Trees for Survival Planting Day

This week our students attended our annual 'Trees for Survival' native tree planting trip. 

We have been watering and nurturing these native trees since we received them as tiny seedlings last August. 

We returned to the same farm as last year to plant them. This was great as we got to see how last years trees have progressed. 

To learn more about the Trees for Survival programme click HERE. 

Our hard working group of students were also joined by some members of our local residential home - Bruce McLaren Retirement Village. We also had Cate Jessep our fabulous sustainable schools coordinator join in too!  

We planted mānuka, harakeke (flax), tī kōuka (cabbage trees) and some native grasses. We planted over 400 trees! It was hard going as we were on a muddy slope. The farmers dog, Mabel, had a fantastic time joining in too! 

I loved seeing all the farm animals (Rianka) 

I liked working together to plant trees (Aira) 

It was fun planting different trees and learning the names of them. (Devin) 

The dog was so cute! And seeing all the other farm animals was fun too! (Ciska) 

Can you spot our baby trees we planted today? 

Our awesome tree planting team! 

Term 2 Garden to Table

 This term, two new classes have been doing our Garden to Table programme. 

In the kitchen... the usual fabulous mix of savoury, salad and sweet cooking continues. 

>  Students made ALL the items on sale for our annual bake sale. 

>  They have made food to celebrate Samoan language week and are planning for Matariki. 

The year 4 students were luckily enough to have a 'one off 'session while the year 5/ 6 students were at camp and doing outdoor education programme. 

Garden activities have included...

* Hunting for carrots and kumara! 

* Smashing up a pumpkin (sadly it went rotten so we had to compost it) 

* Planting, weeding  and composting

Enviro Successes

 Our school enviro programme received a number of awards and accolades at the Howick Local Board enviro meeting this week. 

We were very pleased to place 2nd school overall in the moth pod competition for the East Auckland area collecting a record 21 967 pods and roots.  

We were awarded a certificate for our work on waste reduction. For the 5th year running we have successfully reduced our school landfill waste. 

We have also received a certificate of recognition for beginning our journey calculating and reducing our school carbon footprint. 

Garden to Table - Kea cooking time!

Our Year two students have been cooking using our garden produce. 

They were so excited. 

We went to the garden and collected the vegetables and herbs we wanted to use. Everyone helped harvest and bring them inside. 

We made pizzas using spinach, basil, parsley and thyme. We even made a MONSTER GREEN pizza (using pesto sauce) 

We also used some rosemary to make herby bread chips. Everyone's favourite!  

Recipes: 

Pizza Dough

* 4 cups of self raising flour

* 3.5 cups of natural, plain yoghurt

* 2 teaspoons of salt. 

1) Mix and make into a soft dough. 

2) Add more flour then roll our flat.

3) Add sauce / toppings 

4) Cook at 180 C for about 10 mins 

** Makes about 6 medium pizzas.  

Herby Bread Chips 

* Crusts from about 1/2 loaf of bread or more as required 

* Olive Oil

* Herbs (we used rosemary & thyme) 1 - 2 tablespoons of each. 

1) Break crusts into 2cm pieces

2) Mix in a bowl with a drizzle of oil and herbs.

3) Spread evenly on a baking tray and cook at 180 C for 10 mins or in the air fryer for about 8 mins.  

2024 Garden to Table Bake Sale

 This week we did our annual Garden to Table Bake Sale! 

UPDATE: We made an astounding $627! 

This will be used to buy a new electric frying pan, more knives and other kitchen & garden equipment. 

This is a bake sale with a few differences...

* The kids do ALL the baking! 

* The food is made using garden produce - beetroot brownies, herby breadsticks and pizza scrolls were the favourite! 

For all our latest recipes see HERE. 

Growing our Own Vegetables

 This term, two new year 5 and 6 class started Garden to Table.  For some students this was there first time doing the programme so there was much excitement! 

For their first week, they made herby bread sticks, see in the dark ANZAC cookies and greens and cheese fritters. The recipes can be found HERE. 

This programme has been growing in popularity at our school so we made the decision to give ALL classes throughout the school some experience of Garden to Table. 

Why are we growing our own food? 

"It is fun"

" So you don't waste your money at the supermarket"

" So you know how to cook when you are older"

" It teaches us healthy food to make" 

" If we go to the shops we buy all the treat food and  don't want to the healthy stuff" 

" So we know what vegetables look like in real life"

" Because it's fresher and has no pesticides" 

This led into a discussion about growing your own food also being more sustainable.

 

Everyone had a turn at planting some seeds

   

We started to clear the garden bed of weeds

    
 

There is a LOT of weeds to clear! 

Now we need to remember to water our seeds each day.

Our year 2 classes have started doing some gardening this term. They planted radish and beetroot seeds, prepared the garden area by weeding and digging and learned to identify some different vegetables and herbs. All of these had come from our school garden; it included tomatoes, carrots, feijoas and herbs such as basil, parsley and thyme.  

We talked about where we would use these and what they smelt like.  Which was your favourite? 

We then talked about what we could make using some of these vegetables and herbs. Our ideas were salad, soup, curry and pizza.  

Later in the term we will use some garden produce to cook with. 

Waste Audit 2024 Term 1

We are deeply passionate about reducing our waste to landfill. 

We often talk about how waste in landfill is a problem for our environment as food in particular doesn't break down easily and produces methane gas. 

We have monitors that check our 'traffic light bins' in each classroom weekly. 

We did a waste audit in term 1 to see:

* What we are putting in the landfill bin each week?

* Are some things being placed in the wrong bins? What can we do about this? 

* How can we further reduce our landfill waste? 

Results

We had our BEST EVER result of only 1.54kg of waste going to landfill each day! 

We were so happy with this! 

We gave feedback to all staff, including the SKIDS team. 

Our BIG Question: 

How can we support and encourage everyone to keep putting rubbish in the correct bin AND have less landfill waste? 

Start of waste audit - Tui classrooms R17-4

lunchbox waste which should've gone home

waste which should've been recycled

waste which should've been composted

waste which was corrected placed in landfill 

Each area of the school got a report like this: 

Moth Pod progress report!

It is now half way through the moth plant pod competition and our school has made a great impact on the spread of this invasive weed. 

This year we have also had a big focus on educating as many people as possible about this nasty, invasive weed. 

We have made a number of posters and done presentations to classes.

I'm super proud of Ciska and Aimee and Piper who went home and came up with their own activity to present to the younger students to educate them about moth pod! Well done girls! 

 

A matching pairs game - this helps us learn what all the different parts of a moth pod are like.