Ngā Atua i te Taiao The Māori Gods in the Environment

He iti hoki te mokoroa nāna i kakati te Kahikatea.
The mokoroa (grub) may be small, but it cuts through the Kahikatea.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Small things make a difference – it only takes a pin to burst a balloon.

A game to show many hands make light work.

You need:

• 10 buckets and enough plastic mugs for 1 per
  person (about 20).

Activity:

• The teams have to transport the water from the “pond” to another bucket which is going to be
  used to “put out a fire”.
• Each team has a minute to carry out the task.
• At the end measure how much water altogether they were able to collect to put out the fire.

Set up:

• Fill 5 buckets to be the water resource (pond) – one for each team.
• Set up the other 5 buckets – one for each team – to take the water to.
• Set the teams up to reflect a growing number of people and capability, i.e. number of mugs:
  
  • Team 1: 1 person, 1 mug
  • Team 2: 4 people, 2 mugs
  • Team 3: 7 people, 4 mugs
  • Team 4: 10 people, 5 mugs
  • Team 5: 13 people, 7 mugs

Reflecting on the activity:

• Who made a difference – who contributed to putting out the fire?
• Which team contributed the most?
• How did they achieve that?
• How could we collect even more water in the same time?
• How could we collect it with less individual effort?
• Let’s try some of these solutions.
• Think, pair, share which way was most efficient and why.

Possible discussions:

• • In the team there may have been arguments over turns or children bumping into each other in the group. This may have slowed things down.
  • Hopefully there would have been some encouragement and enthusiasm in the group.
  • Having more people all doing a little bit should have meant the job was done quicker.
  • The student doing it on their own may have been able to work without hindrance but may have felt disheartened and the job will take a lot longer.

Hot seatingopen_in_new is an interactive drama technique where a character, eg, a character from a story or a person from history, is interviewed or questioned by others about their background, behaviour and motivation. This allows for deeper exploration of their ideas, attitudes and perspectives.