LOCKDOWN Enviro Challenge #2 Baking Time!

Everyone knows lockdown is the perfect time for baking! 

Have a go at making something that will be perfect as a LITTERLESS lunch snack.

I know a few of you have already been busy in the kitchen. 

Our go to; BLISS BALLS. 

 

Here's out latest creation - thanks to Aiden & Dylan's mum for these.  

Click HERE for the recipe. 

THREE reasons we LOVE making bliss balls...

1) They are, basically impossible to make wrong - you just chuck it all in the blender! (add more dry or wet ingredients as needed) 

2) Use your imagination! You can make 100's of different versions. 

3) Get everyone involved! Everyone can help roll them into balls. You can pop them in the fridge if you don't get round to making them into balls until later.

Send me any photos of you baking or some awesome recipes to share and I'll add them to the blog.  

 

RAINBOW TREASURE HUNT Enviro Challenge #1 Well done!

Ka Pai (well done) to those of you that have given this challenge a try! 

Here's some of my favourites: 

Great job Lando! 

I love that you included such a range of natural things - flowers, leaves and fruit. 

Awesome job Alex. The red is so bright! I wonder if you could find anything orange to add? 

Well done Kiera! What a fantastic range of colours you found. 

Wow Rory!  You found SO MANY different colours for your rainbow! Amazing!

Beautiful purple magnolia Jobe, well done!
It is very hard to find anything natural that is blue isn't it! 

Term 3 Week 5 LOCKDOWN Enviro Challenge #1

R A I N B O W 

          Treasure Hunt

This awesome activity is for any age and a fantastic way to really

enjoy the beauty of nature.

“Nature, the more you see it, the more you love it”

Being outside, in nature is SO good for you, and SO interesting! Get out there!  It can be your own garden or around your area.

ENVIRO Challenge 1:  Find leaves, petals or other plants in a range of rainbow colours.

Please collect fallen ones; NOT from peoples gardens!

(10 points)

Above is what Aimee and I found in Murvale reserve. 🌿🌏🌈

Send me a photo of YOUR rainbow and I put it up on the blog b.long@howickprimary.school.nz

Y 3/ 4 Kaitiaki get RECYCLING!

 Term 3 Week 2 the Year 3 & 4 Kaitiaki helped to sort out all the products we have been collecting ready for special recycling. These items can't go in our regular yellow recycle bin but you can post them or drop them off to companies that can recycle them. 

This includes Dulco Gusto coffee pods and pens that can be recycled through Terracycle, 

Click the picture to learn more. 

Highland Park Countdown is where we drop off the soft plastic we collect (The Warehouse accepts this also)  

Click the picture to learn more about what is accepted and what this squishy plastic gets made into. 

Bread Tags for Wheelchairs NZ is the company that processes the plastic from bread tags. There are various people on Facebook that are the collection points.  

Cooking with Peter Gordon!

 As part of my role as GARDEN TO TABLE Kitchen Specialist I was invited to a cooking class with celebrity chef Peter Gordon last week! What an exciting opportunity! 

Not only did we learn more about great food to cook; it was also a wonderful opportunity to connect with other Garden to Table specialists around Auckland. 

Homeland restaurant also has a strong focus on sustainability and zero waste by using local growers & suppliers and composting all their food waste! Wow - what a fantastic place!    

Clean Plate Less Waste E BOOK

 Our senior students were lucky enough to be involved in this project where they got to not only create delicious, healthy, wrapper-free lunch box snacks but EAT them too! YUM! 

There's a video all about the project HERE. 

Click on the cover of the book to see all the amazing recipes created by our students and others in this area. The finished E RECIPE book is awesome!  The recipes we made are in chapter 5, page 57. 

Garden to Table Term 3 starts!

Welcome back Rooms 1 and 2!  

They remembered so many kitchen and garden skills from previously which was great. 

We are very lucky to have more gift cards given to us by COUNTDOWN HIGHLAND PARK towards our pantry items. Yay! A huge THANK YOU to them. 

In the garden we have been busy building new garden beds - even more planting space. 

In the kitchen we have already been busy making a range of yummy food; despite the constraint of not being in the hall space this week. We have made most of these dishes before so the helpers and I are becoming real pros at it!  

Using our influx of lettuce and bread leftover from BAKERS DELIGHT HOWICK we made salad sandwiches this week. Lettuce, grated carrot, grated cheese, a little spring onion, mayonnaise and avocado (left over from term 2 out the freezer!) 

ALL recipes can be found on the Recipe Ideas page HERE. 

Beautiful day for outside dining

Term 3 Week 2

Term 3 Week 1

New garden beds going in

Planting time! 

Zero Waste Awards

These awards recognise those doing great things to help Auckland achieve its vision of zero waste by 2040.

We are very excited that we were nominated for an award in the category of 'Growing the Movement'.

To date we have collected 95kg of rubbish and diverted 85.5kg from landfill. 

This is by collected and sorting waste at our school events such as discos, sausage sizzles and school picnics. The PTA have been awesome at supporting with us and many students are now having wrapper free lunches and composting their lunch rubbish. 

We were not the overall winner but we so proud to be nominated! 

Unfortunately Miss Long couldn't go but Mrs Callister went along and had a great evening hearing many inspirational stories. 

Click HERE to read all about the event and the other nominees. 

Trees for Survival

 

Enviro Cluster & Moth Plant Pod winners

 On Wednesday the 9th of June, Howick Primary held an Enviro cluster meeting in our school hall. We had a lot of fun and a lot of schools and businesses came together to share their experiences in helping the environment. 

As Howick Primary; we shared our experiences including talking about our traffic light bin system and how the red bin is for landfill rubbish, the yellow bin is for recycling and the green for food scraps going to our compost/ worm farm. We also made a game that everyone who came would be able to play. We handed out little game packs that included a piece of red, yellow and green paper. It also had pictures of different types of litter and we asked the players to sort out the pictures onto the right piece of coloured paper. These represented the different bins. 

 

 In the cluster we had special people to come up and present the moth plant pod competition winners. Everyone in the hall was feeling the exciting suspense. They had a lot of different categories such as kindergartens/preschools, Primary schools, Intermediates and Colleges. In the Primary category our school came third place! We collected 2388 pods. We learnt it was important to collect these pods otherwise the seeds inside of them spread and grow new pods. These new pods strangle and kill our native New Zealand trees. 

 

-Emma Bloxham

Thank You Highland Park Countdown!

 

Howick Primary Garden Working Bee.

On  Sunday 27th June 2021 Howick Primary held a working bee. 

The goal of the day was to make more planter boxes for Garden to Table and cut down all the cabbage trees outside of rooms 3 & 4.

We got to work and started digging up the grass behind senior classrooms to make room for new planters boxes. We stacked the squares of grass in the staff car park.

 

 

Meanwhile lots of people were hard at work digging up the grass. Joe (Jackson & Jade's dad) was using a chainsaw to cut down the cabbage trees.

We had a break at around 11:00am. We had vegetable soup, lime and white chocolate brownie, coffee and milo. After a quick break we got back to work.

After the break we took all the roots out from under the grass that we had dug up so that weeds could not grow again.

It was not long till we packed up but we got the wooden pegs in and put the frames up for the planter boxes. Joe had finished cutting down all the cabbage trees too!

We packed up, washed all the tools we used, put them away and all headed home at around 1:00pm.

It was a nice hard working day outside doing gardening.

Jackson.B (Room 2) & Jade.B (Room 7)