Here is a recount of our celebrations written by Room 8.

On Friday, for the 150th year of Outram School, we started off with the National anthem, but only in English because you weren’t allowed to sing in Māori. Tyler, Hunter and Nicholas came up the front to raise the flag because they are scouts. Jake ‘got the cane’ for chewing gum and Hannah got it for laughing. To finish off, we did some PE, like arm stretches then found out what groups we were in for the activities.

The classroom teacher was Mr Sinclair aka Mrs Sinclair. She ‘used’ a cane on anybody, but only if they were naughty. We did handwriting on a blackboard or a black piece of paper. If you were naughty, you would get the dunce hat as well as the cane. We also did Maths and our times tables and reading, ending with the story Peter Rabbit.

In Rooms 3 and 4, we played inside games.

We did string games and elastics with Miss B. The string games, you played with your fingers and elastics, with your feet. Kids got caught and fell over when playing elastics. The big kids could do the string games easy and the little kids found it hard. For the elastics, there were song cards that you had to follow. We played knucklebones. If you don’t know how to play, you start with them on the back of your hand and chuck them in the air, not that high. All the kids were saying, ‘ouch, ouch!’ Pick up sticks were also in Room 3. In the olden days people would play pick up sticks. You have to try not to move the other coloured sticks. It was fantastic to play games children played in the olden days.

Hopscotch was fun to learn. Hoop and sticks was hard to do. You had to hit the hoop with the stick. You can hit the hoop on the inside or the outside. Hopscotch is when you grab a stone or rock from somewhere. Then you throw it in the first square and hop over it into the rest of the squares. We also did marbles and skipping. So this is how you play marbles. Each player gets one big marble and about 10 small ones. One player puts the small marbles in the hoop. Each player flicks their big marble into the hoop. The person who knocks the most marbles out of the hoop, wins. Skipping you swing the rope over your body and try not to trip when you jump. Some of us found it hard. It was exciting to try all of the olden day games.

We also did olden day art with Mrs Lord. We used chalk and charcoal. We drew a penny farthing bike and an olden day school. We mostly used black paper and chalk for the school and white paper and charcoal for the penny farthing bike. In the olden days, they very rarely did art because the teachers thought it was a waste of time. Most schools didn’t have paint, so instead they used chalk and charcoal. But for the schools with more money, they normally had paint.

We did folk dancing too. We danced to ‘The Chimes of Dunkirk’, ‘Jibidi’ and ‘The Waves of Tory’. We skipped in a circle to meet the other person. It was an amazing activity to do. But it smelt like it was an old class.

Another activity we went to was making girdle scones. They were delicious and easy to make. First you put in some flour, then in goes the butter. We mixed them together using a dough blender. Next, we put in some milk and then mixed it. We made a pizza shape with our dough and sliced it like pizza slices. We baked them on a girdle then made butter. We grabbed some cream and put it in an empty container and took turns shaking it until it turned into butter. 

We are pleased we are living the life we are today because we can smile at school and we don’t get the cane. We also learnt how stressful it would have been back then. You weren’t even allowed to write left handed.