Students Miranda Heeney, Lucy Martin, Nina Sturrock and Remy Roberts reflected on the excursion.
“The excitement was contagious as we disembarked the bus. When we arrived, we could smell the salty spray of sea water coming from the bay. We watched the trees rustle their emerald leaves to greet us. We couldn’t wait to start the day,” the students said.
“There was a guide for each group who helped us in our adventures. Their names were Steve, Alicia, Shannon and Oscar. After they had explained some important rules about the park, we finally split up into our class groups and started exploring the national park!”
Year 5 enjoyed participating in four different activities. See their recount of each below.
Creating our animal or plant
“We made our way to a round, stone, grey bench. The bench had a cold and hard feeling. Our guide gave us a piece of paper, which had four main points and a blank spot in the middle. The four points were Defensive Mechanism, Obtaining food, offspring and Lives its best life. We all got to work, our minds bubbling with ideas. Everyone’s animals were different and creative in their own way. Some with scary features and some with cutesy ones.But they were all beautiful in their own way.”
The Coastal Walk
“Our Guide led the class on a beautiful bush walk. They gave us each a card with a plant that we had to find. As we walked (and searched) we heard birds chirping cheerfully above us. The sun was warm on our backs, and the trees whistled in the cool sea breeze. We felt free. You could see the aqua waves dancing with joy as we walked past. They must have felt it too.”
Making Our Own National Parks
“One at a time, the classes created small national parks out of natural resources. We split into groups of 3 to 4 and were given animals that we would need to understand as we built them little national parks. Some made marine national parks, some made arid and dry national parks and some made snowy, mountainous national parks. We enjoyed building and chatting with friends and then talking about the animals and types of national parks we had chosen to produce. Everyone tried their best to use nature to their advantage and make an amazing national park that really showed how it helped to protect animals.”
Bug Hunting
“Finally we went bug hunting, the thing everyone was looking forward to! The competition was on! Which class would collect the most bugs? We collected our kits and off we went finding many different interesting bugs, sometimes even scaring ourselves with them along the way! We got to look at the bugs closely in our magnifying containers and tick them off as we went. Everyone was having so much fun that we couldn’t stop! Coming second were three classes finding 51 bugs! But in the end 5 Red stole the show with 56 bugs!,” the students said.
“It was time to go back to school. Everyone had so much fun and we were very grateful to have this amazing experience. We all thanked our guides and hopped onto the buses. What an exciting day it had been!”
