This was a part of our provocation (investigation) morning for our inquiry unit ‘Our Perilous Planet’.

 On our drive to the museum, we had a bit of a peek at the booklet pages that we were given. This task booklet had questions for us to answer about Volcanoes but also about some of the other exhibits too. We were lucky enough to get to explore the entire museum. At the museum we found places to park, relatively close to the entrance and we walked into the entrance. Right next to the entrance, we saw Peter the Tyrannosaurus Rex! The skeleton is amazing.

After that, we went to a session in the learning lab. In the learning lab, we researched where volcanoes are in the North Island of NZ and Auckland, and found out that Rangitoto is only 600 years old. You’re probably thinking how young that is, but apparently most volcanoes can be up to millions of years old, (very, very old). We got to pick out the essentials for if there would be an eruption and we also got to pick up some volcanic rocks, like obsidian, pumice, fire bombs and basalt.

In the history gallery, we saw the Māori royal protection cloak and many more other amazing artefacts. We really enjoyed seeing Te Toki ā Tāpiri, the last great war canoe and there was an amazing canoe pulling simulation. After that, we headed back and had our lunch. We then went to the world war gallery which had a dugout and models of weapons. We saw a TE456 JORAB (a type of plane) and a Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero-sen 22 (a type of Japanese plane) and the spitfire. After all of that walking around, a fair amount of kids and parents and even some teachers were tired (mostly kids, though). So some kids, like us, sat down for a break.

On our next stop was the volcano gallery where we got to lift some other volcanic rocks and we saw something scary! It was a replica of a person who had been covered in ash during the Volcanic Eruption of Pompeii and they had turned to stone! We got to go inside the volcano house which is a model of what happens when a volcano erupts. The house shook and the lights flashed! It made it feel very real.

At the end, we returned to Peter the Tyrannosaurus Rex for one last snack before we left.

In conclusion, we had a truly wonderful time at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. A special thanks to all parents, helpers and our awesome teachers who organised and helped on this trip. We would love to go back in the future.

By Ryan & Eddie