Making Manu Taratahi (Part 1)

As part of our learning about Rāhiri, we have been making manu taratahi (kites). Rāhiri got his village to make a massive, long rope out of harakeke (flax) and tied it to a kite. He threw the kite into the sky and where it landed he split Ngapuhi into 2 parts for his sons Uenuku and Kaharau. Our manu taratahi are made out of raupo, harakeke and toi toi. First we had to make a frame for our kite. We did this by tying 3 sticks of toi toi in a triangle shape. We also tied a stick across the top to make it stable and strong. Next, we had to tie the raupo onto the toi toi using a criss cross weave. We have been finding this part really tricky but we have been super resilient and we keep trying. We are impressed with how they are going and are nearly finished. We will show you the finished ones next week (part 2). Here are some pictures of our first steps.