Making an old Christchurch Street

When we went to the museum we enjoyed looking around the old Christchurch Street.  We have been working on a timeline from when the Maori people came in their waka until today so we thought we would try and make the street.

Last week we painted boxes - brown, white and red.  Brown for the wood, white for painted wood and red for the bricks.

Today it was time to work in groups collaboratively to decide on windows and doors.  Once we had decided that together we cut out our windows and stuck them on.  We had to give reasons why we had put windows where we had.

It was great to see all the groups working together and including others.  Miss Browne was super proud of us and could hear children saying "Thank you", "Can I please have the scissors", "We can all have a job", "You can have a turn now".

Our buildings need doors now and then we can put a street and put all our buildings along the street.

Investigations

Today we had two groups of learners focusing on different parts of our investigations.  First we did some shared writing so that we can send some letters asking for more bottle tops from cream and milk bottles.  We know that we need these for Discovery Time but today we found out that we are also going to use them during Investigations.

At the moment we don't have enough so we are going to send letters to some places that we think use a lot of milk and cream, like the cafe where Dexter's Mum and Dad work.  They are already busy collecting for us so we will have to try lots of other places.  These learners copied our shared writing and then we decorated the letters at Reading Time.

 Our second group of learners were finding out what happens to a tree when it is growing.  These children are busy showing the roots of the tree, slurping up the water.

We are going to find out what happens to the water in the tree tomorrow and add to our picture.  We made fantastic roots and then we were also able to teacher the other children.  What clever learners we have in Piwakawaka!

Investigations

This morning we completed our trees and bushes to make our own Riccarton Bush, just like the settlers would have seen when they arrived in Christchurch.  

We also began to make a whare and Dean's Cottage to represent the types of houses that people used to live in.  We used the photos from our trip to help us look at the different types of houses and what they had.  

All these things will be going up on our walls to make a timeline of events that happened in our past.  It is great to see the collaboration and discussions happening between our students as they make these items.  

They are also thinking hard.  Some people wanted to come to New Zealand in the waka because they were good at paddling and others wanted to coming in the big sailing ships, like The Endeavour, because they wanted to have a bed to sleep in!  What great thinking and reasoning!

The Endeavour

This morning at Investigations we finished making our sailing ships, The Endeavour.  Some of our ships made the sailing from England to New Zealand.  Some didn't!  Some of us needed to try to make our ship several times to see if we could improve our design, especially without holes in it so it could float!

We made our ships out of foil, kebab sticks, paper and blue tac.  We looked at The Endeavour at the museum on Friday and noticed that there were 3 main masts and lots of sails for the wind to blow the ship around the world.

We are now wondering whether we would like to have been coming to New Zealand on The Endeavour or whether we would have liked to have been in a waka coming to New Zealand.  Which boat do you think you would have liked to come to New Zealand on?

Canterbury Museum, Riccarton House and Dean's Bush

Here are some of our photos from our trip on Friday.  What a great day we had.  There was so much to look at and we made some great connections to our learning from earlier on this week.  We look forward to using all that we saw to help us with the next steps in our Investigation "Big Things come from Small Beginnings".

 Look carefully in these two pictures.  Can you see the Piwakawaka?