Yesterday was  a splendid sunny day for my class and for my  teachers  to go and visit an old and special  cottage near my school. Our time was 10 am and I was very excited to go and visit the stone cottage.

We walked our way down the path to our gate and there were so many cars passing by while we waited to cross. Soon we got our turn  to go. At first we walked around the cottage while we waited for our turn to go inside because there was another class there and they were Rm 2 students.

After that it was our turn to go inside. The names of the people  who showed us around  were Terry and Patrick. Terry told us that Patrick was one of the historians of Panmure which means that he knows a lot  about the history of Panmure. Firstly Terry and Patrick showed us how in the olden days they used roses and lavender to make wonderful  perfume. They had a container to dry up the petals.

 We went inside our first room and we met a lovely woman who used to work at my school for years.  Her name was Josephine  and she comes from Ireland. Terry said that in the olden days the ladies used to make tea or bring beer to men whenever they were thirsty. The next room was very interesting for me  because it had so many different things and clothing inside. She said that women  used a type of machine to sew the material because they had to make their own clothes .

I  was very interested in so many things that Terry and Patrick told us and I wish we could visit the cottage again, in case I have missed something. The one thing that caught my attention was the perfume because I never knew how they would make such lovely perfume without any machine. 

This month we celebrate Matariki on July 14th in mid winter. Matariki is a public holiday for school’s and workers around the country. Matariki is  always at this time of the year and means the eyes of god. It is also Maori New Year  and my teacher showed us how to make Matariki stars. We used wool, cardboard that’s  cut into circles. First we cut out the cardboard  and drew short lines for twelve spokes around like a clock. Then we cut the twelve spokes and after that  we went around with wool around the circles (like you can see in my photo).  Then we went around with a different color of wool to outline the first wool. We went over and over around it to make it really beautiful and cool.

Another thing we learned to do last week was play knuckle bones. We found 5 small stones and learned how the Maori children used to play with these long ago. It was fun and we could make up our own games after that.