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