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Friday, 11th September 2015
Going For Geology!
Monday, 23rd June 2014
Handling gold at the Gold Shop!
Year 3 and 4 students from Arrowtown are GOING to the Museum for GEOLOGY!
Planned visits are being made to the Lakes District Museum & Gallery, where students are introduced to the geology of the Wakatipu region by listening to a story which covers information about Gondwanaland , the formation of New Zealand, tectonic plates moving, the ice age, schist, gold, quartz, and pounamu.
Students are also visiting Justin at the Gold Shop, where Justin speaks about the geological formation of gold and its uses. He also lets the students handle some very expensive gold nuggets and jewellery! One nugget is worth $15,000! The gold the students get to see is really heavy and very bright.
The students are also visiting Leroy at the Jade Factory. Leroy explains the characteristics of pounamu such as how hard it is. He demonstrates this by smashing his hammer against it. It makes a loud sound, and when he shows us the hammer, it is flattened!
A quick visit to Buckingham green is also included in the programme. Students explore the large schist boulder at the green and discuss its characteristics as well as how it was formed into a metamorphic rock.
Back at the museum, students are also shown our Geology display which shows the HUGE variety of rocks from this region, including some eratic rocks. Students also have the opportunity to handle more rocks which had been found in the Wakatipu region. Some were about 30, 000 years old! In some of these rocks there are shells (molluscs) and a sharks tooth! Other rocks the students get to handle include: quartz, scheelite, tungsten, a bowenite adze, a greywacke adze, and of course schist.
Helping Arrowtown students learn about geology is wonderful. It's an information overload, but all of the students are such keen learners so everyone is enjoying themselves a lot!
Thank you so much to David the Museum Director, Leroy form the Jade Factory, and Justin from the Gold Shop for contributing to the programme and sharing all of your knowledge with the students!
What are the four rocks and elements you learned about during your visit?
Which rock or element do you like the best? Why?
Can you remember what the term erratic rock means?
How long does it take rocks to form?
What are some other interesting things you learned during your visit?
Answer my questions and comment about your visit below!
Comments (30)
Wow, it sounds like you learned a lot during your visit to the museum! Justin, Leroy, and David were fantastic - they really make geology exciting! Thanks for commenting on the blog Eliana.
We all had a great time at the museum and the jade store and gold store. Thank you Amy.I loved it at all the places.And a big thank you to Amy, Justin and Leroy and also David.
I liked The rocks that you showed us. I like seeing the shark tooth in the rock.
thank you Amy for teaching room 5 about rocks.
It was interesting that Arrowtown was covered over by a glacier hundreds of years ago.
Maggie
Thanks for all of the wonderful comments everyone! It's wonderful to see you all posting on our blog. I think you all make wonderful junior geologists because you were all so knowledgeable when you visited the museum!
I liked it when we got to learn about how the Wakatipu basin was glaciers
From Kaleb and Oz
We had such a Fun filled Time At the Arrowtown museum. We had an Awesome time learning heaps of cool new things. It was so exciting to learn even more about rocks and to hold really heavy GOLD!
Thanks - Madi and Maisie ;)
That is very nice to read and we love how you told us about pounamu and the gold and how it is very expensive that was very interesting from Emma and Maddison
We really enjoyed the museum visit!!!
I learnt so much it makes me want to go back but i
can't because I have so much on !!!
from Catalina & Elise
I liked the way the rough gold felt
from Jack H
I liked the way how the gold was made it is very
pretty me and jack think it was quite heavy fromTiwai
we really enjoyed the trip.It was very interesting
thank you for the trip. and for the greenstone
from Matthew and Gwynie
I liked the way the rough gold felt
from Jack H
I liked the way how the gold was made it is very
pretty me and jack think it was quite heavy fromTiwai
We had so much fun looking at the pounamu
and gold and listening to the story of how New Zealand was formed from Anna and Abigail
Thanks for the interesting facts about the Wakatipu basin. Loved the expensive and interesting gold pounamu schist and quartz. We never knew Wakatipu was once a Glacier.
By Finley Davies and Jack Kilbride
That was one of my favourite trips the gold shop is amazing and we got free greenstone named after jade and pounamu
by Aiden and Logan
The gold was heavy beautiful and it was smooth .
by Joshua h and Pearce
thanks for the amazing information and facts.About gold and pounamu and quarts . We had so much fun feeling the rocks and stones.
from Ellie and Georgia
we liked the jade shop and we like to no about the glacier. We liked the gold shop as well.
We really liked the time when we got to visit Leroy at the jade and opal factory.We liked it when we got the jade.We found out that the when the Maori found Pounamu they took two years to carve it.
from Jack.S and Sophie
THANK YOU FOR ALL OF THE COMMENTS!
It's great to see that you all enjoyed reading the blog. Come back to the museum soon, it's awesome having the Arrowtown school kids visit the museum!
we loved the feel of the pounamu
thanks for showing us the shist, gold, quartz, jade its really nice of Leroy and Justin to give up their time for us.
Thank you for letting us hold all the different rocks and green stone.I loved it and i found out lots of new things.It was really interesting.
Thank you for all the things you taught us. We had alot of fun at the museum getting to hold the rock with the sharks tooth in it. Thanks for showing us the quartz, greenstone, schist and the gold that was very fun. i want to come there again. I liked going in the gold and jade shop. I liked the part were Leroy banged the jade and... his hammer was flat! and we got to hold the greenstone the first one was not that heavy but the other ones were quite heavy. At the gold shop i liked holding the gold it was heavier then i expected it to be.
Thank you for showing us around the museum .
And for showing us the rock's. I leant lot's about rock's.
I liked getting a tour around Arrowtown to see all our rocks. I also liked going to the jade shop and Gold shop.I couldn't believe that Justin sold Gold for 15,000 dollars.
Thank you for letting us come to the museum and showing lots of rocks
from Louis
I really enjoyed going to the museum and the gold
shop and the jade shop My favourite thing was
holding that 15.000 $ piece of gold. I really learned
alot about rocks . My second favourite thing was
when Leroy banged the hammer on the greenstone and the hammer went flat.
I loved seeing the sharks tooth sealed into the rock it was awesome .
I really loved the way you explained how the glaciers pushed all the stones and how the gold was found and where. We all have had a great time and we learnt a hole lot of things about Earth science i loved it so much and loved seeing Leroy at the jade shop and Justin at the gold shop.
A big than thank you to Amy , Justin and Leroy also David
it was a great experience
By: Eliana on Tuesday, 24th June 2014 @ 09:48:11