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Marshall’s Animal Park
Our whanau at BestStart Welcome Bay have been very supportive of our centre and events and we wanted to give back by offering them a chance to spend some time with their children in a fun and exciting way, and take a day of work.
We were able to organise a visit to Marshall’s Animal Park in the Kaimai’s. We hired a bus, took a few cars for our babies, locked up the centre and went for our adventure. We had so many parents join us on the trip that every child almost had 1 adult to themselves. The children were amazing, walking around the entire park, showing respect to the animals, listening to the adults and the sounds of nature surrounding us. Older children demonstrated their strength in tuakana teina relationships (older child helping and guiding younger child) and showed awhi towards the animals and land as we explored this wonderful place together.
We saw and fed so many animals. We got followed some greedy animals too. The highlight was definitely hand feeding animals. Some even let the children stroke them as they were gobbling up the food. We saw Guinea Pigs, Llamas, big and small horses, birds, fish, ostrich’s, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, pigs and even a peacock with it’s brightly coloured tail feathers waving around. All of our children, right from 4 months up to 5 years loved every moment. The connections we already had as a whanau before this trip were only strengthened as we all laughed, walked, talked, fed animals and rode the flying foxes together. We can’t wait for our next whole centre excursion!