Maragret Mahy Trip Recount

 Kia ora, welcome to my blog.. We went to Margaret Mahy playground for a school field trip. Our teachers were set up around the area. One of the stations was at victoria square, another at Margaret Mahy playground, one at  Avon river, and one was looking at mats and feeding eels. We had a really fun time and we hope to go again.

On the 20th of May we went to Margaret Mahy playground. We went there because our PBL is about if someone came into our school we want them to know that we are a school in Aotearoa. 

First we went to learn about the playground. We did this scavenger hunt with some things like: early settlers sailing ships (which were on the path) and tune (there were drawings of them by the water area.) We were all surprised that there was a song carved into this long path around a little bit of the playground.

 After that we went with Mrs Bryce to have a look at these mats, they are things on the ground. There are 13 in Christchurch and all of them have different meanings. After that we tried to feed the eels but they did not take the cat food we tried to give them.

Third, we got to go on the waka! We had to grab an oar and the instructors taught us how to row all in time. We did two laps but not around the whole Avon river just by Margaret Mahy. My right arm hurt but it was fun overall.

Finally we went to Victoria Square with Mrs Brown. The first thing we did was have a little look around. Me and Mia went to go look at the paus, Māori traditional mats, and some statues and fountains. There were 3 mats. The one by the traffic light ment food and resources, the one by Charlie's ice cream van means the 9 trees that made the ngai tahu claim, and the last one was on this crossing meant water resources and health.   

My favourite part of the trip was Victoria Square because I enjoyed learning about the mats and figuring out what they meant. I also liked looking at the fountains and statues, and learning about  them.

Something I learnt was that on the Margaret Mahy playground there is a path and it has a māori song on it. Also on the path there are some of Elise locks written carved into the path.

The thing I found the most interesting was that all 13 mats in Christchurch mean different things. We saw 5 mats in total and they all had different meanings.

This trip has helped me with my PBL because I got some ideas on how we can show our PBL, and some of my ideas are: we could make a māori school song to carve into the ground. Another idea I had was to put some artwork of tuna and things like that on that grey fence.

Have you ever been to Margaret Mahy playground?