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Waiata with actions for Matariki

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Activities for schools

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Written by a Waikato whanau from their whanau knowledge

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Astronomer Te Kōkau Himiona Te Pikikōtuku's account of his people's Matariki tradition has been recorded by his great grandson Dr Rangi Mātāmua in his new book Matariki, The Star of the Year.

The Waikato University academic took on the challenge of publishing the 400-page manuscript he inherited from his father Timi Rāwiri, Te Kōkau's grandson, in 1995.

Matariki is a symbolic cluster of stars that holds a number of traditions for Māori, the most significant being that it marks beginning of the Māori new year. However, Dr Matamua maintains that there is confusion between the moon calendar and solar calendar.

Mātāmua says, "I'm saying that we're looking for it at the wrong time, too early. Sometimes we are celebrating Matariki at a time when it's still below the earth."

Rangi says we shouldn't buy into the belief that the month we know as Pipiri is June. June is factored using the solar year and Pipiri is factored using the lunar year.

"Most of the time, the right time to find Matariki is at the end of June, or the beginning or middle of July. That's Pipiri on the Māori calendar."

Dr Rangi Mātāmua wants to revive Māori astronomy.

"The stories are there. Since Tāne travelled to the heavens to hang the stars. The stars are a tribe of chiefs. Knowledge is the sustenance of chiefs. Therefore the knowledge is there amongst the chiefs suspended in the sky."

Wishing upon a star, Dr Rangi Mātāmua has a vision that he hopes will attract and educate Māori youth and those passionate about astronomy and the knowledge and wisdom embedded within the stars.

"I want to set up a Māori observatory. The idea is that it will be similar to the traditional observatories while incorporating knowledge from the modern world."

The Museum awards will be held tomorrow night, while the book Matariki - The Star of the Year will be formally launched on Wednesday.

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Dr. Rangi Mātāmua hopes to revive Māori astronomy

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Astronomer Te Kōkau Himiona Te Pikikōtuku's account of his people's Matariki tradition has been recorded by his great grandson Dr Rangi Mātāmua in his new book Matariki, The Star of the Year. The Waikato University academic took on the challenge of publishing the 400-page manuscript he inherited from his father Timi Rāwiri, Te Kōkau's grandson, in 1995.

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Visibility of Puaka and Matariki in the South

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Visibility of Puaka and Matariki in the South

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Written by Alan Glimore, University of Canterbury, Mt John Obversatory Tekapo

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Visibility of Puaka and Matariki - Alan Gilmore UoC

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Society of Maori Astronomy Research and Traditions

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Society of Maori Astronomy Research and Traditions

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Making lanterns and then going on a lantern walk is a beautiful way to acknowledge the coming darkness in late Autumn. I tell the children a story about a gnome making a lantern to keep a spark of sunlight safe all winter long (see post " Easy Felt Gnome Tutorial ").

This story leads us into making our own lanterns. These lanterns are easy for young children to make. As we make the lanterns I teach the children the words to a few lantern songs. Early one evening (just after dusk) we plan a lantern walk with all the daycare children and parents. We light our lanterns and go for a walk around the neighbourhood singing the lantern songs. After our walk we come back to the house for hot chocolate and freshly baked muffins. It's a nice way to come together and celebrate the season.

You will need:

White glue
A Balloon
Tissue Paper (a few colours)
String
Wire or yarn
Candle
Step One:

Mix up some white glue with tap water. The mix should be the consistency of milk.

Step Two:

Blow up a balloon. The size of the balloon will be the size of your lantern. Tie a string onto the balloon so you can hang it during the drying stage.

Step Three:

Tear up your tissue paper into strips or pieces. Soak a piece of tissue paper in the glue mixture and smooth it onto your balloon.

Step Four:

Continue to add wet tissue paper strips over the whole balloon. Leave an open spot around the top of the balloon. Add many layers, choosing different colours. Add extra layers on the bottom of the balloon. You will need the bottom to be strong enough to hold a candle.

We used black balloons which make it very easy to see the spots where the children needed to add more layers. Make sure the tissue paper is completely wet with the glue mixture.

Some of the children were having trouble keeping their balloons from rolling around so we sat the balloon in a cup to keep it steady.

Step Five:

Once the whole balloon is covered hang it to dry. Ours took a day to dry. Once it was dry we discovered some weak spots on two of the lanterns so we added more layers and left them to dry again. If you are interested in creating a design with the tissue paper this is a good time to add your colourful symbol or picture.

Step Six:

If your lantern feels dry and firm to the touch you are ready for the last step. Pop the balloon and remove it from your lantern.

Cut around the opening to create a nice even circle.

Step Seven:

Use a hole punch to punch two holes on either side of the lantern. Use wire or yarn to add a handle.

Add a tea light in the lantern and you are done. Since we have some young lantern makers here (two year olds) I bought fake tea light candles from our local dollar store. This will make our lantern walk safer for the small ones. Make sure to warn small children that these lanterns are delicate.

We turned out the lights and practiced our songs for our lantern walk.
My Lamp
The sunlight fast is dwindling,

My little lamp needs kindling,

Its beam shines far in the darkest night,

Dear lantern, guard me with your light.
I Go with my Little Lantern
I go outside with my lantern, my lantern goes with me.

Above the stars are shining bright, down here on Earth shine we.

The cock does crow, the cat meows, la bimmel, la bammel, la boom.

'Neath heaven's dome till we go home, la bimmel, la bammel, la boom.

I go outside with my lantern, my lantern goes with me.

Above the stars are shining bright, down here on Earth shine we.

So shine your light through the still dark night, la bimmel, la bammel, la boom.

'Neath heaven's dome till we go home, la bimmel, la bammel, la boom.

Enjoy the cool night air, the sweet melody of the children's voices and the magical light that shines from your lantern.

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Tissue Paper Lantern Craft - How To Run A Home Daycare

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Making lanterns and then going on a lantern walk is a beautiful way to acknowledge the coming darkness in late Autumn. I tell the children a story about a gnome making a lantern to keep a spark of sunlight safe all winter long (see post "Easy Felt Gnome Tutorial").

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Do your kids love to create things that glow?

Are you looking for a fun nighttime activity that will get them outside and moving?

Now you can share a lamp-lit evening stroll with your kids, visiting neighbors and connecting with nature, using a lantern they made themselves.

It's old-fashioned fun with a colorful twist.

In this article, I'll show you how to create a lantern out of nothing more than tissue paper, a balloon and glue. Your kids will welcome the night toting their very own light.

Why an Evening Paper Lantern Walk?

Tissue paper lanterns create the opportunity to bring a little beautiful light into your world.

As the day winds down, an evening stroll is a great way to connect with your kids. You can talk and share time together without all of the distractions found at home and reconnect with your neighborhood-the people and animals who share your world. It's a special way to bring the day to a close together.

But how do you tear them (and maybe you, too) away from all the enticing indoor diversions that keep them firmly planted in front of a glowing screen?

This project can help. These lanterns give off another kind of glow altogether, one that you'll be pleased has captured their attention.

Kids love things that light up and glow. When you create tissue-paper lanterns, the kids will be eager to go outside and light the way. As the nights get longer, they won't have to wait until near or after bedtime to see them glow.

This adventure is done in two parts on two different days for twice the family fun.

First, you'll create a tissue-paper lantern. This is a simple and creative activity the entire family can do together regardless of their ages. In my family, making our lanterns has become a fun family tradition. We customize them for the current season or holiday and take a few moments to plan our very special evening walk together.

On another day, after they've had time to dry, you light the lanterns and tour through your neighborhood together. With these colorful lamps to lead your way, friends and neighbors will all stop to chat and ask about them. It's a nice way to connect with your community (and show off your kids' artistic talents!).
You Will Need

Tissue paper in assorted colors and patterns

Medium- to large-sized round party balloons

Bowl to rest balloon in

1 inch (2.5 cm) bristle or sponge paintbrush, one for each person

White glue

8 oz. (250 ml) plastic cups

Coffee filters

Clothespins or twine

Single-hole paper punch

Thick yarn

1 tree branch stick ~2 ft. (61 cm) long per lantern

2 LED tealights per lantern

Preparation Time

1 hour to create

2 days for the lanterns to dry

Activity Time
Evening walk: a half hour or as long as you'd like
Location
Your house, neighborhood or anywhere in your community

Gather these simple materials. You can choose tissue paper in any color or pattern.

Let's get started. If you have ever done decoupage, then you're already familiar with the process.

#1: Prepare Your Materials

Cut the tissue paper into large squares and rectangles. This makes it easier for little hands to work with and easier to curve the pieces around the balloon without too many wrinkles.

Empty 1/4 bottle of glue into each plastic cup. Stir in a tablespoon of water and mix well. Continue to add little drops of water until the glue is thin enough to spread with the paintbrush.

Blow up your balloon to a large size. Find a bowl that's the right size to hold it upright.

With your paintbrush, dab a large area of glue onto the bottom of the balloon.

#2: Build a Coffee Filter Foundation

Place a coffee filter on top of the glue and flatten into place. Brush glue on top of the entire filter, saturating the paper. Make sure to cover the edges with glue.

The coffee filter will create a solid and strong base for our final product since it's thicker than the tissue paper alone.

Place a piece of tissue paper on top of the filter. Brush glue over entire piece of tissue paper, saturating it and covering the edges as you did with the filter.

#3: Cover Your Balloon

Continue to brush a section of the balloon with glue, add tissue paper (smoothing out the wrinkles as much as possible) and coat the paper with glue until the bottom of the balloon is covered.

Alternate colors to give it a fun and festive look and be sure to overlap the edges of each piece of tissue (otherwise, they won't be connected).

As you apply the squares, use slow, steady strokes to brush glue over entire sheets of tissue paper. The wet paper is delicate. If you go too fast, you may tear holes in your lantern.

Continue to add and glue tissue paper up the sides until 3/4 of the balloon is covered.

Keep the top portion of the balloon (near the knot) free from glue and tissue paper so you can get your LED candle inside.

#4: Hang Your Creation Up to Dry

Once you've finished gluing and papering your balloon, take a clothespin or piece of string and pin the balloon to a hanger by its knot.

Use a clothesline, shower rod, hook or chandelier to hang your balloon up to dry.

It may take several days for your creation to completely dry. If you're drying your balloon indoors it will sometimes dry faster (if the room is warm) and be ready overnight.

When the balloon starts to shrink, the lantern may fall off. You'll know it's dry when this happens.

Check after two days to see if your lantern is dry. If it is, and the lantern is still attached to the balloon, cut the top of the balloon off, deflate it and peel it out of the lantern.

When the lantern comes off of the balloon, it will be a little bit dented. It's perfectly okay to gently pop out and smooth over the dents.

#5: Add a Handle

Your next step would be to cut four pieces of yarn that are each 30 inches (75 cm) long.

Using your single-hole punch, punch four holes at the rim of your lantern; one hole in the middle of each side of the rim.

Thread the yarn through the hole and then bring it up and over to match up with the other end. Do this on all four lantern holes.

Gather up all of the yarn ends, lift them up and hold them over the lantern. Tie a big loop knot. It will look a lot like a colorful little basket!

#6: Take an Evening Lantern Walk

As the sun sets, prepare your lantern for a neighborhood walk. Turn on the LED tealights and place them in the bottom of your lantern.

Grab a stick and slide it under the knotted handles of your lantern. Be careful not to poke someone or bang the walls and furniture as you make your way outside and into the night.

To add a fun and festive twist, we often bake a batch of pumpkin or banana bread in small loaves and deliver them to neighbors as we walk and explore our neighborhood by lantern light.

It's also fun to listen for night sounds and look for nighttime animals.

Since your lanterns eliminate the heavy glare of a flashlight, you're more likely to see small nighttime creatures and hear sounds of happy frogs and singing crickets.
Final Words
Enjoy this time of togetherness with your family as you step out into the darkness of the evening with your lanterns shining so bright. We always have a great time making our lanterns and just as much fun as we walk through our neighborhood showing our beautiful creations.

What do you think? Have you had any fun nighttime experiences with your kids? We'd love to hear what you've been up to. Don't forget to share your fun family lantern walk experiences in the comments below. Photos welcome!

Tags: evening lantern walk, lantern, lantern idea, nighttime activity, outdoor activity, paper lantern, tissue paper idea, tissue paper lantern, tissue paper project, valarie budayr

About the Author, Valarie Budayr

Valarie Budayr is a children's book author, publisher, and advocate who is committed to instilling the love of reading and play in children. You can connect with Valarie at Jump Into A Book. Other posts by Valarie Budayr "

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How to Create a Paper Lantern and Explore By Night With Your Kids

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Do your kids love to create things that glow? Are you looking for a fun nighttime activity that will get them outside and moving? Now you can share a lamp-lit evening stroll with your kids, visiting neighbors and connecting with nature, using a lantern they made themselves. It's old-fa

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Series of YouTube clips from Tuia - Ngai Tahu partnership with Environment Canterbury

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Series of YouTube clips from Tuia - Ngai Tahu partnership with Environment Canterbury

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Customary Food Gathering, Self determination...

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Uploads from Environment Canterbury - YouTube

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It's fairly well known that if you want to witness the glow-in-the-dark properties of our native forests, you can visit a glow-worm dell. Much less well known is that you can also visit the common tree fern Cyathea smithii and see its skirts glow with fungal bioluminescence.

Fungal bioluminescence, sometimes called fairy fire or foxfire, can be bright enough to read by, and on these ferns it can make much of the skirt glow in the dark; the trees' own wearable art.

Last month, I joined a small group of mycologists on a mission to observe this phenomenon and collect specimens of the fungus responsible. As far as the official records went, New Zealand had no foxfire-emitting fungi, and we hoped to correct that.

We were all in Matawai, near Gisborne, attending the annual national fungal foray, and when this unusual night-time expedition was proposed, I couldn't contain a primal yap: "Can I come?" The foray folk are very encouraging of non-scientists and I was soon stumbling through black bush with the experts.

Until that night, luminous trees had only been rumoured. A photograph of what is (incorrectly) described as fern-frond phosphorescence can be found on Naturewatch here. But the rumours were few and/or vague, and no-one knew much about these luminous trees, nor what species caused them to glow if indeed it was a fungus.

Led by Dr Peter Buchanan from Landcare Research, the party of six went to a bush track in the Matawai area. We walked in using dim torches and cellphone screens, because we wanted our eyes to adjust quickly to the darkness when we switched them off. This we did once we were under a dense forest canopy that excluded most of the moonlight.

We waited. Soon, we started to perceive wan glowing rods on the periphery of our vision. Those rods were the rachises, or spines, of the fern fronds. When a C. smithii frond dies, its rachis often remains hanging on the tree, and the rachises together form a twiggy skirt. Gradually, as our eyes convinced us, we could see on the edges of the track a ghostly display of glowing skirts.

When we approached the tree ferns, we learned three things about the glow effect:

1. The source was a fungus, and that fungus was fruiting. Teeny, tiny white mushrooms were present on the glowing twigs. The mushrooms appeared to be Mycena.

2. The mushrooms were not the only part of the organism that was glowing: most of the light came from the mycelium. Mycelium, which constitutes the matted bulk of the organism, is the part of a fungus we usually do not see, because it is under soil or bark.

3. The glowing was occuring only on the skirts and fallen rachises of this fern type. This indicated the fungus was a saprobe: one that feeds on and helps to decompose dead organic matter. Although C. smithii may not be its only host (we would later learn this Mycena had been recorded on cabbage tree skirts too), it was favouring the fern at this site.

We plucked glowing rachises from the ferns, waved them like magic wands - well, I did - and then took them back to the foray's makeshift laboratory at the Matawai Hall. There, Landcare Research's Dr Jerry Cooper got to work describing the species.

This particular Mycena mushroom was known: Dr Cooper had previously given it the tag name 'Crystal Falls', after the Otago location where it was first recorded, but no-one had bothered to describe it formally. Now that the bioluminescence of this species has been discovered, however, 'Crystal Falls' is well on the way to having its family tree drawn up.

The scientists are, of course, taking a precautionary approach, not wanting to declare prematurely that the country's fern forests glow in the dark.

But I want to declare that. The host fern is common throughout the land. The 'Crystal Falls' fungus has been recorded in the lower South Island and now the upper North Island, which suggests a large geographical spread. Why would we not suppose these two species could set each other aglow any time they get together?

True, the 'Crystal Falls' Mycena may only bioluminesce in certain conditions, but I'll bet it very often does. I'll bet the reason it has seldom been seen to do so in recent times - and this is not to suppose early Maori were not aware of the phenomenon - is simply people usually use a torch, if they head into the bush by night at all. Witnessing this subtle, ethereal spectactle requires you to wait patiently in the dark for your eyes to adjust.

If any readers live near a suitable forest track and feel like heading on a little night-time expedition to check for glow-in-the-dark fungi on tree ferns, I'd love to hear reports back.

Let's find out the spread of this glow-in-the-dark treasure and map it, so New Zealanders will know if they have a luminous forest in their neighbourhood.

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It's fairly well known that if you want to witness the glow-in-the-dark properties of our native forests, you can visit a glow-worm dell. Much less well known is that you can also visit the common tree fern Cyathea smithii and see its skirts glow with fungal bioluminescence.

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Matariki in the night sky - Matariki - Māori New Year - Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots and learn more about SkyView® Lite. Download SkyView® Lite and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

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Senior Lecturer Te Tumu, Uni of Otago. Ngai Tahu

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Taatai Arorangi:

Matariki and the New Year

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websites

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Making flax flowers

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Matariki Waiata words

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Maori Language Commission

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Matatiki Waiata

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Erana Hemmingsen - Te Papa Online Learning Resources

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From Puketeraki Marae

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Te Papa