May Day in Hawaii is a celebration of Hawaiian history and culture. Our school will officially celebrate it on Friday, May 4. Each class will dance a hula they have been practicing for the last few weeks, there will be ukulele playing and singing Hawaiian songs. And flowers – lots of flowers.
For their dances, each class will dress in various Hawaiian-style clothing, and will wear lei. Andrea has been helping me get things organized for my class, and she suggested the kids make a field trip to the forest to pick palapali ferns and weave them into haku lei (which are worn on the head).
Yesterday, Andrea and I went hiking to look for palapalai. She wanted to get a some fronds to practice weaving them into haku. Her daughter Lihau will work with her, because Lihau is the seventh grade kumu (hula teacher), and she will be helping the kids make their haku next week.
We also found a nice big patch of palapalai for the kids to get fern fronds from next Wednesday.
We were a little confused about the difference in leaf form, but we decided it was only a difference of varieties of palapalai.
Now that is the kind of Hawaii stuff I can get on board with. Walking around nature? Picking plants and making something? Ukulele playing? Dancing? This sounds like it’s going to be wonderful!
I’m humbly voting for a how-to video…or time lapse/fast motion video, whichever is easiest. Lei (s?) are beautiful mysteries and I’d love to see one come together!
We get to learn Polynesian from your posts, too! “palupali”… “haku”…Are you feeling rather bilingual yet?