Room 4 & 3 Garden to Table

 Over the last 6 (school) weeks Room 4 and 3 have been busy in the garden and kitchen. 

They have been...

*  clearing garden beds after the summer

*  learning all about how to maintain our new hot compost system 

*  planting for autumn 

When the students have been in the kitchen they have been enjoying cooking heir favourite dishes (herby breadsticks!) as well as learning new skills and recipes. Show students even commented they enjoyed washing up! 

All recipes can be found HERE if you want to keep cooking and try them at home! 

Need some ingredients? Talk to Miss Long if you need some herbs or greens from the garden. 

Moth Pod Mania!

To help rid the Howick area of pesky weeds we have, again, entered the 

HOWICK LOCAL BOARD MOTH POD COMPETITION. 

This is always a very popular event with our students who love to get behind this initiative; it's great to see the number we have collected going up and up! 

This year we have already collected over 10,000 pods and roots! 

This is a great environmental action that gets you outside and exercising as well as helping the environment! 

More than 1 in 10 of all our students have brought in moth pods.  Many, many more of the older students have been actively involved in searching for them at lunchtime, counting them and clearing them away after. 

before...

after!! 

GARDEN TO TABLE 2025

 Our well regarded Garden to Table programme is BACK for 2025! 

Room 4 and Room 3 classes have sessions this term. 

Some of their activities and learnings so far include: 

* How the new hot composting system works - and collecting 'greens' and 'browns' for it 

* Planting from seed

* Vegetable and herb identification

* Identifying weeds and removing them

* Naming garden tools

After all students had done a 'knife safety' refresher lesson they were straight back into cooking! 

We have started with some firm favourites to get us back into the swing of things with recipes such as:

*  Herby breadsticks

* Chocolate bliss balls

* Greens & cheese fritters

* Brownies 

All recipes are available - click on the link HERE or just ask Victoria or Miss Long. 

Year 3 / 4 Adopt A Park visit #1

 This week we went for our first visit of the year to our 'adopted park' William Green Domain. 

After we had checked on the native trees we planted last year (and removed / flattened some weeds around them) we had lunch and a play on the playground. 

Levi had brought along some special lunch snacks; some edible seeds from a kahikatea tree. Everyone was keen to try them. They tasted quite sweet, some said they were like apple. 

trying some kahikatea seeds

The next activity was a scavenger hunt going round trying to find different things in nature like our four whānau trees! 

We also collected some harakeke seeds. Levi will look after these and we hope we can pot them up then eventually plant them at the park! 

spotting koru and cabbage trees

We also talked about different kinds of weeds; the ones round our native trees, others that the bees like, taro and the dreaded moth plant pod! 

We managed to find a lot of tiny moth plant pod growing and removed about 200 seedlings growing. We removed many big pods last year and we were pleased to see there weren't too many more!  

"I liked the scavenger hunt and looking for different birds and native trees" (Ruby) 

" I liked learning about the new trees, like the tallest tree in New Zealand and how lots of different birds like eating it"  (Mila) 

" I learnt that harakeke has seeds; I thought Tui just sucked the nectar. We collected heaps of the seeds which I really liked doing. I also found looking at the wasp nest interesting because it looked like it wasn’t really attached to anything. (Aimee)  

" I liked collected the seeds and playing on the playground" (Issac) 

"I wondered why we saw a dead fish in the stream..." (Kane)

Year 5/ 6 ENVIRO Eye on Nature Trip

 On Tuesday we went on an enviro trip with Mrs Rothery and some helpful parents to the Auckland Botanical Gardens. It was so fun, we did a lot of activities. 

1) Our 1st activity was learning about bees. We learnt how to get honey from the bees. Eden and I got to wear special beekeeper clothes. They were too big for us but it was cool. It was fun trying to find the queen bee. 

The 2nd activity was learning about plants and what they could be used for. We went for a walk in a native forest. We learnt about lots of other native plants we never knew about. We saw some Totara. When we were done we went back to the place we started at and did a quick quiz. After we had a snack and then we moved on. 

The 3rd activity was food scraps. It was so fun. Some volunteers got to do a great show even if it was short. Then we played a game. It was so noisy when we played it. Thinidi won a prize. Finally we learned more about how food scraps can help us. 

The 4th (and final) activity was the AM/Auckland museum. They shared a Maori legend with us and showed us cool instruments. I played the poi. It was loud in the tent. Everybody had  cool ways to play the instruments. Sadly it started pouring and some of us got wet. When we were done with the musical instruments and activities we got on the bus and went back to school. It was an amazing day and we learnt a lot of new things. If you get an opportunity to go on an enviro trip you should because it is great fun and you learn lots of new things.

Written by Rianka

        

 

Bumblebees!

Our school is currently lucky enough to have a small BUMBLEBEE hive! 

Each class has the opportunity to go and visit the bees and learn more about them. 

Some classes have followed this up with amazing art work, others have read 

'Bumblebees Have Smelly Feet' and others have written a haiku. 

A huge THANKS to Garden to Table and NZ Bumblebee Conservation Trust for organising this project and giving us the opportunity to learn more about bumblebees.