Congratulations to all our wonderful tamariki and whānau - what an amazing time of learning about so many different cultures. Games, national costumes, language and yummy food was experienced for each continent. Our grateful thanks to all our parents who supported their children in sharing their culture. It was fantastic!

We began Cultural Week with Asia on Monday. The students loved sharing their presentation of their cultures with the school. 

Lourde and her mum Abeer showed us some music and dancing from Iraq. 

I was so nervous before we started, but when I was dancing I felt happy!

-Lourde Oshana

My station was rakau and we taught everyone a simple routine. They learned three different tricks and at the end we did the whole routine with music.

- Brea

My station was Suipi. It's a card game where you try to get the most cards at the end of the game. My sister Mckenzy and I led the school on how to play Suipi.

- Monica

On Thursday, we celebrated the cultures of our tamariki from Europe. The children learned about the Italian artist, Leonardo de Vinci, and did a Mona Lisa inspired pop art activity. They also learned a popular ceili dance from Ireland called the Walls of Limerick and played the French game ‘Pétanque’ outside. 

Before we ate the delicious kai made by our European tamariki, each of them stood up in front of the rest of the school and spoke about the country they are from and explained the food they brought in with them.

It felt good, I felt happy. I felt happy because I got to share my culture with other people. 

-Nikodimos

It made me happy because I’m Ethiopian, and my culture is fun. 

-Leul

It was also good that Mum came to watch us share our culture.

- Nikodimos and Leul.  

On Monday, we had Africa and I’m from South Africa. I did a presentation where I talked about the miners and the flag of South Africa. The food was really good. I brought bull tongue. I felt a bit embarrassed because I had to stand up in front of the whole school but I’m proud of my country.

-Tyler

For Africa day, we played gena which is kind of like hockey and we did a slide show teaching everyone about Ethiopia. I wore traditional clothes and so did my family. My brother was there too. I was worried people would think the food was too spicy and they wouldn’t like it but actually a lot of people wanted more.

-Tamiregnaw

I made a slide show about Ethiopia. I talked about its games, languages, the alphabet and the flag. Also we told the school some facts about Ethiopia like its capital city and how old it is. Our families came in wearing traditional clothes and brought traditional food like doro wat and chiko. It felt good teaching everyone about my country because it makes them know me more and where I come from.

-Natan

The work Tom and I put into America was really good and came out really good even though Justin was not at school that day. We did four rotations. One of the rotations was Jazz from Louisiana (New Orleans) because Justin is from there, another one of the rotations was a building competition out of Play-Doh and Lego then we had a game of baseball outside on the court. Then the last rotation was pop culture, which had music, food and fun facts about America. We also had food. We had apple pie that Tom made and I bought some blueberry jelly.

-Cobie

Me and Cobie were leading America's Cultural Day, but we’re not from America, and Justin, the only American student in the school, wasn't able to help because he got badly sick so we worked on what we had talked about. We decided on 4 rotations, Baseball outside, playing Jazz with instruments because New Orleans (where Justin is from) is very into jazz, there was a building competition where you had to try to build the Statue of Liberty out of Lego or playdough, and a pop culture section. In the pop culture section, we planned to have a bit of music playing and board games to play but we didn’t have enough board games so last minute I brought in poker which I surprisingly was allowed to teach the whole school. It didn’t all go to plan because we didn’t have some supplies but all over it went well. I bought apple pies and Cobie brought jelly and I would give the afternoon an 8/10.

-Tom