Artworks that reflect our cultural diversity

At the beginning of the year we decided that each class would have a waka and somehow we would display our children in this to show that we are all working together.
This was quite a difficult task to start with but once the waka was in place we just needed to be up to date with any New Entrant or new arrivals.
At the time we produced drawings of sea creatures and put koru type designs over their bodies and this enhanced our 'Waka Wall'.  Later we made pictures of turtles using a salt dye method and these are displayed above the waka. This has turned out to be very effective, with children enjoying seeing themselves in the waka.

We were very lucky last term to have a provisionally registered teacher, who had incredible artistic skills. I was able to talk to her about the ideas of producing Tapa cloth type artworks and she worked alongside children to produce, firstly a paper Tapa template

We then went to salt dough tiles, using our original design as a basis for producing these tiles. So nice to have Loren taking my initial idea and working on it. She even took the tiles home and her and her husband attached them to a rod. They look great.

The next phase was to produce similar tiles that were made out of clay, and were kindly fired by a local potter. Once again Loren and her husband mounted these onto a large piece of plywood (lucky me!). I did help out by varnishing the tiles. We were very happy with the results.

Loren got a job! She did deserve it and I was left to finish the final phase of our 'Tapa experience'.

I used calico, which was washed and then the children traced patterns and painted these with a mixture of coffee and small amount of water. These were put alongside our final display.

This display is currently in our foyer and the tiles are in the class foyer area. We were very happy with our work and felt that it represented some of our families really well.