World Trip!

A few days ago Glenbrae School had gone on a world trip. I'll explain it to you soon... For our world trip we went to Room 3, Maru had came to our school, we were the 28th School they had visited out of the thousands of Schools in New Zealand, so we were very lucky.

When we arrived, we could see a cardboard view master with a smartphone inserted. Mrs Parker and Maru explained what we had to do like hold it from both sides so the phone doesn't fall out and when we press the cardboard “button” down, it would zoom in. Mrs Parker controls the phone on a tablet, so where ever she presses on the tablet, we go there. When I put on the “Google goggles”, I didn't know it would look 3D, I thought it’ll just look like a normal smartphone screen, but no, it was 3D, because there were some glasses in there. Maru said that they’re still deciding if they want to release the app or not, so we kinda got a sneak peek and just to let you know they are real life photos… so we couldn't go to the other planets like Jupiter, Saturn and the others.

After that, Mrs Parker told us to carefully grab one and wait for her to take us to our destination. We first went to the Volcanoes, I got so scared, because it looked like I was standing in lava. It look SO REAL! We went to so many places, but I especially liked the Slovenia caves and space. I really liked space, because we I learnt that the Milky Way goes all around our galaxy. As I said before we went to so many places, but I can only write about two so let's talk about space now!

In space we saw the Earth’s atmosphere, the Sun, the Moon, Mars and the Stars/Milky Way. On Mars it was just grey and students were asking why it was that colour, because we all knew that it was a bright colour. Mrs Parker said “Because it is night time, during the day time it’s bright.” We also went on the Moon, and saw Neil Armstrong. It was really scary, because we were kinda like flying and it was really high.

After a few places, we went to the Slovenia Caves in Italy, but I've been to the Caves somewhere in New Zealand. It looked really similar, but there were Glow Worms.

Stardome Trip

On Thursday Glenbrae School seniors have been learning about planets, so we had gone to Stardome to learn more and I did!

When we arrived at Stardome, on a bus, we firstly had a little bit to snack on before we could go inside. After lunch, Room 9 and 10 went to play on the playground, while we went inside.

Our class, Room 7 and the other class Room 8 had looked around first, before we could go into the observatory classroom. When we entered, we could see some displays of planets. That plastic Jupiter ball was so huge, imagine how big it would be to see in real life. We explored more of the place, and there was a astronaut cardboard with a face hole, so we could see what we would look like “wearing” an astronaut suit. There were a couple of games we could play about Aliens, Reflection, and there were some information about our solar system and satellite dishes in space, we could read about.   

Moments later, we were called in the observatory room. Our Stardome teacher, taught us more about the seasons, like how Earth is just like the Goldilocks story, because we are not so close to the Sun or not to far from it. We learnt a lot more, but right now I’m going to type about the fun and interesting part.

When we entered the Room, we could see a big dome. I guess that's why it’s called Stardome. It looked really small from outside, but when we got inside, it was so LARGE! After we got over how awesome it was, the Stardome teacher explained some exits, if there was an emergency. Next, we found a seat to watch the movie, but first of all, the teacher showed us the what the stars look like when Matariki occurs, you can see seven stars all close together and you can see Maui’s fish hook… There were a lot more other shapes of stars. There was a blue and red star together, that is shaped like an arrow, which is pointing to a cross. We could see some Planets from Earth, like Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury.

Okay okay, enough about that. We then watched the video that was about a girl making her science project about the solar system (her Earth wasn’t on a tilt), when her little brother came in playing with his rocket and robot toys. Her little brother was intrigued by her science project so he approached her… He asked her what she was doing, but while he was doing so, he was playing with his rocket and totally broke plastic Earth, so it was hanging down. When it happened, it started to rain leaves in the house. Then the next thing you know, her little brother’s rocket took them into space to see why we have seasons. When they stopped, his robot came alive too, they were in such a shock, but then he started to talk and told them the Earth was on a tilt, so that is why we have seasons. They also went exploring around and about and learnt that the higher the Sun is in the sky, the hotter is, so the lower it is then the cooler it gets. We learnt a lot!

When we finished watching that awesome little movie, we finally went to play on the playground.

MOTAT Trip!

On Wednesday the 13th Glenbrae School seniors went to MOTAT. First, Room 7 went on a bus to get to MOTAT. Room 7, 9 and 10 came on the trip with us. We went to MOTAT so we could learn about World War 1, technology and the story of ANZAC day.

We arrived at MOTAT, Katherine, our educator led us the way to the hall which is where we have our morning tea and lunch. After Katherine welcomed us and explained the rules and instructions, we got into our groups.

I was in Mrs Card’s group and along with us was Whitney, Nirvana, Trent, Amelia, Fasi and Salesi. The first place we went to was a place where there was trains and ship engines. Mrs Card asked some questions like, “what kind of engine is this?” So we looked at the signs that said it was a ship's engine.

After that, we went to the Telecommunications place. I think everyone enjoyed that place the most because there were telephones and you could speak to the other person on the other side of the room.

Next, our group was gathered so we could go to the see the fire engines. Mrs Card took out her phone so we could take a photo by the fire engines.  Meanwhile Mrs Parker and her group were in the room next to us (different rooms), looking at the gear they used to use in the olden days.

Then, the fun olden day shops! They were so cool. In the first shop there was bread, pies and what is normally in a bakery. A mannequin was dressed as the shopkeeper of the bakery and he was holding a piece of bread. It looked so realistic, I couldn’t believe it.

When we came out of the shop, there was a water pump outside so we went and tried it. We pulled the handle so we could push the handle down and the water would come out then goes through this pipe to get in a big wooden box with a twist ties fence over it.

There was another shop of clothes but only me and Nirvana went in there because we sneaked in, while the rest of the group was busy playing with the water pump.

Moments later, when they finally stopped playing with the water pump, we had gone into a room of olden day washing machines, stoves, and a dryer but it’s not like the dryers we have now it’s very different, it’s like Spongebob’s dryer.

There was a stock! We headed towards the stocks and we were so excited to try it. If you don’t know what a stock is, it’s a kind of jail they used to use back in  the days. You put your head and hands into the stock and I’m pretty sure they throw rotten tomatoes at you and there was another one but you had to put your hands and legs in it.

After, we went to the Church then we went to see the cars and we had to find out which car was the oldest and which car was the newest. Everyone in the school all wanted to go to the mirror maze, students were very confused and some students found the way out but went back into the mirror maze.

Yay! Our group and the other two groups came with us to the challenge zone. People got so addicted they didn’t want to go, but eventually we all got out of there.

Before lunch, we had gone on a tram ride with the tram driver, Denis. We found our seats and sat down, but before we could go, Denis told us some information about trams and he asked some questions. I found some new information about trams.

Then we had lunch. We had our lunch and Room 7 went with Katherine to a room where there was activities to do about ANZAC, I was filming all the awesome parts.

Finally, we had to go back to school. I felt very excited and amazed to be going to MOTAT and it was so much fun.