Some of our Tamariki have been showing an interest in Taniwha since we introduced the song 'I saw a Taniwha'. I had been thinking about how to extended this interest so set up the art table with pictures that Harry and I had googled. This inspired some amazing pictures and encouraged lots of discussions about whether Taniwha are real or not, where they live etc. So then I began to wonder how to extend this further. I came across a post on Mairtowns blog about challenging tamariki to create 3D pictures and I immediately thought that our tamariki could give this a go. I contacted Christine from Mairtown to ask for some advice about how she went about creating these works and shared with her how inspirational her posts are to me. Then I was ready to give it a go, once I mentioned the idea I suddenly had a table full of eager tamariki ready to get started.
This activity was a real challenge and required tamariki to work on their pictures for most of the day as it was a lengthy process. 

I really enjoyed working on this activity with our tamariki, watching their pictures develop, seeing how proud they were of their creations, sharing ideas and techniques with each other and the discussions that formed around what a Taniwha might be and seeing the many different ways they interpreted it. Once I managed to display the art work it was so rewarding to see the tamariki proudly showing their whanau their achievements. Click here to view email from Mairtown