Week 3

Maori fishing hooks and sinkers

Hi!! Julia and Chloe here to tell you about our third exciting week in 2011. We went on a science trip to the Mapua Aquarium and to the McKee reserve in Ruby Bay ( see photo's) to find some shellfish and some little beach animals such as a variety of crabs and shells, little shrimps and cats eyes. In the aquarium we fed the fish since it was feeding day. Then we went to the discovery room and Richard, a man who works at the aquarium, thought us all about the Maori and the early fishing that they did.

A Maori drill we used to drill holes.

A huge stingray we saw in the aquarium.

Our class also got to keep a huge cray fish shell that a crayfish sucked it's body out of to be able to grow bigger.

A crayfish we caught on a Maori inspired hook.

We also tried to fish with a flax net but we didn't manage to catch anything because the fish broke the net.  It is really interesting to be able to learn about the rocky shore since it is very important to New Zealand and also because you get to learn about all the little creatures under the rocks and in the rock pools.

1. 

Our rocky shore searchers at the McKee reserve

Finding rocky shore creatures.

 


Here are some facts we either heard from Richard or facts that we found in the aquarium:

• An octopus only lives for about 18 to 24 months; The red eared turtle is native to Southern U.S.A 
• There is more oxygen in cold water than in warm  water.

In the afternoon we went to the McKee reserve to observe little sea creatures such as: crabs , starfish, worms, anemonies, barnacles shrimps and sponges, mussel shells, limpets and seaweeds. We then put everything we found together and shared  all the different 'stuff' we found. From this I learned that there are about 5000 tiny animals under a single rock.

  We had swimming every day of this week at the ASB Aquatic Centre to improve our swimming skills for swimming sports.

In class we have carried on with our novels, Silverstream, Hatchet and Island of the Blue Dolphins. we are now up to chapter 3 and we are getting to know the characters more and more.

We have nearly finished our placemats with the Koru designs as a border. It has been a very cool week with the field trip  and we hope we have some more field trips over the year.