Taniwha and the Dragon

Written by: Summer

Following the celebration of the Māori New Year, Matariki, we continued our learning journey about Māori myth, culture and landscape in Kowhai Room. Taniwha, which are supernatural creatures in Māori tradition, have been the centre of our Kowhai children’s attention. According to the Māori culture, Taniwha are similar to serpents and dragons in other cultures and are said to dwell in lakes, rivers, oceans, or caves. They stand for vital and living energy that guards a place, a mountain, a river, a valley, and any natural feature, and thus a tribe or iwi might have their own Taniwha.

During our investigation times, our tamariki were instinctively drawn to different stories about Taniwha, where we met Tangaroa (God of the Ocean), Ranginui (Skyfather), Papatuanuku (Earthmother), as well as both scary and lovely Taniwha. It is fantastic to hear our tamariki creatively commenting that Taniwha looks like the “letter S”, “a snake”, “a dragon”, “a hook”, “Captain Cook’s hook”, and even a “question mark”.

After listening to the stories, our tamariki were fully engaged in multi-literacy experiences to express their ideas, feelings, and understanding of Taniwha, which included the literacies of visual art, music, and movement, to name a few. It is amazing to observe our tamariki demonstrating great perseverance and high focus and concentration while using various art mediums, such as pencils, colour pencils, pastels, felt-tip pens, paint, clay, and paper collage to visualize their ideas and create their masterpieces.

As an extension of our Taniwha project, our tamariki worked as a team to brainstorm how we could make use of a big cardboard box donated by one of our teachers. We reached an agreement that the box could be a cave for our Taniwha. Following this decision, we painted the box thoroughly, decorated it with our cool drawings such as “baby Taniwha”, “grass”, “tree”, “sea”, and also added vines and leaves made with different sensory materials to our “Taniwha cave”.

With the progress of our learning journey about Taniwha, a dragon, which is a mythical creature from Chinese culture was introduced to our tamariki. The experience of learning and comparing mythical creatures from different cultures could encourage our tamariki to explore their own cultural identity, create a positive sense of their identity, and establish their connections to people, places, and things in their world. After listening to the mythical stories about Chinese dragons, our tamariki commented that they like the “happy Taniwha” or the “scary Taniwha” while they are also amazed by the dragons who can blow “fire”, “ice”, and “smoke”. Then we carefully observed the appearance of dragons and compared them to the Taniwha. It was wonderful to see our tamariki quickly spotting that the dragons have “long tails”, “horns”, and “moustaches” but not the Taniwha. Our tamariki also mentioned that dragons and Taniwha both can fly but only Taniwha “has wings”.

To wrap up our learning journey about Taniwha and dragons, our tamariki confidently and proudly presented a show named “The Taniwha and the Dragon” to our preschool friends. During our production, it was so lovely to see our tamariki sitting down beautifully, listening carefully to their friends, and bravely sharing their knowledge about taniwha and dragons with Pohutukawa and Kauri children. Ka Pai, Kowhai children! We are so proud of you!