WF Daily Explorations Tuesday 8/7 | Wee Friends Early Childhood Program LLC

In “The Land of the Long White Cloud”, there is a mountain range that is so long and so high that, on overcast days, the clouds stretch over it’s peaks and rain pours down…lots of rain! In fact, the average annual rainfall in this Land is 10 meters, or 13 Ada’s tall!

This is one of the many interesting things we learned today when Finn’s Dad, Lindsay, took us halfway around the world to his native New Zealand.

He held up the globe, showed Wee Friends where New Zealand is and asked “What do you notice?” Friends replied:

“It’s tiny!”
There’s water all around it!”

They asked him questions and made observations:

“Is it a long way from Notre Dame?”
“My mommy talked about England”
That’s the English flag!”
“Bats sleep upside down, do Kiwis?”

We learned that the four stars on the New Zealand flag represent the four brightest stars seen in the New Zealand sky. If you draw a line down and across, it creates the “Southern Cross”. Sailors used this formation to guide them at sea. Long after the Eastern Polynesian settlers came, the English came and colonized the island. Both peoples are represented on the national flag.

He held up a Chinese gooseberry and asked “Do you know what this is?” Tami cut one open and many friends recognized the familiar kiwi fruit!

And then, Lindsay introduced us to a member of the New Zealand family that our friends our still talking about: New Zealand’s national bird, the Kiwi.

Lindsay taught us that the Kiwi bird is nocturnal and uses his nostrils at the tip of his beak to eat insects and bugs and worms. He shared with us that some of the worms in New Zealand are actually as big as Tami! It is the father who protects the eggs in the nest and often protects his friend’s eggs as well!

Friends got to hold a model “weta”, which is something akin to our grasshopper. It lives like a forest rat and can grow to 6” long.

Lindsay told us it takes 20 hours (from LA), by plane, to get to New Zealand. One time he was traveling back to the US on his 40th birthday. He left New Zealand at 8pm one day and arrived in LA on the same day at noon. His 40th birthday, lasted 40 hours! This is how explained the invisible International Date Line!

He read Kapai’s New Mates by Uncle Anzac and Perky the Pukeko by Michelle Osment that introduced us to a few Maori words:

Kumara: Sweet Potato
pipis: clams
pakaru: broken
kai: food

Home of the Mighty Black Team, Lindsay wore a black rugby jersey and explained that black is the color for all national sports. And then came the homemade Pavalova! Named after the Russian ballerina, this delicious meringue dessert was devoured by Wee Friends and teachers! So good!