Mr Darcy The Cat and The Matariki Glow

Phonological Lesson Opportunities

Use the following graphemes, depending on where the children are at within the Scope and Sequence you are following. Blends have been included as some Scope and Sequences include them in this way. They can of course be taught as individual phonemes and then blended when reading/decoding.

• Single Graphemes – m, n, d, 

• Consonant digraphs – wh, th, ch, ph, sh

• Consonant blends –   r blends: cr, gr, fr, tr, l blends: gl, bl, cl, s blends: st, str, sk, sl   

• R affected vowel sounds – ar, ur, or, ir

• Vowel digraphs/teams – ai, oa, ea, ee, ui, ou, au, oo, 

• Long spelling of /k/ - ck

• Two sounds of /ow/ (now, glow, how, down, allowed, 

• Silent letters – k (know),  b (tomb), 

• Long vowel sound ī – igh

• Long vowel sounds with split digraphs (silent -e ) words – a_e,  e_e, i_e, o_e,  u_e                                                                 

Morphological features

Contractions – couldn’t, didn’t, that’s, he’d, 

Suffixes – ing, ed, s, less, ly, ous, al, est, 

Prefixes – trans, pre

Language Features

Rhyme – The whole book, apart from the fun facts, is written in rhyme. You could highlight those words that sound like they rhyme but are not quite perfect and/or have different spellings.

For example – bed/head, frogs/dog, escape/wait, power/hour, nose/go, stars/past, down/how, dreams/seemed, silk/built, afar/bizarre, Japan/land, for/shore, rub/love

Descriptions (oral and written)

• Describe Mr Darcy

• Describe or discuss each dream he has, the country, the setting, the chosen icons that represent each country.

• Describe the cats (there are many to choose from)

• Describe each of the dream settings

• How do you feel about the celebrations other countries have for the star cluster we know as Matariki?

Hidden Gems

Ask your students to see if they can spot these while you are reading.

Did you know that on all the pages depicting the countries of Mr Darcy’s dreams, the stars of Matariki are hidden? Can you find them all? Hint – they are not all depicted as stars.

Answers – Egypt - Matariki is in the stars in the sky

                   China – Matariki is in the fireflies around Mr Darcy

                   Greece – Matariki is in the stones on the right-hand side of the page

                   Japan – Matariki is in the cherry blossom around Mt Fuji

                   Smugglers Cove (New Zealand) – the waves around the boat

Illustrations make the story

There is also a Matariki cluster on

• the back cover 

• on the front cover 

• title and the escape page, in the reflection of his eyes

• the page where he's looking out the window

•  sitting on the roof

•  and on the "What is Matariki?" page

so there are at least 15 clusters for students to look for! 

Also, another wee hidden gem - on each page of the dream sequence there is something that belongs to the next spread;

• in Egypt, it's the lantern tassel in the phoenix's claw

•  in China, the stones on the Silk Road from the Greek ruins

•  in Greece, the cherry blossoms

•  in Japan, the seagull 

Similarly, before he falls asleep on the roof, the sky has the glow of one thing from each place he is set to visit; the pyramids, the dragon, the temple, the boat, and The Great Wave.

Cats Matter

Fun Fact: there are at least 50 different cat drawings (a lot of them are Mr Darcy in different poses) just in the internal pages of the book, not including the endpapers. 

Also, he has a guide take him through each place - he meets the Bengal in Egypt, and she comes to China where he meets the ragdoll, she leads him to Greece and the ginger short-haired cat takes him to Japan where he meets the Japanese Bobtail who comes back to New Zealand with him 

And these are the cats that you see disappearing into the sky as he wakes up.  

Why Captain Cook in this special book about Matariki?

When you look at the last dream page, it features Captain Cook. The reason for this is that there is some documentation to say that it was from one of his ships that the first cats were introduced into New Zealand.

“Cats were carried on ships to control the rats on board. They first came to New Zealand on James Cook’s ships, and later with whalers and sealers. Wild cats prey on birds, lizards and insects, and are hard to control.” (Te Ara, 2007)

“Cats were carried on ships to control rats. When James Cook’s Resolution was tied to trees in Dusky Sound, Fiordland, in 1773, one of the cats ‘regularly took a walk in the woods every morning and made great havoc among the little birds, that were not aware of such an insidious enemy.’” (J. G. A. Forster, A voyage around the world in his Britannic majesty’s sloop Resolution. Vol 1. London: B. White, 1777, p. 128.)

Cats (Felis catus) were deliberately introduced to New Zealand from 1769 onwards by European explorers. For example, Captain Cook gave two cats to Māori at Tolaga Bay on his first voyage to New Zealand. (Bionet.nz)

Writing and Research Ideas

Each of the countries that Mr Darcy visits in his dreams can be researched and written about with a variety of focus points.

• What are these countries like today?

• What more can you learn about the star cluster, its name and its meaning, for each of those countries?

• How do people celebrate the star cluster in those countries?

• When does the star cluster appear in those countries? Is it the same time as Matariki appears for us?

• Where are these countries? What Languages do they speak?

Fun fact expansions

Expanded information on the fun facts for each country can be found at the following links.

Egypt/Ancient Egypt – Found here and here.

China – found here and here. 

Greece – found here, here and here.

Japan – Found here, here and here.  

England – Found here and here.