celebrations 2020
What is Matariki?
Matariki is the Maori New Year. Matariki represents the rising cluster of stars that are visible in the pre-dawn sky every winter. It is celebrated in New Zealand every year between the months of June and July.
Matariki is a time where you come together with your friends and whanau, where you can reflect on the years before, celebrate the now and plan for the year ahead.
How we celebrate Matariki:
This year at our small West Auckland childcare centre, we are celebrating Matariki between 20th June and 15th July 2020. On Thursday 2nd July, it was decided we would have a feast together and all participate in cooking a delicious vegetable and chicken soup for our lunch. The vegetables that were brought in by all our whanau signifies the food sources provided to us by Papatuanuku.
All the children were excited about bringing in their vegetables for the soup, which they then helped to chop up in preparation for the soup. There was lots of discussion about the different types of vegetables we had and their different textures – mostly about how hard some of the potatoes, kumara, pumpkin and carrots were to chop. All the children persisted as they chopped up the vegetables into bite sized pieces and added them to the pot ready to be cooked.
Fast forward a couple of hours later and our delicious soup was ready to be shared for lunch, along with some freshly baked bread rolls.
Check out our video of the children participating in this experience and read some of the comments from the children about their meal…
Watch this space on more learning about Matariki: The Maori New Year.
Our quality early childcare centre located in Te Atatu South, West Auckland currently has limited under two year old spaces available. For more information on the services we provide contact us today.
