Waihirere Domain Trip

Last Thursday, we were able to take our trip to Waihirere Domain and the children had a fantastic time!  I want to say a big thank you for all the parents who came and helped, the volunteers Kauri and Amy, who taught us new things about the river (awa) and things that are found in the area.

We took the bus out and once we go out we put our bags in our area.  We went down to the river with Amy to see what difference we could see between the Taruheru river here at Waihrere and behind our school in town.

We could see the bottom of the river and all the stones.  We found heaps of mayflies, woody-cased caddisflies, smooth-cased caddisflies.  We also managed to catch 4 fresh water crayfish and 1 eel!  The kids were very excited to see all this wildlife from the river.

Next we went onto building our own boats.  The children got into pairs and had to find things laying around to create a small boat.  They were given some string and blue-tac to help them too.  Once the children had some time we got them together to have some boat races where they used straws to blow their boats' sails.

The children stopped for lunch and a play then we went on a walk with Kauri to explore the forest life up towards the waterfall.  It was a big hike to get right to the waterfall so we went half way.  We saw a rat trap with a dead rat inside!  We also saw a beautiful kereru bird in the trees.

Lastly we listened to some water stories and played some race games moving water around.  It was a long, busy and fun-filled day.