DAY 1: Arts & Entertainment

Activity 1: New Zealand Royalty

‘Lorde’ is a New Zealand singer who rose to fame in 2013 with the release of her song Royals. She currently has over 6 million followers on both Instagram and Facebook and close to 8 million followers on Twitter. Lorde has won many awards and influenced many people with her music and her original dance moves.

Lorde’s real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor and she was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1996. Her mother, Sonja Yelich, is Croatian and her father, Vic O’Connor, is Irish. Lorde’s parents encouraged her to read a lot as a child. They also encouraged her to follow her passion. Lorde started performing covers (other people’s songs) when she was at intermediate school and started writing her own original music as a young teen.

Activity 2: Exploring Our Roots

Taika Waititi is a New Zealand filmmaker, director, actor and comedian. He has produced and/or directed a number of popular films including “Boy,” “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” and “Thor: Ragnarok.” As a child, Taika Waititi lived in Raukokore (a small town on the East Coast of New Zealand). When he graduated from secondary school Taika moved to Wellington to study drama at Victoria University. Despite moving away from home, he has never forgotten his family or his roots (where he comes from).

Speaking of roots, Taika comes from a culturally diverse family. His dad is Māori (Te Whānau-a-Apanui) and his mother is Russian-Jewish. I, on the other hand, am Pākeha (New Zealand European). Most of my ancestors come from England. When I talk about who I am, and introduce myself to others, I sometimes use a pepeha.

Activity 3: Big Friendly Giants

Roald Dahl was a British writer, fighter pilot, spy, and inventor. He is best known as an author having written dozens of books, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George’s Marvellous Medicine, the BFG (Big Friendly Giant), and Matilda. Many of his books, including the BFG, have been made into films. Have you seen any of them?

In each of Roald Dahl’s books there are many unique characters, including adult villains (the evil, nasty characters) and good, kind-hearted children. There are also a number of unique words - words that Roald Dahl created all by himself. Here are some examples: Scrumdiddlyumptious, catasterous disastrophe, sizzle pan, bundongle, churgle, darksome, snozzcumber, frumpet, gollup, grunches, and mideous.

DAY 2: Sport & Leisure

Activity 1: Faster than a speeding bullet

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is a world famous athlete (sprinter). She currently holds the record for the 100m sprint and has been crowned “world’s fastest woman” a record four times!

Shelly-Ann was born and educated in Jamaica, a small country in the Caribbean that has produced many successful athletes and sportspeople. During her college years she did well in athletics, winning the Jamaican Schools Championships at the age of 16. She subsequently went on to win many races at both the Olympics and the World Championships. Over the years people have compared her running speed and that of other elite sprinters, like Usain Bolt, to many things, including animals!

When people make these comparisons, they often say things like: “Shelly-Ann is as fast as a cheetah” or “Shelly-Ann is fast like a fighter jet”. These comparisons are examples of similes. In many cases, similes are not exactly true.

Activity 2: Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Fiao’o Fa’amausili was the captain of the New Zealand (NZ) Black Ferns, our national women’s rugby team, until 2018. The Black Ferns have been a very successful team, winning the Women’s Rugby World Cup a record five times. Wow!

Despite this success, the Black Ferns have only recently become ‘professional’ rugby players who are paid to play rugby. Although they are paid, the Black Ferns make less money than members of the men’s professional rugby team - the All Blacks. This difference in pay is often called the ‘gender pay gap’ and it is not uncommon in sports.

What do you think about this? Is it fair? Should female athletes, like the Black Ferns, be paid the same amount as male athletes who play the same sport?

Activity 3: The Greatest of All Time

While there are thousands of talented athletes in the world, there are a small number of individuals who rise to the top of their game and earn the title of G.O.A.T - The Greatest of All Time. One of these is Grandmaster chess player, Garry Kasparov. Garry was the top-ranked chess player in the world for fifteen straight years (1985 - 2000). He started playing chess when he was just seven years old.

To become an expert, he practiced for hours every day. According to some scientists, you have to practice a skill for 10 000 hours (about 9 years) in order to become an expert. Wow, that is a lot of practice!

For Garry, this meant training to play chess every day at a special school with special coaches. He was not able to attend regular school and did not have much ‘free’ time to spend with family and friends.

DAY 3: Environment & Exploration

Activity 1: The Rainman of Rajasthan

Arguably, the most important resource that we have on this planet is water. Without water, we simply would not survive. Here in New Zealand, almost everyone has access to free, clean drinking water but this is not the case in other parts of the world (e.g. Rajasthan, India; sub-saharan Africa, etc.).

In fact, almost 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. People like Peter Chasse have set up organisations like The Water Project to help address this issue and bring drinkable water to communities that do not currently have access to it.

Activity 2: When the Rubber Hits the Road

The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. It is located in South America and is home to an incredibly special and unique environment. Unfortunately, the long-term health of the forest is at risk with hundreds of people entering the rainforest and cutting down trees without permission. Activists, like Marina Silva, are fighting back against this illegal logging and, in some cases, they are winning.

Marina actually spent her childhood working in the Amazon rainforest as a rubber tapper. She did not attend school or learn how to read or write until the age of sixteen. In fact, she was the first person in her family to ever go to school and the first one to earn a university degree. Her family must have been so proud of her accomplishments.

Activity 3: The Columbian Exchange

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer born back in 1451. He started sailing when he was 14 years old and spent a lot of his life looking for a passageway from his home continent of Europe to Asia. He never found one. Instead, he spent much of his time in the Americas (North, Central and South).

Christopher Columbus was, and still is, a very controversial man. Some people would even call him ‘infamous’ (well-known for doing something bad) because he spent much of his life sailing around the world, enslaving innocent people, spreading diseases and taking natural resources from the countries that he visited. His actions had a significant impact on the lives of others.

Who has had a significant impact on your life?

DAY 4: Politics & Activism

Activity 1: Leading the Charge

Helen Clark was the first woman to be elected as the Prime Minister (PM) of New Zealand (NZ). She served as PM for nine years (1999 to 2008). During this time, she introduced a number of new policies and fought to ensure that New Zealand continued to be nuclear-free. In 2008, Helen Clark was defeated by Sir John Key in the national election. Mr Key went on to serve as PM of New Zealand from 2008 - 2016.

Before entering politics, Helen Clark lived on a farm near Hamilton. She became interested in politics while she was a teenager, and went on to study politics at the University of Auckland. After completing a lengthy career in politics in New Zealand, Ms Clark moved overseas to take on the job as Head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She was the first woman to ever lead this international organisation. As the head of the UNDP, Helen made a number of important changes to the way things operated within the UNDP.

Activity 2: Fighting for Freedom

Mahatma Gandhi was an activist best known for his role in helping India become an independent country in 1947. Prior to this, India was under British rule. During the fight to become free from England, Gandhi (and others) led peaceful protests, marches, and hunger strikes in India. His birthday (2nd October) is widely celebrated in India as the International Day of Nonviolence.

Gandhi originally studied to be a lawyer in London, England. When he completed his studies, he got a job in South Africa where he saw that people were treated differently because of their skin colour. He thought this was unfair and wrong, and so he organised protests to highlight the rights of Indians living in South Africa.

Gandhi impacted the world by using non-violent protest to bring about change. Recently, school students around the world have followed his lead and participated in peaceful protests about climate change. These were started by a girl called Greta Thunberg who, like Gandhi, is using nonviolent protest to try and make a change.

Activity 3: Mass Migration

The current President of the United States of America (U.S.A.) is a man named Donald Trump. He was elected President in 2016. At the time, he promised the American people that he would build a wall between the U.S.A. and Mexico - the country immediately south of the United States. He made this promise because he wanted to stop people from crossing the American-Mexican border.

Earlier this year, a migrant caravan (people moving in a large group) came through South and Central America on its way to the Mexican-American border. The people in the caravan were heading to America to find jobs and build a better life for themselves and their families. You can learn more about them in this video.

Donald Trump’s plan to build the wall is very controversial (some people strongly agree with his idea and others strongly disagree).

DAY 5: Science, Technology & Invention

Activity 1: The Social Network

Sheryl Sandberg is a business woman from the United States of America. Although she has had many interesting and high profile jobs, she is arguably most famous for working as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook. Facebook was started by Mark Zuckerberg as a messaging service for students at Harvard University but quickly grew to include people from all over the world. Although it was not the first social media site it is currently the most popular with over 2.23 billion users.

Many people on Facebook like to share pictures and videos. Some of these videos are even streamed (shared) live.

Activity 2: Impossible Burgers

Who enjoys a delicious beef burger? How about a juicy steak on the BBQ? Many people in New Zealand enjoy eating meat, however, about 10% of New Zealanders are vegetarian. Vegetarians don’t eat any meat or meat products. Instead, most vegetarian food comes from plant-based products.

Pat Brown is the founder of Impossible Foods - a company that makes food (“meat”) from plants. They have discovered a way to genetically engineer plants to form a product that tastes, looks, smells and feels like meat. Pretty amazing ‘eh?!

Let’s look at the nutritional facts for two of the burgers made by the Impossible Foods company - the New Impossible Burger and the Original Impossible Burger.