A couple of weeks ago I finished the first year of my three year teaching degree. Whew it has been hard work!
My class mates and I all agreed out kids were a little bit neglected this year while we spent most of our evenings reading or watching lectures online and weekends writing essays, practicing our ukuleles and te reo and getting our heads around lesson planning and assessment. So to celebrate the end of year and spend a bit of quality time with the children we booked ourselves a stay at
Farewell Gardens holiday park in Golden bay. Which is just a hop, skip and a jump away from farewell spit and a short drive to the windswept Wharariki beach.
My kids were fascinated with the relics of the old wharf which was used for loading coal onto ships early in the 20th century according to a book we later found in an apartment at the campground. As we walked out at low tide Phoeb and Gabe speculated about the old rotten posts in the ground and the machine we were heading for. It is just magic, how given the opportunity, kids curiosity and imagination will motivate their own learning. When we got to the amazing old contraption they discussed their theory.
We walked across some hilly farmland to find Wharariki, I wish we could have explored for longer but we had an appointment with a fishing net at low tide and had to get back to Pakawau to help pull it in. Gabe just loved watching one of my student teacher colleagues gutting and filleting the sharks. In the big one below he found shark eggs to his great excitement as he had just been reading a book from the library all about sharks and was fascinated by the close up pictures of the eggs.
Needless to say we had shark for dinner that evening.
