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. 

Year 2/3 Adopt a Park

On Tuesday afternoon, a group of very enthusiastic Year 2 and 3 'Enviro students' visited William Green Domain for a planting afternoon.

We began with a quick tour of the park, identifying native trees and collecting rubbish.

Despite the changeable weather, which shifted from rain showers to sunshine, we successfully planted over 100 native trees and plants without getting too wet!

Our planting coordinators, Anna and Levi, demonstrated how to dig proper square holes for planting—we even discovered plenty of worms along the way!

With the support of our fantastic parent helpers, the students worked incredibly hard. We planted a variety of native grasses, cabbage trees, and flaxes, ensuring they were firmly in the ground so the pūkeko couldn't pull them out.

Adopt a Park #4

 This week we had our final trip to our adopted park - William Green Domain. 

The weather was not looking the best but we were determined to get a final visit in for the year. 

Focus: HOW DO WE KNOW WE'RE MAKING A DIFFERENCE? 

We want to start measuring the positive impact we are making on this space.  

We can do this by counting the amount of trees we have planted and the amount of rubbish we collect. 

We looked at the native trees we planted earlier in the year and saw they were quite smothered by weeds. We tried to squash down the weeds then put some dried grass as mulch round the base in a doughnut shape.  We counted about 7 cabbage trees and 8 flax in the first section (up to the big tree). 

After we had done that we did a quick "10 minute rubbish challenge" to see how much rubbish we could pick up.

Back at school (after we had dried off and had Milo to warm up!) we sorted, weighed and counted all the rubbish.  

We collected: 177 pieces of rubbish weighing 4.23kg. 

we sorted the rubbish out into piles to see what we had found... 

Lots of plastic bottles / hard plastic ...

122 pieces of soft plastic

bottle lids

and lots of other takeaway cups

Going forward we will think about how we can reduce the amount of these items in our environment. 

Adopt a Park visit

 This week our year 3 / 4 enviro group visited our 'adopted' park - 
William Green Domain. This is our third visit this year. 

During our visit we...

* learnt about the different shaped leaves and what plants or trees they come from

* discovered some interesting wildlife - a red dragonfly, a skink, woodlice, a shiny ladybird bug and some green leaf bugs

* found an awesome 'canoe' - part of a fallen nikau leaf 

* helped the environment by picking up rubbish. 

Happy green bugs!

shiny ladybird

Whose footprints are these? 

spot the lizard!

 

We found lots of plastic - including 5 plastic bottles. We talked about how we can help the environment have less plastic in it by having a wrapper free lunch. 

John - I liked helping the environment

Piper - the most interesting thing I found was the giant canoe (leaf) 

Ayla - I liked finding 2 dragonflies

Ella - I enjoyed picking up rubbish

Aimee - It was very exciting to find a mysterious rucksack (rubbish) I think it might belong to my favourite book character - Wolf Girl (- I love the imagination!) 

Luka - I enjoyed the rubbish hunt

 

Next time we go we will have a closer look at the native trees and plants we planted and see if we can do some weeding around them. 

Adopt a Park Term 2 visit

 Last Thursday we braved the ever-changing weather to head back to WILLIAM GREEN DOMAIN - our adopted park. 

This term our focus was on tree planting.  After Anna, a park ranger, had shown us how to plant trees and talked about WHY it's good to plant them we got started! 

During the afternoon we planted ti kouka (cabbage trees), harakeke (flax) and a native grass. We had about 150 trees to plant! 

We worked in twos or threes to plant in a very muddy area by the stream edge. Unfortunately it started to pour with rain after about 20 minutes so we all had to run for cover!  After the rain had stopped Ranger Anna and her colleague quickly finished planting the rest of the trees. 

    

The best things about the trip were...

digging (Ayla) 

planting the trees (Blake, Mason, Lucas) 

when it started to rain! (Harper) 

being out in the environment (John) 

Playing in the rain and getting muddy feet seemed to be popular too! 

                                                 

We walked back to school taking another enviro action - picking up rubbish -  as we walked.  

We found a few interesting treasures! A brand new looking bouncy ball and a tasty looking grapefruit! When we got back to school we washing it, sliced it and tried it. It was pretty sour but still many were keen to try it.