Making a tivaevae

This week is Cook Island Language week! 

To celebrate this, my class learnt about Cook Island Maori words for our family members, and then made our family trees with labels. 

We are also making our very own tivaevae! 

"Tivaevae or tivaivai (Cook Islands Māori: tīvaevae) in the Cook Islands, tifaifai in French Polynesia, is a form of artistic quilting traditionally done by Polynesian women. The word literally means "patches", in reference to the pieces of material sewn together."

First, we looked at a movie made by Te Papa about the origins of tivaevae. Next, we looked at different designs for tivaevae, check out some examples here and here.

I gave the students some examples I had printed out, and gave them instructions to design their own 'patch' for our Room 6 tivaevae. It tells the story of our class - each of us has a unique contribution to make. Even if we used the same pattern or idea, we may colour it differently or use it in a different way to portray ourselves.

Here is my class designing our tivaevae this afternoon -

Will post an update on how it looks when we collate them altogether to make our class quilt!