Saturday 3 November 2012

Penguins and Seals: Our Learnz Adventure

We have been learning about penguins and seals in New Zealand with the  amazing Learnz Organisation. We have been using online resource material to learn about penguins and seals. We will be going on a virtual trip to a penguin colony and seal colony on the Westcoast of the South Island.

We have audioconferences booked for  Wednesday 7 Novembr and Friday 9 November.  We have read the background materials and have come up with some "fat" questions for the scientists. We can't wait!

Using the Learnz materials, we looked at the Department of Conservation's penguin nesting box plan. We thought we could make one and send it down to Westport for the DOC officers to use. BUT... when we asked a freight company for a discounted price it was still going to cost us $99 to send the box we made down to the South Island.

Luckily, the scientists started talking to each other and we soon had scientists in Auckland wanting to help us find a home for the Little Blue Penguin nesting box that we built with the help of our school caretaker, Mr A, and our trainee student teacher, Mrs S.

The box took shape like this...
The Plan:



We looked at the plan and shared it with our caretaker. He was so keen he cut out the pieces before we had made the template pieces! Thank you Mr A!



Then we put the pieces together.... lots of screws and woodglue.... but we didn't see that some screws were longer than others... so we undid the structure more than once!











We are so thrilled by our first nesting box we will be making a second one. We want to thank our terrific caretaker for helping us so much.

We also want to thank the DOC staff us who also helped us find another home for our first nesting box. It will be exciting to see if it ends up on Motuihe Island or Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf.

We really enjoyed this project and could get a real appreciation of just how small the Little Blue Penguin is. We also won't forget how useful a rectangular prism, together with a cube, can be for one of our most lovely little penguins.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A magnificent memory-for-life for these students. Congratulations, Mr . A and teachers !