Excursion to Ayres House and the Migration Museum

Today was an exciting day in our learning. We went on an excursion to the city of Adelaide to explore 2 different places. Our current Inquiry topic is about investigating how items have changed over time and so we visited Ayres House and the Migration Museum to see what they could show us.

First, we arrived at Ayres house to see if we could apply for jobs as servants in the grand old house. There was going to be a Ball that night and they needed extra help. When we knocked on the front door 2 ladies came to answer the door Mrs Wood and Mrs Peters. They asked to see if our hands were clean and then inspected our teeth – making sure there were no rotten teeth. Then we had to twirl on the spot while they watched our movements. We were taken into the main dining room area and were taught how to carry trays with special crockery on them – making sure to be careful not to drop them and the tray wasn’t allowed to rattle. We had to work silently at all times and with grace!

One of our first tasks was to learn how to do jobs in the kitchen, such as cooking, grinding coffee beans, grinding spices, making butter, making jelly in moulds, preparing dinner, rolling out pastry and making baked goods.

Then we toured the house with Mrs Wood and she showed us how to clean and polish the furniture and grand staircase. We went into the bedrooms to learn how to make the beds, dust the furniture and clean out the chamber pots – luckily they we didn’t have to empty them out! Then we went to the Nursery to look at the room where the children are fed, play and sleep. The golden rule was ‘children were to be seen and not heard’. 

 

When we returned downstairs we had to learn the different bells that are used by the owners of the house. There were 3 bells to learn – the Gentleman’s bell, the Ladies bell  and the bell for the children’s room. The bells helped us to learn which rooms we were needed in.

We thanked the ladies for having us as visitors and headed off along North Terrace to the Migration Museum.

After a lunch under the lovely verandah of the Migration Museum we began exploring.

We divided into 2 groups – one group went to the classroom area and one group went into the Migration Museum.

In the Migration Museum we learnt about the Aboriginal people who lived here when explorers landed here from England. It was interesting to learn about all of the different Aboriginal groups in Australia and find out about their lives. Then we moved further into the museum to find out about the early settlers in Australia. We learnt about the items they brought with them from England and why they’d brought them here. There were lots of slides, artefacts, maps and models to look at in this area.

We dressed up in uniforms from the olden days and given new names that were quite different to ours. We always had to let the ladies go first when moving around the different displays.

 

Then we moved over to the old classroom area. We had to march into class and sit on the special mat for the class.  We learnt about how Aboriginals were treated by the new settlers to Australia and how lives started in a new country. We then practised being in an old fashioned classroom – even doing handwriting lessons on blackboards with slate pencils, writing in cursive. Again, we saw models of meals that people ate and it didn’t look very tasty.

Our last activity was to play old fashioned games in the Migration Museum courtyard.  We played hoops with sticks, knuckles and quoits. It wasn’t as easy as it looked.

We had a fantastic day of learning and gained a far greater insight into just how much things have changed from the 1800’s to today.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to the staff of Ayres House and the Migration Museum. They all gave us such a wonderful insight into our history and how lives and items have changed so much over time.

We’d also like to say thanks to Kath and Ahmad – the 2 best parent helpers on the day! They were a wonderful support.

What were some of your highlights of  our excursion?

 

 

Urrbrae Secondary School Excursion

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Today the Year 1/2 and Year 2 classes visited Urrbrae Secondary School and the Nature Education Centre as a part of our current Inquiry unit about Ecosystems and the human impact upon ecosystems.

WOW!!! We had a fantastic day and learnt so much new information from the experts there.

We didn’t know a lot about freshwater ecosystems – now we do.

We started our day at the Nature Education Centre, where Sally introduced us to a ring tailed possum, a bearded dragon lizard, a sleepy lizard, a carpet python and an owl.

Next, we walked over to the wetlands area and walked on a special trail to explore the plants and larger animals that live in this habitat. Each team had a recorder with a checklist, one person with a microscopic view finder, one person with the charts to help identify creatures that we saw and everyone had binoculars for a closer view. We used tallies to count some of the animals – especially the rainbow lorikeets. A part of our tour was to look at the drains that feed the fresh water into the wetland areas and the nets that catch all of the rubbish, leaf litter and many other items that come into the wetlands when it rains. This showed us the impact of humans on ecosystems and gave us some new ideas for how we need to continue to care for our environments.

After lunch, we explored the waters of the wetlands. Each team used nets, water trays and ice cube trays to collect water, mud, plant bits and any tiny creatures that live in the water. Then we used spoons and pipettes to scoop water into the ice cube trays and carried these inside to the digital microscopes. Using these digital microscopes we could see all of the aquatic macro invertebrates.  We used more charts to find out which types of  aquatic macro invertebrates lived in these waters. We found lots of red worms, water slugs and water boatman.

We can’t wait to get back to school and use our new information to help our inquiry investigations.

Our final activity was a bit of a surprise – we went up into a grassland area and build some stick cubby houses or structures. It was a great fun way to finish the day.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Sally from the Nature Ed Centre, Ann Louise from Urrbrae SS Wetlands classroom and John, Stacey and Alice – the Craigburn Primary parent helpers. Our helpers made sure our day was a great success.

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Some more photos of our excursion – thanks Alice for the extras!

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What was your favourite part of the day?

Excursion to Tailem Town

Last Friday our class travelled with the Year 1/2, 2 & 3 classes to Tailem Bend to visit  Old Tailem Town. This excursion tied in perfectly with our Inquiry unit about Artefacts.

Old Tailem Town is set up like an old town – it has houses, long/short drop toilets, movie theatres, garages, mechanics, a fire station, a police station and dungeon, old trams and trains, general stores, hotels, hospitals and so many more spots to visit. People are free to wander around the town and explore!

We walked around all of the different parts of Tailem Town and went into lots of the buildings to see how our earlier settlers lived. We looked at the rooms in houses, the old furniture and meat safes, table settings, beds, furniture and farming equipment and vehicles. There was so much to see and do – we had a really busy day!!

As we toured around the village we could see how many different items in our homes have changes, for example: fridges, washing machines, toilets, plates, cutlery, wardrobes – just to name a few.

Here are photos of our day.
Tailem Town – Part 1 on PhotoPeach


Tailem Town – Part 2 on PhotoPeach

What did you think of Tailem Town?

Road Safety Excursion

As a part of our previous unit of Inquiry about Safety, our class visited the Road Safety Centre at Thebarton. We went on our excursion with the children in Mrs Chick’s Year 2 class.

We travelled to the Road Safety Centre by bus and we were met by Police Officer Rob when we arrived. We had a quick tour of the centre and then watched some Safety videos in the school area.

We learnt about:

  • Helmet safety
  • Car passenger safety
  • Safety equipment when riding bikes
  • Road crossing rules
  • Bike safety
  • Pedestrian safety

Then we went outside and fitted our bike helmets and chose a bike to ride around. Mrs Chick’s class were the pedestrians. After 45 minutes we swapped over and our class became the pedestrians and Mrs Chick’s class rode the bikes.

We had a lot of fun practising the road rules and safety rules while we rode our bikes on the mini road set up. We had to stop at the red lights, go on the green lights, stop if the railway signals were flashing on and off, stop for pedestrians at emu and school crossings, remember which way to go around the roundabout and most importantly to ride on the left side of the road.

When we were pedestrians we needed to wait at the lights for the green pedestrian man to light up so we knew it was safe to cross the road, look right, left and then right to cross the road safely, use the emu crossing and watch out for speeding bikes!!

We LOVED all of the activities at the Road Safety Centre.

Then we had lunch in Bonython Park and we played on the most amazing playground. It was so exciting to see so many different pieces of equipment to play on.

We were all really excited to hear that you can visit the Road Safety School on the weekend for free and use the roads, signs and park areas anytime you like. We can’t wait to go back there.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Chick for organising our day and to the 3 mums who helped our class – Alison, Candi and Kim. You were all a great help for us.

Here’s some photos of our day!!! Enjoy.

Road Safety Excursion – Part 1 on PhotoPeach

Road Safety Excursion – Part 2 on PhotoPeach

Road Safety Excursion – Part 3 on PhotoPeach

 

What did you enjoy about our excursion today?