This week has been a bit of a ‘back to it’ week after we took a little time off towards the end of May. We seem to do well on smaller concise projects and one of my favourite authors and conservationists shared some resources that she had been working on for On the Edge Conservation. (There is another set of resources written by Isabel Thomas).
.I had a quick look and thought we would tie in New Zealand and the Kakapo into a short project. I’ll share here what we did.
Resources Required
- New Zealand information pack (We have the one from Trip Abrood – signing up to their mailing list sees them email a themed workpack each week. If you email them they’re happy to send the older ones out direct)
- New Zealand flag
- EDGE Conservation Pack one and two specific to the Kakapo.
- YouTube New Zealand tours
- Atlas – we like Atlas of Adventures
- Travel Book
- Notebooking pages from Undercover Hippy Bus (I used the World Explorer pack and Animal Nature Study)
The Lesson
First, we located New Zealand on a map and talked about just how far away it is from us in the UK. We talked about whether we thought it was close to Australia, and that whilst it’s closer to Australia than we are, it’s still quite far away! I got the children to think about what that might mean in terms of how the land has developed and the population etc.
We then looked at the New Zealand page in The Travel Book and Atlas of Adventures. We talked about the Maori culture and how that might be similar to some other cultures we had been learning about. We watched some YouTube videos of the Haka being performed in different situations and talked a little about that.
We then read aloud from the New Zealand pack from Trip Abrood whilst the children used the template in the pack to design their own Maori mask. They then moved on to complete some of the notebooking sheets about New Zealand and coloured the flag for the front of the folder we are using to store their work. We talked about some of the reasons for why the flag is similar to the Australian flag and why both have the Union Jack on it.
We then watched a fab YouTube video that showed the many different sides of New Zealand and the children promptly declared they want to go!
Next we looked at the packs from On the Edge. We talked through them and we talked a lot about the Kakapo and the impact that humans have had, but how it’s now up to humans to help them flourish again. I really like these materials. There are two sets that we used. The first set (here) are part of a new educational series and I think a new set will be released each week. This first set mentions a few different animals, but for the purpose of the work we were doing I wanted to focus on the Kakapo so I took the information I need and we will return to the rest at a future date.
There is a second specific Kakapo set that we used. There are crafts and games included and we had a lot of fun making up the corner bookmark. The guides are written in a really accessible way with lots of fun illustrations. There is a good mix of activities too for children to that cover a wide range of curriculum areas.
Other Things to Explore
The On the Edge packs as well as the Trip Abrood packs are nice packs to work through in and of themselves, I’ve just added a little extra to them to bring them in line with how we tend to do small projects.
We also completed some of the animal study pack sheets from Undercover Hippy Bus for the Kakapo and then the older two wrote a storyboard. E wrote about the Kakapo and its characteristics and D wrote about how they had come to be critically endangered and the efforts being undertaken to help them to flourish. If children are particularly keen to help in other ways then here’s an example of something we did a while back that the older two still remember today.
