Traditional Māori games and how to play them

Traditional Māori games include kī-o-rahi ‘a ball game’, the stick games tī rākau and tītī tōrea, whai ‘string games’, games with the poi, and kōruru ‘knucklebones’, played with five stones. Most need nothing but sticks, string, stones or a ball. This guide explains where the games come from, how to play each one simply, and the te reo Māori that goes with them, from the word for a game to the countdown in kī-o-rahi, with every word checked in Te Aka Māori Dictionary.

Updated 6 November 2026 · 10 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

The words for play

Three sentences from Verbavia’s course that a class can use straight away:

Where the games come from

Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, says sports and games were important in traditional Māori society and were played by adults and children alike, for entertainment, for learning and sometimes as part of ritual. They belong to the realm of the atua Rongomaraeroa, who stands for peace and a plentiful harvest, and they were played at gatherings where there was plenty of food, above all at the new year festival for the rising of Matariki or of Puanga; the stars themselves are in Matariki words.

Iwi tell the origin of games differently, and Te Ara gives several tellings side by side. In one, Miru, an atua of the underworld, taught string games, puppets and the stick game tītī tōrea at his school of learning, and the people who learnt them brought them back to the world of light. For some iwi, Raukatauri, the goddess of flute playing, and her sister Raukatamea are the atua of music and games. Others trace games to Takatakapūtea and Marere-o-tonga, children of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, and some hold that the patterns of string games came from Māui.

Two details from Te Ara matter for a classroom. Games were always accompanied by words, spoken, chanted or sung, so a game was also language practice. And the season decided the game: water sports and athletics in summer, and string games, stick games and hand games on winter evenings and wet days.

Kī-o-rahi

Te Aka defines kī-o-rahi as a traditional ball game played with a small round flax ball called a kī. Two teams, the kīoma and the taniwha, play on a circular field divided into zones; they score by touching the pou ‘posts, boundary markers’ with the ball and by hitting the tupu ‘central target’. Te Ara describes it as a free-flowing team sport with some similarities to rugby, and says a similar game was played in circular clearings before Europeans arrived. Its court cousin, tapuae, is played more like netball.

How to play kī-o-rahi, simply

1. Mark a circular field with a target, the tupu, in the middle and a ring of pou around the outside.
2. One team plays kīoma. Most of its players pass the kī between them and try to touch pou with it; after touching at least one, a player runs the ball in and touches it down in the middle to score. In the rulebooks, each pou touched before the try is worth a point. A few kīoma players, the kaitiaki ‘guardians’, stand in the inner circle and protect the tupu.
3. The other team plays taniwha. They try to win the ball and hit the tupu with it, which scores for them.
4. Teams swap roles at half time or at each quarter, so everyone plays both sides.

Rules differ from region to region, and kiorahi.com explains that at some competitions the teams meet before a game to agree the rules for that match. Te Aka’s entry says teams of seven; the 2019 Tāmaki Makaurau school rules play eight a side, four girls and four boys, with no tackling, and a tag ripped from a player’s belt in place of a tackle. Kiorahi.com says schools mostly play this tag version, while a few iwi play a tackle version called nonoke.

The te reo is part of the game. The two team names are Māori, and in the national rules a kaitiaki holding the ball has five seconds to pass it out, counted down aloud from five to one:

The numbers up to ten, and how to build every number after them, are in Māori numbers, days and months.

Stick games: tī rākau and tītī tōrea

Tī rākau is the general name for stick games, and Te Ara lists tītī tōrea among its other names. Players throw and catch rākau ‘sticks’ in time to a chant or song, and the song gives the cue for every move. Te Ara says they helped warriors practise hand–eye coordination at speed, and Sport NZ reports that boys and young men used the game to sharpen dexterity and alertness while girls and young women used it to build poi and dance skills. Stick games are also, Te Ara notes, a rare traditional Māori game taken up by Pākehā, through Scouts, Guides and schools.

How to play

• Seated (tītī tōrea). Te Ara describes two or more seated players throwing sticks to each other in time to the chant, each stick a tītī ‘stick used for the game’ about 40 to 60 centimetres long.
• In a circle (Te Aka’s tī rākau). Six or more players sit or kneel in a circle, a little apart. Four players each hold one stick upright in the right hand. In time to the song they swing the sticks up and down; at a certain word, they throw them across or around the circle; at other moments they lower them until the end rests on the floor.
• In rows. Te Ara also describes two rows facing each other, and big group games where anyone who drops a stick is out until one player is left.

The best-known stick-game song, E Papa Waiari, is explained in Māori songs.

Whai: string games

In whai, Te Aka’s word for string games and cat’s cradle, each player makes patterns with a loop of string held between the hands, traditionally flax string, to particular chants. Te Ara says players competed to make the most complex patterns in the most elegant way, that women were often the most skilled, and that some patterns needed teeth and feet or two people to make. Each iwi had its own patterns, which told stories such as Tāwhaki and Karihi climbing to the heavens and Māui hauling up Te Ika a Māui ‘the North Island’; a skilled player could tell a whole cycle, changing the pattern for each part.

Te Ara quotes a saying about it, He whare wānanga te whai ‘whai is a house of learning’: a child who could remember the many patterns might be marked out for the whare wānanga ‘house of higher learning’.

How to play: each player needs one loop of string. Learn one pattern at a time together with its story, and tell the story as the pattern changes, which is how Te Ara says practitioners did it.

Poi as a game

Today a poi is mostly seen in performance, swung and tapped in time to song, and that side of it is explained in kapa haka explained and Poi E. But Te Ara says that in earlier times poi were juggled, thrown and caught between players, and that early European visitors described the pastime of tossing the poi with a ball about the size of a cricket ball. Te Aka’s verb poi still means to toss up and down.

How to play: sessions reported by Sport NZ include poi toa, a pass-and-catch poi game: players throw the poi to one another, and one child at the session said the fun was trying to catch it on the full.

Kōruru: knucklebones

Knucklebones has four Māori names in Te Aka: kōruru, ruru, kaimakamaka and tutukai. It is usually played with five small stones. The stone that is thrown up is the hai ‘the jack’ and the others are the kaimahi. Te Ara says players worked through a series of stages, chanting a verse for each, and that among Tūhoe the game was still played in the 20th century.

How to play

1. Warm up. Te Aka’s example sentence for ruru gives the first action: throw all five stones up so that they land on the back of your hand, then toss them up again and catch them in your palm.
2. Koropū, the first stage. Te Aka describes it: draw a circle on the ground and put four stones outside it. Throw the hai up, place one stone inside the circle, and catch the hai. Repeat until all four are in the circle, then throw the hai up, pick up all four in one move, and catch the hai.
3. Kōruru, the last move. Hold four stones in your hand with one on the ground. Throw the four up, snatch the stone from the ground, and catch the four before they land.

In class, count the stones aloud as they go into the circle, tahi, rua, toru, whā, and the game becomes a counting game.

Hand games

Tī ringaringa, in Te Aka, are games played by opening and shutting the hands while reciting verse. Te Ara says they were very popular. In pairs, one player makes hand movements while reciting a chant, and the other must copy both the movements and the words without a mistake. Te Ara gives the opening of the chant:

Upokotiti is simpler: a group stacks their hands one on top of another while chanting. It was one of the children’s games that Tūhoe kept playing into the 20th century.

More games from Te Ara

Suppression and revival

From the 1820s, Te Ara says, missionaries tried to suppress traditional games as pagan, and through the second half of the 19th century they gave way to cards, draughts, horse racing, rugby and other European games. Canoe racing and kapa haka were among the few traditional competitions that carried on. Since the second half of the 20th century many have been revived, kite-making came back with the revival of Matariki, and kī-o-rahi and tapuae became increasingly popular in the 21st century. Sport NZ’s news pages report taonga tākaro workshops from West Auckland schools to family sessions at Cornwall Park in Auckland, part of a Sport NZ initiative.

Using these games in class

Every game here comes with words, which is the point Te Ara makes about all of them: count the stones in kōruru, count down in kī-o-rahi, chant with the sticks. For the instructions around the games, such as sit down, stand up and listen, see te reo Māori for teachers, and for first words, songs and activities for younger children see te reo Māori for kids. A good next step after a game is a meal: the traditional way to feed a crowd is in what is a hāngī. And to learn the language behind the games yourself, Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course (our own) starts with the most common words.

Sources

1. Te Ara: Ross Calman, ‘Traditional Māori games – ngā tākaro – Sports and games in traditional Māori society’
2. Te Ara: Ross Calman, ‘Traditional Māori games – Games of physical movement’ (piu, taupunipuni, wī)
3. Te Ara: Ross Calman, ‘Traditional Māori games – Stick games, string games, poi and haka’
4. Te Ara: Ross Calman, ‘Traditional Māori games – Games of skill with words and hands’ (tī ringaringa, upokotiti, ruru, mū tōrere)
5. Te Ara: Ross Calman, ‘Traditional Māori games – Flying kites, spinning tops and other games’
6. Te Ara: Ross Calman, ‘Traditional Māori games – Suppression and revival’ (kī-o-Rahi, tapuae)
7. Sport NZ – Ihi Aotearoa: Traditional Māori games and music captivate tamariki (15 November 2023)
8. Sport NZ – Ihi Aotearoa: Whānau connect through taonga tākaro in Tāmaki Makaurau
9. Kiorahi.com: About (tag and tackle versions)
10. Kiorahi.com: Kī o Rahi rules (rules differ by region and are agreed before a game)
11. Kiorahi.com: 2019 Tāmaki Makaurau Kī o Rahi rules (PDF)
12. Kiorahi.com: Kī o Rahi national rules v1.0 (PDF; the kaitiaki count from rima to tahi)
13. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tākaro — to play; sport, game.
14. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kaitākaro — player.
15. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whare tapere — house of entertainment.
16. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: taonga tākaro — toy.
17. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kī-o-rahi — a traditional ball game.
18. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tī rākau — stick game (how it is played).
19. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tītī tōrea — game played with sticks thrown in time to a song.
20. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tītī — stick used to play tī rākau.
21. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whai — string game, cat’s cradle; to play string games.
22. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: poi — to toss up, swing the poi.
23. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kōruru — knucklebones; the last move in knucklebones.
24. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: ruru — knucklebones (with the example of the first action).
25. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hai — the jack; koropū — the first stage of kōruru.
26. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tī ringaringa — hand games.
27. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: upokotiti — hand game.
28. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: piu — to skip; skipping rope.
29. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: taupunipuni — rendezvous, secret meeting place.
30. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: manu tukutuku — kite.
31. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pōtaka — whipping top, spinning top.
32. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: karetao — marionette, puppet.
33. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mū tōrere — traditional game similar to draughts.