Garden to Table OPEN DAY

 Today we hosted an open day to celebrate our status of becoming a MODEL SCHOOL.

We had guests from Howick Local Board, our school Board of Trustees and volunteers that have helped over the four years we have been running. 

   

In the afternoon, we had a special assembly. Three of our senior kaitiaki students created and presented a slideshow all about Garden to Table. You can view this HERE. 

We have also set up a fun 'treasure hunt' competition; students find Garden to Table tokens and win prizes! Check back here for an update of our winners! 

  
In our session today we: 

* Made medical tea using kawakawa

* Learnt about a nature slug / snail trap you can make

* Made our favourite Garden to Table recipes - Cheesy green fritters, lemon muffins and kale chips. 

    

Click HERE for all our recipes from the term.

    

   

slug and snail trap - equally fascinating and disgusting! 

 

Year 3/ 4 Lizard Lounge & Fairy Garden

 Our Year 3/ 4 Enviro group have been looking for areas around the school we could improve. 

We found quite a few 'nothing' areas and thought about what they could become. 

One area we've been working on is the area by the hall. 

We used the ACTION LEARNING CYCLE  to plan our project. 

We thought about...

1) What it was like and how we felt about it. 

2)  What we could do instead - we looked at what others had done and got LOTS of ideas from the internet.  We recorded all of these in a big book. 

What we wanted to do. We all came up with different ideas for what we would like there. 

What native creatures have we seen there? How can we attract more? 

3) Take ACTION and get to it! 

We have learnt...

"We can re use rather than buying things" (Elana)

"Lizards like dark places to hide"  (Annika)

" Lizards like to eat bugs - these hide in leaves and old wood" (Yasashmi)

" Lizards don't like being touched" (Elana) 

" Hedgehogs can eat lizards" (Aimee) 

Year 5 / 6 Bronze Cadetship

School native garden area

EDIT: THANK YOU to Nicole, Duncan and others for sending through your photos of your lizard hotel set up at home! Great job!  See below for photos. 

For the last four weeks our Year 5 / 6 Enviro students have been working with the Pest Free Howick expert Ethan. 

 During these sessions they learnt about invasive pests in New Zealand, native trees and native birds. They have set up trakka tunnels to see what pest animals might be around at our school and looked at real (stuffed) pest animals. 

Aimee and the cat 'Stormy' looking for rats!

Although cute, hedgehogs are a pest species in NZ as they eat bird eggs and lizards  

Tyler with his kowhai he grew from seeds

Visit to our native garden 

        

     

How many native trees can you name?

In the last session we designed a lizard friendly garden using a special corrugated lizard shelter. 

Some students opted to take these home and set up a lizard sanctuary for native lizards at their house.   

In order for these to be successful the lizards also need to have access to food - native plants and creepy crawly bugs, water and plenty of places to hide from predators.  

At the end of the session we visited the Year 3/ 4 'lizard lounge' area by the hall. We thought about if it had everything the lizards needed and what feedback we could give the year 3/ 4 group. 

     

Chip Packet Initiative

Save those BIG chippy packets! 

In conjunction with Botany Downs Secondary College, we are recycling LARGE chippy packets and making them into something useful - a thermal blanket. These are given out to homeless people to provide a little more warmth this time of year. 

This is a great way to help people AND recycle. 

If you have any at home please drop them at the school office in the special box. 

For more information click HERE. 

Room 17 & 2 Garden to Table - round 2!

 This term Room 17 and Room 2 have returned to the Garden to Table programme to have a whole term of gardening and cooking! 

Many favourite dishes have popped up and some new favourites too. 

The garden is starting to show glimpses of spring with lots of produce!  Lettuce, onions, rhubarb and lemons to name a few. 

For our latest recipes see HERE