In Room 12 we have travelled back 300 million years. We have been learning about the history of New Zealand. We have learnt that New Zealand’s landscape once looked very different and are beginning to understand what happened to make New Zealand what it is today.

We have learnt that New Zealand started off as part of the supercontinent Pangea. Pangea was affected by the shifting of tectonic plates and was split making two continents, Laurasia and Gondwana. Eventually, a huge section of land split away from Gondwana and was known as Zealandia. However, this land was still changing and moving. Zealandia stretched out and then sank. Only a scattering of small islands were left above the surface. Then it was pushed up against Australia and a bit of land rose from the sea. This is the land we call Aotearoa, New Zealand.

As well as learning about the supercontinents and how they changed over time. We have looked into New Zealand's prehistoric era. This was consolidated with a trip to the Auckland Museum to learn about dinosaurs. We celebrated in class by making some salt dough dinosaur fossils.

The mammals era of New Zealand was intriguing, with many questions being left unanswered. We learnt that most of New Zealand's mammals had been wiped out - the children had many interesting theories as to how this may have happened - however, it is still not known. We learned that once New Zealand was dominated by birds and that many of our birds lost their ability to fly. Check out the awesome moas we made below.

Here are some photos of our Inquiry so far. We hope you enjoy them. 

Next, we will be learning about the changes in New Zealand's climate over time and how volcanoes have helped shape New Zealand’s terrain.