Sunday, August 9, 2015

Look Back to Look Forward - Shantytown

We traveled to Shantytown as part of our Social Studies work around our theme 'Look Back to Look Forward'.  
This year we are looking at the 'World of Work'.

After leaving school at 9am we arrived at Shantytown at 10.30am.
The teacher greeted us and took us to the schoolroom.




After morning tea we got to ride the train! 
Along the way we passed the sawmill.







We found out that before people had cars, travel by train used to be more commonplace.

Then it was time for lunch, and a chance to check out some of the attractions.









Mrs McK learned about some duties of school teachers 
in the past!

After lunch we went shopping. 
Each group had a shopping list and we had to make sure we found all of the items. 
Nowadays people can get most grocery items by visiting just one supermarket, but in the past people had to visit lots of shops to get all of their shopping. 

We had to get a leg of lamb from the butchers and order the meat for next week:

We visited the hairdressers and the jewellers:



We wrote a postcard and posted it to ourselves:


Fresh vegetables from the gardener in Chinatown:




At the grocers, the customer was given a chair to sit on while being served by the shopkeeper. 
We had to wait until it was our turn to be served.





The tea, flour and rice had to be weighed and bagged.
Nothing came plastic-wrapped back then!



We enjoyed our day exploring the past.

Have you ever visited a heritage park like Shantytown?
Do you think life was easier or harder back then?
Why do you think that?




















2 comments:

  1. Hello buddies
    It looks like you had an interesting time! We have never been to Shanty town before.
    Is there people living in the houses? (Nirvana)
    Did you have a train ride?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Our class have never been to Shantytown, but Mrs P has - she panned for gold there! It was a long time ago. We have a small heritage block of buildings at our local wildlife reserve, Staglands. There is a jail with a block you can put your head and arms in (and people used to throw tomatoes at you), there is shop, a bank, a hut, a school room and a cart you can ride in on a train track. It is very cool.
    We think life would have been harder in the olden days because you had to do a lot more work yourself, like pumping the water. Mrs P thinks life would have been simpler as there would have been less rushing and gadgets!
    From Mrs P and B5 at Eastern Hutt School

    ReplyDelete