Today we finished looking at our last set of New Zealand postcards from Mrs. Faithful’s students in Room 12.
We found out that they have a lot of different symbols and icons that are important to them. There were a few that we have never even heard of before! We would like to know what a koru, a punamu, and a jandal are.
We couldn’t believe how many celebrations they have! They have a celebration called the Chocolate Festival. We found out that they get to make chocolate sculptures, climb chocolate blocks and race jaffas down the steepest hill in the world. We would like to find out what jaffas are.
They have a lot of celebrations that we don’t, but there are some that we both celebrate like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Christmas.
Here is a mind map we made showing what we learned from their postcards:
We enjoyed reading about what you discovered about New Zealand from our postcards.
To answer your questions pounamu is the Maori word for green stone/jade. We have excellent green stone on the west coast of New Zealand. Jandals are summer shoes also known as flip flops or thongs.
Koru is a Maori Design that represent the fern frond as it is uncurling.
Jaffa’s are chocolate covered with orange flavoured hard lolly. These are round lollies. Would you like us to send you some to try?
Regards
Room 12
Dear Mrs. Faithful,
Thanks so much for explaining some of the icons and symbols for us. We have jade here on our island too. Some people use it to make beautiful jewelry. We loved learning a new name for flip flops too!
The students were very excited about possibly getting to try Jaffa’s. We’ll have to think if there is something from here that we might be able to send your students.
Mrs. W and the 2/3’s