Garden to Table: THANK YOU and fundraising!

 As our Garden to Table programme comes to an end for the year we wanted to acknowledge and celebrate all our AMAZING volunteers that make this programme so successful. 

We held a special morning tea to thank ALL the volunteers that have helped our school this year. 

We are very privileged and lucky to have so many volunteers that come every week to help run our Garden to Table programme.

To finish off the year we are also selling excess veggies, herbs AND some jar mixes as a fundraiser for next years enviro projects. 

These make great Christmas presents AND they are zero waste! 

Favours include: 

- Cookies: choc chip cookie mix and Christmas gingerbread shapes 

- brownie mix, lemon & white choc mix and

- muesli bars / breakfast mix. 

WOW trip to Motuihe Island

 On Sunday Aimee. Aurora and Miss Long visited Motuihe Island as part of a prize for collecting so many moth pods earlier in the year! 

We travelled there on a very old boat - Ethel - she was built it 1896! There were 4 other boats too. 

These are the other boats 

 

We sat out on the deck and enjoyed the ride! It took quite a while! On the way we saw some little blue penguins in the sea. 

Aurora helped put up the sail

To get ashore we had to go on a little boat called SEALEGS - it grows 'legs' (wheels) when it reaches the beach!  

When we arrived we heard about the history of the island and how they have made it PREDATOR FREE and now lots of rare native birds live there - including KIWI! There's also Tuatara living there - we saw a tail of one as it disappeared down a hole! 

Sadly Miss Long spotted a few moth pod growing! Even here! So it really is getting EVERYWHERE! 

We need to keep up our work removing this pest weed. 

We went on a big walk exploring some of the island

We saw big tree weta in here

This seagull had made a nest here and had 2 eggs

Huge thank you to... 

PEST FREE HOWICK WARD 

CLASSIC YACHT CHARITABLE TRUST 

MOTUIHE TRUST 

for making this awesome experience possible! 

Walking School Bus trip to MOTAT!

THANK YOU! to Auckland Transport who generously give all our Walking School Bus members FREE tickets to MOTAT! 

Sunday 16th November was a beautifully sunny day for our visit!  

We lived all the interactive activities and riding on the tram. 

Afterwards some of the group had a wander through Western Springs to look for birds. 

   

Adopt a Park #4

 This week we had our final trip to our adopted park - William Green Domain. 

The weather was not looking the best but we were determined to get a final visit in for the year. 

Focus: HOW DO WE KNOW WE'RE MAKING A DIFFERENCE? 

We want to start measuring the positive impact we are making on this space.  

We can do this by counting the amount of trees we have planted and the amount of rubbish we collect. 

We looked at the native trees we planted earlier in the year and saw they were quite smothered by weeds. We tried to squash down the weeds then put some dried grass as mulch round the base in a doughnut shape.  We counted about 7 cabbage trees and 8 flax in the first section (up to the big tree). 

After we had done that we did a quick "10 minute rubbish challenge" to see how much rubbish we could pick up.

Back at school (after we had dried off and had Milo to warm up!) we sorted, weighed and counted all the rubbish.  

We collected: 177 pieces of rubbish weighing 4.23kg. 

we sorted the rubbish out into piles to see what we had found... 

Lots of plastic bottles / hard plastic ...

122 pieces of soft plastic

bottle lids

and lots of other takeaway cups

Going forward we will think about how we can reduce the amount of these items in our environment. 

Eye on Nature Enviro ART Competition

At the end of last term some of the enviro students entered an enviro art competition. 

They worked tirelessly for many lunchtimes with Zeena (Selena & Karolina's Mum) to create a masterpiece!  It was displayed at Auckland Botanical Garden during the school holidays. 

While it was on display, lots of visitors saw our art work and loved it! They voted for ours as their favourite!  

WE WON the PEOPLES CHOICE AWARD! 

We won a $150 voucher for The Warehouse towards art supplies for future projects.

Addilyn, Kimberley, Karolina, Annika, Zoey, Adwitiya, Hamreen,
Rianka, Leah, Selena, Jarvis, Piper, Ayla

 

Zeena also organised some trophies to celebrate the student's achievements.  These were handed out at assembly today. 

Year 5/ 6 'memorable' Enviro Art

 Our students have all designed and painted a rock as part of our art programme. This is a special 'waste free' keepsake for them.

In addition our year six students are creating a 'Legacy Art' project. 

This is a way to leave their 'mark' on the school in a creativity, environmentally friendly and peaceful way. 

The students all brainstormed potential themes. These included native NZ creatures, vegetables depicting garden to table foods and native trees. 

However, the winner was...  "OUR COUNTRIES AND CULTURES"

To start off with, we are preparing the area where we will paint. This includes sanding down the old, faded paintings and using a 'primer' base coat to help the paint stick on. 

Watch this space for updates of the countries & cultures that are significant to our students and the awesome designs they come up with! 

Pumpkin Carving!

This year we, again, grew some giant pumpkins. 

They were GINORMOUS and everyone was fascinated with them! 

After storing them in the enviro room for a while we decided now was the perfect time to carve them.

First Miss Long ran a competition - anyone interested in helping needed to draw a design and hand it in. 

Some students from year 3 / 4 and year 5 / 6 were chosen as winners and helped every lunch time last week to carve faces, patterns and shapes into the pumpkins. 

They were surprisingly easy to carve - we just used spoons! 

We displayed them outside the hall for assembly on Friday. 

We collected all the seeds from them so we can try and grow some more from seed - both at school and at home!  Time to get planting! 

We found a video HERE about how to grow them from seed.