Senior News - Port Chalmers Pirates

By Linda Martin | Posted: Monday November 20, 2017

Last week all senior classes went to Port Chalmers to learn more about maritime and art sculpture structures.

On Thursday November 16th Rooms 1 and 2, and on Friday 17th Rooms 2a and 4, traveled by bus to Port Chalmers.

Classes visited the Maritime Museum where John and Brian kindly gave a tour and told interesting stories about the early days of Port Chalmers. The children were very interested! They saw models of sailing ships, a working model of a gold dredge, underwater equipment, a binnacle, the port working the straddle cranes and many more things.

These are some excerpts from their writing:

I really liked learning about what they used on the boats. My favourite part of the Maritime Museum was the cabin. The look out was really cool to look at and I enjoyed the art garden and all the sketches. I sketched the ¨Black Phoenix 2¨ by Ralph Hotere. by Imogen H

I was really surprised that they had a working model of a gold dredge that had a red button to push and the buckets moved. You could see how the whole thing worked. You could actually see there were pistons that went in or out, and they connected to a wheel that turned which was connected to another wheel with a rubber band, and that turned a cog which made the conveyor belt move the buckets. It operated on big ponds or lakes in Otago. by Adam

It was time for the walk.  It was really steep. When we got to the top there was a really cool look out. We used some binoculars to look. After that  we went to the art garden and saw some nice statues. It was a really fun and tiring day! by Meg

We went to the Art Garden. There were some very weird sculptures. We also got to go to the lookout point we got to use Mrs Martin's special binoculars, you could see some cool things there. it was a very fun day. by Ruby

Going to the museum was the place to learn new things. One of the favourite rooms was the pioneer room with all the old trophies and what people wore, used and ate on a boat or ship. People learnt about the equipment used on ships in the old days. If you looked closely at the cranes working you could see how they load the containers onto the cruise ship called the Celebrity Solstice. by Emily F

and other pieces of writing:

Astrobiology is a rather boring sounding subject, but astrobiology is actually just a really long word for aliens. The reason why this subject is so important is that there could be life out there. Put this book down right now, go to the nearest window and imagine it being night time, ( if it is night time this step can be missed out ), look up at the nearest star and imagine a happy little alien sitting on it, waving at you. I know what you’re thinking - it’s just your imagination, the thing is there is a very small chance that it actually could sitting there right now, waving. And that’s why astrobiology was turned into a subject and not a little boys’ colouring book. by Hannah

Christmas is the longest holiday of the year. At Christmas time people give and receive gifts. But it is not all about gifts, it is mostly about spending time with your family, having fun and relaxing! Lots of people put up Christmas trees and decorate them. BBQs are a great way to have lots of friends and family over.by Laura

This week , on Wednesday, the senior classes had a lot of fun with their Kiwi Golf sessions with Melanie Harper at the Nairn Street park, learning how to refine a golf swing. They practised with flags first, and then graduated to different sized balls. The skills developed rapidly with Melanie's guidance.

There was also a Fun Day organised by the NZ Police to recognise the Year 6's help with road patrol during the year. There was loud music, swimming, playing on inflatables, floating and chasing in the wave pool, speeding down the water slide and a bar-be-que. It was a great day.

A reminder - swimming is every Monday for the seniors. The children know when their water survival skills day is, and will need to be prepared with long pants and a long sleeved top. An extra plastic bag would be useful for these groups.

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