Matariki

On the 3rd of June 2014 something special occured at Mapua school, The Mapua students as well as other Whanaū joined the teachers and staff to celebrate the 'Moāri New Year' or 'Matariki' For the First time in Mapua School.

Matariki is signalled in the middle of the winter when seven stars ( also known as 'The Seven Sisters Of Matariki') appear in the sky and signal the start of the Moari year.

For our celebration we kicked off the ceremony with a game of 'Ki o Rahi' where the Adults showed the Kids who was boss with a stunning win of 23-7 in favour of the Adults. Then the Adults where herded out of the gates as we started the ceremony with a mini whakatau.First we had the karanga from the teachers welcoming the Adults and visitors into the School Grounds and the reply came from Lara Hania.

Then the perfomances really kicked off with the Kapa Haka group performing multiple perfomances like 'Te Waka' and 'Poi e' The Senior Band 'Bullet Proof' showed off their talent playing 'Waving Flag' By Kn'aan and the Sherlock Family playing one of their original songs. Lara shared the story of creation with us.

There was delicous food on offer like roast kumara, fried bread and good old sausages,
Then all the parents went and had a wonder around the class room as I took the stage and perfomed one of my songs on my guitar.

In the end each of the familys took a candle each and walked down to the beach to place their candle on top of the giant drift wood and stone koru sculpture.

This was all a great experience and we all thoroughly enjoyed it and hope it becomes an annual event on the school calendar.

By Reuben Prestidge

Movie Night

Movie night was a fun thing that a group of year eights organized. I myself only helped on the night working at the cafeteria and organizing the movie Frozen for the younger kids. My help started when we began to set up at two o-clock, we had to first get the chairs and pillows set up then the movies had to be tested in the laptops to make sure they weren't going to break down in the final seconds, but we did have a problem with one laptop. Luckily we could get a new one! Once that was done it was time to set up the cafeteria, we had to lug loads of fizz across the school while buddy time was taking place out on the court. The tables were set up in a semi circle then we loaded the popcorn and sherbet onto them and put the drinks in the middle. Finally we set up the ticket table and cleaned the rooms and connected the laptops to the TV.  We were ready.

Once the bell had rang we had a giant line of kids waiting to get into the movies. Suddenly a wave of hungry children burst into the food area and pushed towards the tables, I stood there for awhile taking orders and retrieving what they had asked for but then I was told to go get my movie going. I chucked some money in the box in the middle and grabbed some food off the tables before sprinting off to get Frozen running.
Once the laptop had started the film Jason and my self sat down and monitored the movie and fixed the occasional bug in the system.

After the movie had ended the clean up began and we had to vacuum and mop up many spills and bits of food on the floor, it took us half an hour to clean up almost everything on the floor but we still had to bring in the tables. Once the tables in we took turns in celebrating our successes once the noise had died down Sharon thanked us for helping and we all began the journey home.

Thank you To everyone who helped us with the movie night. It helped us gain over $500.00 to our Wellington camp.