Integration of Art and Maori

During Term Three I had the pleasure of working with both the Art and Maori teachers in combining a unit of work with the Year 6 students.  The brief was to use their knowledge from Maori and Art to produce a pendant or magnet.  Through Maori the girls learnt about the patterns depicted in the wharenui.  They discussed the meaning behind the traditional colours of red, white, black and green and chose their object accordingly.  As students drew their images, they were mindful that these pictures held a story and the design of their fridge magnet of pendant had to represent something of personal meaning to each individual.  Through their art classes, they looked at shapes. They were challenged to identify open and closed, positive and negative spaces on their design and use the same image replicated differently with these concepts.  Finally the design was printed using our 3D printers.  We used an app on the iPad called PrintShop which captured a photo of the girls design. From here we were able to resize and manipulate it before printing it.  Many thanks to Maria and Sue for your combined effort to make this unit of work such a success.