Māori Language Week Visits - Information Page

🎶 The music session itself 

Here’s a YouTube link (COMING SOON!) to a playlist with a few of our reo-Māori waiata that are likely to be included in our session. Feel free to play this on repeat for your Centre’s tamariki, before and after our visit.

The music session will be 30-minutes long. As this is a Māori Language-specific music session, we won’t usually take requests, however, if there is an extra special waiata of ours that your tamariki would really love to have included, please do let us know and we will do our best to find a way to include it into the set, but are unable to guarantee it as some waiata work better as part of a larger event performance rather than in a small group setting (but we will definitely try!).

We will have the tamariki up and moving about, as well as settled times, to catch their breath. There will be plenty of repetition to help them learn any new kupu/words and some call-and-response waiata – a good combo of different styles to keep them engaged throughout. We finish with our breathing song and a lullaby.

With our props songs, can we please have kaiako help to hand them out to tamariki in the back. We can cover those sitting near the front, but to avoid standing on little toes/fingers, we do our best to not walk over/through them, especially if they’re seated, if we can help it – thank you, in advance!

If space allows, we’d love for tamariki to be seated in a semi-circle, but kei te pai if that’s not possible. This format ensures all tamariki are able to see the actions and props, etc, however, we do understand that sometimes the spaces aren’t wide enough to allow for that.

Siu and I would love a chair each to sit on, please. After years (approx. 15!) of doing this mahi and sitting on our knees many times a day (which I’m sure kaiako will understand!), they started complaining (our knees, that is! lol!) so a chair each will be awesomely appreciated – ngā mihi!

👫🏾The ideal group size

The ideal size for a Preschool visit, for this pricing, is between 30-40 tamariki. The intention is for an intimate group setting that allows us to really connect with the tamariki. Occasionally, we have stretched to 50, but the most ideal is 30-40.

Groups larger than this require us to push ourselves more, vocally, and, over time, can cause voice fatigue, which is less than ideal in our line of work. Performing to 50+ tamariki also becomes more of a concert and will usually require us to set-up a sound system, which is an additional cost to bring along and more time-consuming to set-up and pack-up afterward.

Thank you (in advance) for your understanding of this. If you are indeed after more of a concert performance for a larger group of tamariki, flick us an email, HERE for more info on pricing and booking that in.

🪇 Props – shakers and scarves

We love to include props to use in our waiata, which is usually a shaker and a light-weight scarf. Are you able to please supply enough of each for the number of tamariki that will be present for our visit? 

Ideally, there will be enough for one of each, per child. Please let us know if you don’t quite have enough and we can bring along extras to top-up your supply. We often don’t have enough time between visits to clean our props, and don’t have enough to supply if we have three back-to-back bookings, so having Centres provide their own enables us to continue including our props songs in a session, while also enabling Centres to continue using them with our waiata (and many others, I’m sure), after our visit.

Shakers can be made by popping small toys or blocks into a plastic container or bottle, or there are a number of DIY ideas available on Pinterest or YouTube. We have had preschools use their poi collection or whatever ‘noisemakers’ or instruments they might have available, so, not necessarily limited to your standard wooden maraca/shaker.

With scarves, the most ideal are square, light-weight, see-through scarves, especially for very young tamariki/babies, otherwise any type of fabric will work fine. We have had Centres in the past use facecloths, t-shirts, baby blankets and regular scarves, so whatever you have available on the day will be fine.

As mentioned, we are able to bring a small supply of shakers or scarves to top-up your supply, if you need. Some Centres have borrowed from other Centres, also, so that can be option, too.

🌈 Additional Props – rainbow ribbons, poi or tī rākau

If you have any of these props (enough for one, or one pair each, in the case of Tī Rākau) and you would like to use them for our visit, please do let us know and we’ll replace either of the Shaker or Scarf songs to accommodate.

With the rainbow ribbon props, the most ideal would be ones that have six of the rainbow colours that are in our “Uenuku” waiata (see YouTube link, above), or some rainbow songs have seven colours, which will work fine, too.

Here is a video that we made during lockdown that shows how you can use materials that you may already have on hand, to make your own, and it also shows the triangular, ice-cream lid, rainbow ribbon props that we made for ourselves.

⏰ Timeliness

We endeavour to arrive about 5-10 minutes prior to our starting time, as it doesn’t take us long to set-up.

If we have a full schedule, we are confident that we’re able to get to each Centre/Group on time. However, there is always the possibly that we hit delays, in which case, we will endeavour to contact you to let you know (as soon as possible) that we’re running late, so, thank you in advance for your understanding.

Also, if it is a full schedule, we may not be able to linger the way we would usually like to, to chat with the tamariki, after the session. In lieu of this, we’d love to leave you all with some colouring-in sheets for your tamariki to enjoy (approx. 40 sheets, but please do let us know if you need more!). We also end the session by inviting tamariki up for a stamp on their hand, which is a lovely quick way to meet and greet them all, individually, and is usually the highlight of our visit!  ❤️

🅿️ Parking spot

If it’s not too much trouble, it would really help us out to have a carpark allocated for us, near the entrance, please. This will definitely contribute to a smoother transition between each visit, if we have a full schedule, and may even allow a couple minutes extra to have a quick kōrero with you all.

📖 Ordering our books and merch!

If you are not already aware, we have a 5-book ‘Rainbow Collection’ of bilingual children’s pukapuka (click on this link for more info about them), based on five of our original waiata, so tamariki can sing along while checking out the illustrations. Our books are printed here in Ōtautahi/Christchurch and were created by a mostly Ōtautahi-based team of wāhine (our graphic designer is Auckland-based, but we don’t hold that against her! haha!).

If anybody is interested in purchasing any (along with any merch), we would love to offer them to you at a discounted $20 per book (normally $22). Just click on THIS LINK to head to an order form that you can fill out and email back to us and we’ll bring your order with us, when we visit – too easy! We may take along a few extras with us in case anybody decides to purchase them on the day, and we have an eftpos device, although pre-purchasing is the preferred option (due to potential time constraints).

🧾 Invoicing

If you would like an invoice, please let us know and I will send one through, via Xero.

If you decide to order any of our books and would like them added to the invoice, I can do that, and if you need me to add a purchase order number to the invoice, please send that through as soon as possible.

The session is $260 (no gst included, as we are not currently gst-registered). Please note that this is our regular fee. You may notice a price difference between our standard Preschool Visits and our Matariki and Māori Language Week Visits. For the standard visits, we offer a reduced fee as a bit of a “locals discount”, if you will, for Ōtautahi-based Centres, only, to show our appreciation for all the support our hometown have shown us since we started this full-time gig!

📸 Photos, videos and social media

You are welcome to take photos and video footage of us performing, during the session, or a group photo afterward. We are happy for you to tag us in any social media posts, also [FB: @LoopyTunesPreschoolMusic and IG: @loopytuneskidsmusic ].

We will always ask permission before posting or re-posting on our own social media pages, if tamariki are in any of the photos.

Also, we like to take a selfie of ourselves and the Centre’s sign as we leave so will tag you in this post at the end of the day.  😊

🗣 Feedback

We would LOVE any feedback from you about our visit, so we try to flick through a wee survey the day after our visit (just a heads up!).  👍