Te Ika a Maui - Artworks

Mrs Jackson read Room 2 the legend of ‘Maui’s Big Fish’. In this story Maui tricks his brothers and hides in their boat so they will take him fishing. Using his grandmother’s jawbone as a hook, Maui fishes up a giant stingray. This stingray becomes ‘Te Ika a Maui’ (the fish of Maui) the North Island. Room 2 explored traditional Maori fish hooks. This linked in with our current inquiry topic of ‘Inventions’. We learnt that stone, bone, shell, pounamu and sometimes wood was used in traditional hooks. Pieces of paua were used to attract the fish.

We created our own clay hooks. We completed observational drawings of traditional hooks from a variety of images then we chose our favourite drawing and turned it into a clay model using Jovi clay.

Maori fisherman used flax rope as their fishing line. We researched the traditional methods and protocols of gathering flax and then gathered some from our school garden. We plaited thin strands of flax which proved to be more of a challenge than some of us thought! Once we had the rhythm and the pattern though it was easy.

Once our clay had dried, we had to sand our hooks smooth and glue on our paua. Mrs Jackson spray coated the hooks before tying on the flax rope and hanging them on our mock paua backgrounds.

The hooks are on display in Room 2 if you would like to come and see them.

Tamati carefully cutting out his hook.

We needed to make sure our clay wasn't too thin or it would crack when it dried. We used a sharp tool to cut out our pattern.

We added some paua pieces to help attract the fish!

The mock paua background. We used impasto brush strokes like Vincent van Gogh.

Ryan helps Tom with his flax rope weaving.

We sanded our clay carefully to smooth off any rough edges.

Shakira, Elsie and Amber focused on their sanding.

Testing out how it will look!

A sample of the final product.