Middle Room Overnight Stay
Last Monday our class went to Dunedin to stay in the Otago Museum for their overnight stay. At 2pm we left school and headed to the Otago Museum. When we got there, we met Kim who took us up to the Education department of the Museum. To get there we had to walk through Discovery World, this excited us! After that, Kim talked to us about what we would be doing while we stayed at the Museum. We were allowed to have a snack after this. After we ate it was time to go back to the vehicles and unpack all our gear for the night. When we dropped all our gear off, it was time for the scavenger hunt around the Museum in groups! It was challenging doing the scavenger hunt and we had to work as a team! Shortly after we started doing this, the Museum closed (5pm). This meant we were the only ones in the Museum!
After we finished the scavenger hunt we met Lauren who was our teacher that stayed the night with us! She was really nice and knew lots about the items in the Museum! Next we played in Discovery World and we had to figure out how the activities worked. There was lots of interesting things to do in Discovery World! We played in here until our pizzas from pizza hut arrived for dinner! YUM!
After tea we were allowed to play a bit more in Discovery World until our next activity was ready.
When we had finished dinner and playing, we went and studied Mummy Mania. Lauren told us all about the Mummy in the Museum. Otago Museum is very lucky to have their own Mummy! She was quite small and was 35 when she was mummified, and had been mummified for 2300 years! WOW! Mummies hearts were left in so they went to the underworld, only if their heart was as light as a feather. If it was heavier they couldn't go! Savannah got to dress up as a Mummy and we went through the process of mummifying her! She was quite scared when she saw the hook that was used to mush up brains! After we finished our lesson, we went back to the Education Centre and made our own death masks! These are masks that are put on Mummies faces.
It was time to make our beds now. We took a mattress, pillow, blankets and our sleeping bag down into Discovery World and we could sleep anywhere we liked!
Tropical Forest is where we went next to see the butterflies, fish, turtles, tarantulas and quail! Tropical Forest was nice and warm with heaps of butterflies. They like people and sometimes land on you! Miss Ward didn't really like this! We had supper in the Tropical Forest.
Next we went back to the education room and played a game while the adults went away for a wee bit. After this we lined up and put our hands on each others shoulders and we weren't allowed to make a sound! This was because the alarms might go off! We headed off on a dark night walk, up to the Animal Attic. Lauren read us a story when we got here while we sat in a circle. The story was about animals that were in this attic! There were some animal noises being made while the story was being read but we figured out it was the adults! They tried to scare us! When the story had finished we were allowed to look around the animals and we had to pick our favourite one while also looking for the animals that didn't quite make it back into their places. There was three roosters and a chimp that hadn't made it back to their places. We also had to look for the Humpback whale's eye and the Crown of King Rats! When we had finished this, we sat back down in a circle and shared with the group our favourite animals. Lauren also told us some more facts about the animals in the attic. After this we got back in our line with our hands on each others shoulders and headed back to the education room. On the way while we were walking down the stairs in the dark, Kate and Mrs Ramsay had mummy masks and out of nowhere, scared us in the dark!! We all got frights, some people had tears and some people SCREAMED REALLY LOUD! They did a great job of scaring us! We were glad the alarms didn't go on!
After that it was time to get ready for bed. It was 10.15pm! This is very late for us especially on a school night! We headed down into Discovery World and hopped in our beds. Everyone got a pretty good sleep although some people woke up in the night time.
Lauren woke us up at 7am! It was time to pack up, get changed and have breakfast. We farewelled Lauren after she took us around the Pacific part of the Museum. This was really interesting. We also went back into the Tropical Forest.
After this we went to do some science experiments with Kate the science educator. We made Elephant's Toothpaste, Blew up a Bag, changed colours of a liquid and dissolved cups with a scientific liquid! It was exciting doing these experiments!
When we had finished with Kate, we picked up our gear and farewelled Otago Museum. It was time for a swim at Moana Pool. We went on the hydroslide, lazy river and wave pool. We had a great time at the pool. After this we headed to the Dinosaur Park at St Kilda to have hot chips, pizza, baking and fruit for lunch. YUM! We were hungry after our busy morning. This park was cool with lots of different things to do.
At 1pm it was time to head back to Waiwera South Primary School. Our overnight stay was over!
All in all we had an awesome time! We can't wait to go on camp again!
Thank you to Kate, Brony, Mrs Ramsay, Hamish, Craig, Joanne and Stacey who came on our overnight stay as parent assistants. Thank you also to Miss Ward for making our trip happen!
By the Middle Room
