Lawrence Area School was our first booking for Term 2, with 27 year 7 and 8 students visiting the Lakes District Museum & Gallery.

It was a rainy, dark, day. BUT the Lawrence Area School students were bright and eager to learn! Wendy our Educator helped out in the morning with the group, as the students experienced an 1800's style classroom with the terrifying Miss Gray. This was followed by a session in the museum where students got to handle artefacts from the past.

After lunch, I took over, and we had a session of making butter and creating rag mats. This helped the students to understand what living conditions were like for children during the late 1800's. It was a lot of hard work for those kids where they didn't have technology or modern day conveniences to help them with their chores! The visit ended with a tour of the Chinese settlement. The Lawrence Area students had a fantastic background knowledge about New Zealand's Chinese settler history, as the township of Lawrence also had Chinese settlement during the gold rush. Lawrence, like many other parts of New Zealand, segregated the Chinese from the rest of the community due to the racist attitudes the European settlers had towards different cultures. In Arrowtown this meant the Chinese settlers built their own village away from the European part of Arrowtown. In Lawrence, the cemetery was divided into sections so all Chinese who died in the Lawrence area got buried separately from the other European settlers.  The students really enjoyed hearing about the ghost stories of Ah Lum and Ah Sip too!

Is learning at school easier today than it was in the 1800's? Why?

What were some of your favourite artefacts that you got to handle?

Did you think the butter you made tasted like the butter you buy from the store?

Do you think it was harder to be a kid during the 1800's?

Can you remember any of the facts we learned at the Chinese settlement?

Answer my questions and comment about your visit below!