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. 

Moth Plant Pod Celebrations!

At last the day had come; the day we find out where we had placed in the annual 

MOTH POD COMPETITION! 

For the last few months not only had our awesome team been out weekly collecting pods and roots but the whole school community. This year we had a record of 56 students and staff that brought pods and roots in for our school team! 

  

Moth pod is an invasive weed with a very long vine that wraps around trees and strangles them. The flower sap kills butterflies and bees before growing into a pod that contains hundreds more seeds. 

We were very keen to go and remove as many as we could find! 

Our goal: 10,000 pods and roots... Actual number: 15, 909 

nervously waiting to find out the result... 

The prize giving this year was at Bucklands Beach - a beautiful setting. 

We were very excited to finish SECOND school behind Howick College! 

We received some prize money and everyone in our team received an awesome pin badge. 

We also received certificates for being first at the halfway point and being the school team
that pulled out the most seedling plants. 

awesome pin badge

Moth Pod Season!

 Students have been asking me for weeks... 

'When is the moth pod competition starting?' 

And it's back! Our 6th year in a row entering it! 

We have already made a fantastic start collecting over 1000 pods so far with over 30 students helping by bringing pods in or being part of our fantastic 'podding team' that has been out removing pods after school and at weekends!  

These invasive weeds are a real PEST! 

Their vine wraps around trees strangling and smothering the tree so it dies!

 The sap is an irritant and stains clothes so we have to be careful when removing the pods; gloves, glasses and old clothes on! 

Before...

After! Now we can see the actual plant!

Moth Pod Prize Giving: 2nd School

 This week we attended the enviro schools meeting where the moth pod results were finally announced! 

This competition is organised and supported every year by Howick Local Board. 

We are regular competitors; we have now entered the competition for 6 years running and continually placed in the top 5.  

We had a great team supporting us this year with 46 different families or community members collecting and bringing in pods for us.  

Aimee, Aurora, Emily, Charli, Charli's Mum and Mr Earl came along to this event. The girls have been our top collectors this year and been out on many after school and weekend missions collecting pods. 

We were excited when they started announcing the results and we found out we came...

 2nd SCHOOL! 

We received a certificate, some prize money and took our photos with the cute native soft toy creatures.

 

    

Moth Pod Mania!

To help rid the Howick area of pesky weeds we have, again, entered the 

HOWICK LOCAL BOARD MOTH POD COMPETITION. 

This is always a very popular event with our students who love to get behind this initiative; it's great to see the number we have collected going up and up! 

This year we have already collected over 10,000 pods and roots! 

This is a great environmental action that gets you outside and exercising as well as helping the environment! 

More than 1 in 10 of all our students have brought in moth pods.  Many, many more of the older students have been actively involved in searching for them at lunchtime, counting them and clearing them away after. 

before...

after!! 

Moth Pods are BACK!

 This year we are, again, tackling the invasive weed MOTH POD! 

The students are really excited to get out there pod hunting and help the environment! 

Some senior students have made posters to put up around the school to remind everyone to bring them in. 

One student made a flyer to add to people's letter boxes. 

We talked about why moth pods are such a problem. The students had lots of ideas to share. 

"They strangle other trees by wrapping around them"

" They hurt nature"

"They are bug (bee) and butterfly killers!"

Every pod or root we collect is worth 1 point! We are asking students to bring them into school for the local competition. We already have over 4000 points! 

Podding play date over the weekend!

The big weekly pod count!

NEW Composting System!

 Last week we were very excited to get a new composting system. 

A huge THANK YOU to Auckland Council for helping to finance this and to Carbon Cycle Compost for the awesome product! 

This compost system will allow us to: 

* Create compost faster

* Have a predator-free compost area

* Compost our weeds and those annoying small sticks we always find around! 

Carbon Cycle Compost got all the students involved in helping to build the compost boxes. 

The students said:

"It was tricky to get the level (of the wood) just right"

" It was so fun using the tools to make the boxes"

" The wood smells nice" 

" We learnt how to prepare it like a sandwich with layers of greens and browns" 

" Microscopic bugs help break down all the food scraps" 

We need... one bucket of greens and one bucket of browns...

We also need water and the 4th ingredient... air!
This helps the 'FBI' (fungi, bacteria and invertebrates) break it all down
 

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.