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Investigate the World – New Zealand’s landscapes have been formed along the Pacific and Australian tectonic plate interface on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Most of the native ecology is only found in New Zealand and the culture is a surprising integration of European and Polynesian. New Zealanders are proud of their small place on earth and actively care for it.
- Travel Day: Relax and enjoy our scheduled flight from North America.
- Travel Day: Cross the International Dateline.
- Meet your Tour Director: Our 24-hour Tour Director will meet us at the airport and remain with us until our final airport departure. We will have use of a private coach and driver, while touring for the next six days.
- Tauranga: Upon arrival at Auckland International Airport, we will transfer to Tauranga.Our base for the next four nights will be Tauranga.
- Karangahake Gorge: Experience a natural landscape. See how water cuts through rock over the ages. We summarise New Zealand nature here and the story of how people interact with nature. We take a guided walk along a river gorge and see how plants grow - even on solid rock! They create a place for animals to live. We go exploring - this time of the tracks and tunnels that were built to bring gold bearing rock from the gold mines; Visit an old gold mine.
- Lunch: Today, lunch is included.
- Dinner: Tonight, we will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- Daily Reflection and Group Discussion: "We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience" - John Dewey On every evening of the program, we will set time aside to update our Reflection Journal and share thoughts and impressions that have come to the fore in the course of the day.
- Breakfast: Enjoy a daily included breakfast.
- Wathershed: Let's get involved in the environment. We will follow the rain and see what we can find! Start by visiting a waterfall at the top of the "Watershed". See how the rainforest protects the land and keeps the stream clear. Find little animals in the water that tell us the health of the water.
- McLaren Falls Park: This is where we study marine life in streams and the relationship between the plants found in the stream and the health of the water. We complete field work that teaches students the role that forests have and we demonstrate why different plants grow in different places - the concept of niches and habitats. Take a guided walk into ancient rainforests to discover the rainforest community of plants. See how each plant is dependent on the other plants for survival - how each plant has a role to play in making up the rainforest. Learn how rainforests are the lungs of the earth and the important role they play in giving us good quality fresh water.
- Lunch: Enjoy a picnic lunch beside Hydro lake - feed the ducks!
- Stream Study: Arrive at stream at McLaren Falls. In this stream, we look for biological indicators - special animal species that are evidence of the quality of the stream water. Lakes are badly affected if the water entering them is "enriched" with too much nitrogen or sediments. Much of New Zealand is covered in rainforest which helps filter the water as it flows to the lakes. This means that our water is usually very clear and sparkling. We use a special stream survey to test the amount of oxygen in the stream water to check that it is clean and healthy Students are briefed on the science of water quality and how we are learning to test the fresh water in the stream to see how clean it is. In small groups, students examine a sample of water from the stream and remove any small invertebrate animals into a separate container, then using magnifying glasses they identify them. From this data they can deduce the amount of oxygen in the stream. Complete a fresh water stream survey to find animals that live in oxygen rich water. Find small invertebrates in the fresh water stream, identify each animal from a classification sheet and use these animals to make the conclusion on the quality of this water. Follow the water as it runs from the stream into the hydro lake then out the lake and down the canal and finally into pipes that plunge down under a hydro power station. Discuss how this potential energy - falling into the power station - produces electrical energy. Describe and compare this as renewable energy compared to fossil fuels and its effect on the environment.
- Dinner: Tonight, we will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- Glowworms Tour: Return to rainforest and venture in to forest in darkness to experience the amazing Glowworms at night.
- Breakfast: Enjoy a daily included breakfast.
- Waimarino: This morning we will depart for Waimarino. We will have a briefing on this mornings kayaking activity and the relevant safety factors. Thevsafety session presented by the kayaking guides is very important and they are veryvexperienced experts in taking students of this age on the water.
- Lunch: Today we will enjoy lunch at Waimarino.
- Free time: Enjoy some free time on outdoorvchallenge activities.
- Maori Excursion: We visit the local estuary where the Maori people have always gathered their food andvharvested their flax. This session the group will be completing a coastal discovery along the sandy beach. This is a sheltered tidal sandy beach which is excellent to explore and discover fascinating marine life and appreciate how much life that the ocean supports.
- Collect animals: Small groups will be given a bucket each to collect different animals and a species sheet to identify them. Facilitator will brief them on handling the animals and keeping them healthy. They will be given time to follow trails of shellfish in the sand, upturn stones to discover animals living underneath and dig in the sand for those animals hiding from the birds. Facilitator will use the findings to introduce a variety of animals that live along the shoreline. The group will discuss ways in which animals along the shoreline protect themselves. They will find the animals that Maori people use for food. At the end, the groups will show and tell about their bucket of specimens and then all animals will be carefully returned to their habitat. Students will be debriefed on the value of giving back to nature and how everything is interrelated. From this data we can discuss how healthy the estuary environment is and how long it has been healthy.
- Fun Activity: We finish the day with a predator and prey activity that illustrates the food web that is active in the estuarine environment.
- Dinner: Tonight, we will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- Breakfast: Enjoy a daily included breakfast.
- School visit: This morning we will have a briefing on school program and how to integrate with New Zealand classroom activity. Spend a day with Buddies at a New Zealand school. A special interactive program will be run to engage Visitors with New Zealand students including a theme of water alongside fun and enquiry based learning.
- Lunch: Today, lunch is included.
- Plant trees activity: After school, students propagate native tree seedlings to plant in forests in 2021.
- Free time: This evening we will have some free time.
- Dinner: Tonight, we will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- Breakfast: Enjoy a daily included breakfast.
- Explore a native forest: Visit a native wetland and learn about how people can conserve an environment that is important for endangered plants and animals. Take a walk through a restored native forest to see how it creates shelter for these endangered species. Help us with our conservation efforts by planting native trees into an area that needs restoring and will assist in filtering the water so it enters the sea as clean.
- Lunch: Today, we will have Fish and Fries for lunch at ocean beach picnic!
- Kiwifruit Tour: Learn the kiwifruit process at its primary stage from orchard to the market to gain an appreciation of the technology behind this innovative product. You will enter the fruit orchard and be introduced to as many as 70 different types of fruits that grow well in this region which is rich in volcanic ash soil. Students undertake practical activities to assess the quality of individual fruit. Students will learn the importance of a strict selection process to ensure that only the best fruits are exported overseas. Students will form into small groups and come up with their simple advertisement for TV to market their fruit to the rest of the group members as a simple entrepreneurship exercise. The learning task is to think about how to "sell" Kiwifruit to others using its wonderful qualities and where it is grown in New Zealand to entice them to buy.
- Manuka Honey: Visit this centre and learn about the honey bee and its importance in producing food on planet earth! Taste Manuka Honey and get yourself a Manuka Honey ice cream.
- Dinner: We will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- Breakfast: Enjoy a daily included breakfast.
- Maori carving school: Learn how the Maori tell stories of their family history using carving. See the carvings on the large meeting house and learn how these people sailed to New Zealand 900 years ago. Then we will join with others to receive a formal welcome onto the Maori cultural centre (marae). Songs and Dance are performed as Maori men and women present the Maori stories and history and we learn of the traditions and the importance of family in this culture. Today we learn about Maori people and understand cultures and cultural difference. Maori did not have a written language so they remembered stories, history, great events with the use of song, dance, handicrafts and great carvings Visit Te Puia Geothermal Park to study and experience geothermal activity including steaming streams, bubbling mud and Pohutu - the largest geyser in the southern hemisphere. Te Puia is a geothermal vent on the edge of the Rotorua caldera volcano. It has been the home for Maori since the 1300s and was the scene of some of the earliest tourism activity in New Zealand. It is an excellent site to introduce the Taupo Volcanic Zone.
- Kiwi Bird: See the endangered Kiwi bird and learn about the endangered species management - Kiwi Recovery Programme, where Kiwi are hatched in special laboratories and released into the wild when they are able to defend themselves from predators. New Zealand leads the world in endangered species management.
- Lunch: Today, lunch will be included at Rotoura park.
- Free time: We will have some free time in the park.
- Lake Tarawera: Learn of the massive volcanic eruption that destroyed this area. Learn how these Maori people shifted to Te Puia and set up Maori tourism there. Take a boat cruise on the lake to an isolated shoreline and enter the forest to find a hot pool in the forest. Spend a glorious time soaking in this amazing pool hidden from the outside world. Some may want to go from pool to lake alternating hot bathing with rather cool bathing!
- Maori Craft: Before we return to the accommodation and dinner, learn a Maori craft by weaving a flax flower to take home as a souvenir of New Zealand.
- Dinner: We will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- Final Reflection and Discussion Session: This evening we make the final entries in our Reflection Journal and share some of the most significant observations and perspectives that have taken shape in the course of our travel experience and how these may be most relevant for us all as we return home.
- Breakfast: Enjoy a daily included breakfast.
- Skyline Skyrides and Luge: Take the Gondola to the Mt Ngongotaha Skyline and the famous Luge rides. Take the exhilarating luge ride down the mountain tracks. From the vantage point of Mt Ngongotaha, we look over the huge Rotorua volcanic crater.
- Photo group: Final act is a group photo from this vantage point with the huge crater in the background. Discuss the role of water across the landscape in New Zealand.
- Lunch: Today, lunch is included.
- Travel: Today we will return to Auckland.
- Dinner: We will enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.
- End of tour: Our rewarding and enjoyable tour comes to an end as our Tour Director accompanies us to the airport on our final day.
- Recognize Perspectives and Communicate Ideas: 3 College Preparatory Credits Through the University of California at San Diego Extension. As a result of participating on this program, all high school students are eligible to take an online Global Perspectives course through a learning management system, where all the grading and assessment will be undertaken by the WorldStrides Curriculum and Academics team, led by Wendy Amato PhD. The course offers 3 college preparatory credits through the University of California at San Diego Extension, where credit will be awarded upon successful completion of the online coursework with all costs associated with the course covered by WorldStrides.
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