Ki O Rahi with Glenhome Primary

Thursday 26th of June saw the students at Glenhome Primary School celebrate a "Tikanga Day" filled with many traditional Māori arts and crafts and also Ki O Rahi.

In brief, Ki O Rahi is a traditional Māori game modelled from the legend of Rahi and how he rescued his wife from a group of patupaiarehe.  The game was later played to celebrate and cement a new covenant of peace between Rahi's people and the patupaiarehe.  A video of the legend will be up soon!

The day at Glenhome school was filled with huffing and puffing, laughter and also cries from the kids to carry on playing - exactly what Te Whare Tapere is about; entertainment.

Te Papa Tākaro o Te Arawa are enforcing a new (old, traditional) values based system of scoring Ki O Rahi and other games we facilitate to emphasize that how we play and conduct ourselves is more important than who scores the most points.

The students at Glenhome school were a little confused at first because they all wanted to win and give the kī to their fast runners to score all their points.  However, because the final score did not determine the winner, the kids were quick to share the kī around, to encourage each other, to help out the other team if they slipped on the grass and even hand over the kī to the other team if they were 'offside.'

This was a great development to see in the students as their thinking shifted from winning at all costs to how they could play the best as a team. Tau kē Glenhome Primary!!