Have I mentioned how much I love the National Museum during "school" holidays?
We went in because they advertised their exhibition entitled, "Vaka Moana", which highlighted the exploration and population of the Pacific. We were invited to come in, make our own "Vaka" and look through the exhibition.
The National Museum has this fantastic open space in the forecourt and the staff there had put together a tremendous array of materials for construction. The boys could make a boat out of leaves, cardboard, sticks, foam, felt, tissue paper, coloured paper, rafia, string, straws and it could be held together by almost every imaginable craft possibility. There was even a staff member handling a glue gun and trimming pieces for the children!
After finishing the boat building stage, some of the boys coloured in a picture. This was great because Stevie took twice as long as the others as he made his boat out of wood. The National Museum staff were so impressed with his Vaka that they took a photo of him with it. Zac and Adam made The Canberra Times on Sunday, a photo showing them hard at work.
Then it was time to "test them out" on the simulated waves before heading into the exhibition.
It was certainly interesting to see the different types of Vakas that sailed across the Pacific
and to see some life size examples of these vessels.
After all that work, there was still some "down time"
- you see, we were only half way through our day. After the Museum, the older boys were booked in for an Art workshop at the National Gallery and I took the younger two to Questacon for a couple of hours.
After a short tour in part of the Gallery looking at sculptures, Stevie and Zac made a "Squishy Sculpture". They could use foam, styrofoam and wire to create their own design.
Zac’s one was on a stand and had a wire armature and Stevie’s was a relief of a cricket pitch. I think they would have liked more time to do this than they got so they could finish off their designs properly.
We went home, knowing that we’d put in a long day… but we still had energy left for the next day…which I’ll write about now.
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