Friday, December 13, 2024

Enviro Stall for Term 4

At the end of each term we hold an 'enviro' stall. 

Why?

* To showcase and sell 'cookie mix in a jar' - a fun and easy way to BAKE and be WRAPPER FREE! 

It also makes a great Christmas gift. 

* To enjoy some yummy home baking!

* To pick up a bargain - 2nd hand lunchbox, beeswax wrap or some fresh veggies from the garden. 


 

Everything we sold was from one of the jar mixes; 

            - Choc chip cookies

            - Gingerbread people - great this time of year!

            - Chocolate Brownies

            - AND also some herby breadsticks - a Garden to Table favourite.                     

This also uses up bread left from the recent school disco #lovefoodhatewaste 

We raised $265. We hope to put this towards an enviro trip next year. 

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Water tank - the finished aquarium!

 All year 6 students who are off to Intermediate School next year have added a wonderful sea creature to our "aquarium". This is how we would love our ocean to look - teeming with life! 

Not only is this a fantastic piece of art that our students have created, it is also a great way to leave a positive mark at the end of their time at primary school and to showcase our water tank in a beautiful way! 

How many different creatures can you spot? 











Monday, December 9, 2024

Rubbish Relays!

We have been thinking about all the rubbish that has to go in the red bins. 

We played a game where we made a 'rubbish rainbow'.

We were in teams and one person had to run and grab an (old, broken) pen and put it into our red hoop.

Then the next person in our team went and grabbed a different colour pen - we arranged them to make a colourful rainbow.  There were a lot of pens! We talked about how we could reduce the amount of pens that are going in the red landfill bin. 

Afterwards we did the same relay activity but used soft plastic instead. We realised there was still quite a bit of wrappers around our school. 






The following week, we had a visitor called Penelope from Beautification Trust.   She talked to us about what should go into each bin and WHY.  

We did a really fun relay activity where we had to grab some rubbish from a bag and then run to the front and put it into the correct coloured bin; 

red for landfill

yellow for recycling

green for composting



What did we learn? 

* That tetra pak is made from plastic, metal and cardboard (and has to go into landfill or special recycling) (Mikayla)

* The paper straws are just as bad as plastic straws and can't be recycled as they are lined with plastic.  (Mahi) 

That wooden cutlery can be recycled  (Angie) 


Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Adopt a Park - final 2024 visit! Operation: stream clearing!

 Today we had our final visit to William Green Domain for 2024. 

We focused on the stream. Our aims were:

1. To find out more about the health of the stream by doing some tests and observing what was in there

2. To unblock the stream so the water could flow and not be blocked. 

the stream - where does it flow from and to? 

The favourite activities, by far, were seeing the eels and getting in the stream. 

Others students said... 

" I LOVED getting in the river and getting rubbish out" 

" I like wears boots and getting in the creek" 

" Pulling all those big weeds out was satisfying"

" The dragonfly was scary!" ( I thought it was very cool!) 

" I like going across the stream on the stepping stones" 

"Looking at tiny bugs in the tray was fun"

"Working out if the stream was healthy or not was interesting" 


can you spot the eel? 

rubbish that we found in the stream
 

getting in and doing the mahi!

removing lots of arum lilies - a pest plant


We conducted a number of experiments and observations to work out how healthy the stream was. 

Our findings were: 

Water temp: 20°C (fair)
Water clarity: avg of 71cm (good)
SO SMART (0=poor, 1=fair, 2=good)
smell - 1
obstruction - 1
stream bed - 0
margin/bank - 1
appearance of water - 2
rate of flow - 1
top surface - 1
overall SO SMART score: 7/14 (fair)
Macro invertebrates: found worms and damselfly larvae, note: eel spotted. (overall: fair)
pH: 7.5 (good)


Overall stream health: FAIR. 


finding interesting bugs - a damselfly larvae





all the arum lilies we removed. 






Enviro Stall for Term 4

At the end of each term we hold an 'enviro' stall.  Why? * To showcase and sell 'cookie mix in a jar' - a fun and easy way t...