Term 3: Adopt a Park visit

 This week our year 2 & 3 enviro students walked to William Green Domain to do some ACTION to help the environment. 

First we picked up some rubbish in teams of 3 or 4. 

We were shocked how much there was! We found over 25 plastic bottles in just 10 minutes. 

To reduce this we thought visitors to the park could...

"make sure they don't leave rubbish behind"

"take it with them and put it in a recycle bin"

" use reusable bottles so they don't need to keep on buying more plastic bottles. 

Next we had our lunch and explored the playground. 

After that Ranger Abi came and showed us how to remove the weeds round the natives we planted last term.  We learnt the name of some native trees and some interesting facts about them. 

Fact 1: The karo tree was planted from bird poo! 

Fact 2: Cabbage Trees (ti kouka) actually taste like cabbage in the middle! 

Fact 3: Harakeke (flax) has a gel that can be used to sooth sunburn. 

Our very favourite job was WEEDING! We pulled up LOTS of onion weed. All the weeds were stopping the young trees seeing the sunlight. 

Garden to Table - Celebrating with Tongan Food and other delights!

 We have been celebrating food from around the world at Garden to Table this term - from the Cook Islands and Italy to, more recently, Tonga. 

Our menu for Tongan language week was: 

- chop suey

- keke Vai (Tongan pancakes) 

- coconut cookies (Masi Samoa) 

  

We have been using all our seasonal vegetables to create lots of delicious recipes - greens to make risotto and fritters and pizza, lemons to make muffins and bliss balls and carrots to add to our ANZAC biscuits or just eat raw! 

 

We tried using a purple carrot in the ANZAC biscuits recipe instead of the usual orange carrot - it had a fascinating effect! The mixture started off purple, then went blue, after cooking it went green! 

We've also been getting through our kumara stash and collecting bean seeds!

 

 

 

 

 

Food Trip... around New Zealand!

 We have been learning about food from different places in the world. 

The next part of this 'food trip' brings us back to New Zealand. 

We have been reading about the giant food sculptures that are throughout the country; the giant carrot, fruit and the big trout. Some of them have been here for many years! 

We learnt about the Maori gods - or atua and how they help provide food. 

After we played a game where someone did an action and we had to guess which god it was linked to. 

To finish with we tried some carrots from the garden and some from the supermarket... do you think YOU could tell the difference? We could! 

" The shop carrots might have chemical sprayed on it so it will taste different" 

"One of them was a lighter colour" 

" The darker orange one was sweeter"

" One is much crunchier than the other" 

Walking School Bus RECORD!

 ON Friday we had a RECORD number of people on our 

Walking School Bus! 

This runs every day down Patons Road past the playground. 

We have been running this every day since last year and the numbers have slowly grown.  Our term 2 numbers were up 31% compared to term 1. 

Walking to school is a great way to...

💚  get fresh air and see the nature all around us (we love seeing Luna the cat come to greet us!) 

💚 get exercise in the morning

💚  get cars off the road & lower car fumes

💚  socialise

17 students joined us this morning to walk to school

Want to join us? Meet 8.15am at the Juliet Avenue playground. 

We also have another walking school bus running every Wednesday from the end of Angelo Avenue. 

Email Miss Long for more details: b.long@howickprimary.school.nz 

Food Miles: How far did my snacks travel to reach me?

 As we have been watching the FIFA World Cup, we have been learning about food from all around the world. We tried some snacks from different countries too. 

To start with we looked at my lunch to see what country each item had come from.  

We then thought about how far our snacks travelled to reach us. 

We were surprised to  find out that the tuna in my sandwich was from Thailand. 

We found out that most of our fruit is grown in New Zealand.

  

   

In year 2 we used smily, straight and sad face emojis to show how far food had travelled

We guessed that many of our snacks would come from Asia.  We found that: 

*   Seaweed snacks are from Indonesia

* Really Fruity sticks are from China

*  Mini Oreos are from Indonesia

* Shapes crackers are from Australia

SO WHAT? 

We talked about the further food travels the more fuel is used and more pollution is produced. 

We watched a video about greenhouse gases and talked about 'Food Miles' and how much carbon is produced by aeroplanes. 

WHAT NEXT?

We discussed the other benefits of buying food locally: 

💚 cheaper

💚 fresher 

💚 healthier 

Food Trip Around the World!

 Over the last few weeks we have loved watched the FIFA Soccer World Cup. 

Next month is another great international sports event -  the Commonwealth Games. 

To coincide with this the whole school has been learning about different countries around the world. 

We decided going on a FOOD TRIP around the WORLD would be a great match with this topic! 

During the first lesson we talked about our own cultures and heritage - what countries we had an association with and what foods were special to these countries. Throughout the whole school we covered many, many different countries and foods! 

These included:

• Sri Lanka - 'hoppers'

• South African - milk tart

• England - Yorkshire puddings 

• Samoa - sapasui

• Spain - chorizo sausage

Do you know what county these foods are from? 

We drew food on a plate to represent a typical meal. We tried to think about food that was linked to our own unique cultures. 

We then chose 4 different countries to research. We had to find out what their flag looked like and some food that was typical to that country. 

To finish the session we went on a 'eating trip around the world' and tried food that are famous in 4 different parts of the world. 

Can you tell which countries they were from? 

We tried pita bread, hummus, pretzels and persimmon.