Year 3/ 4 Lizard Lounge & Fairy Garden

 Our Year 3/ 4 Enviro group have been looking for areas around the school we could improve. 

We found quite a few 'nothing' areas and thought about what they could become. 

One area we've been working on is the area by the hall. 

We used the ACTION LEARNING CYCLE  to plan our project. 

We thought about...

1) What it was like and how we felt about it. 

2)  What we could do instead - we looked at what others had done and got LOTS of ideas from the internet.  We recorded all of these in a big book. 

What we wanted to do. We all came up with different ideas for what we would like there. 

What native creatures have we seen there? How can we attract more? 

3) Take ACTION and get to it! 

We have learnt...

"We can re use rather than buying things" (Elana)

"Lizards like dark places to hide"  (Annika)

" Lizards like to eat bugs - these hide in leaves and old wood" (Yasashmi)

" Lizards don't like being touched" (Elana) 

" Hedgehogs can eat lizards" (Aimee) 

Year 5 / 6 Bronze Cadetship

School native garden area

EDIT: THANK YOU to Nicole, Duncan and others for sending through your photos of your lizard hotel set up at home! Great job!  See below for photos. 

For the last four weeks our Year 5 / 6 Enviro students have been working with the Pest Free Howick expert Ethan. 

 During these sessions they learnt about invasive pests in New Zealand, native trees and native birds. They have set up trakka tunnels to see what pest animals might be around at our school and looked at real (stuffed) pest animals. 

Aimee and the cat 'Stormy' looking for rats!

Although cute, hedgehogs are a pest species in NZ as they eat bird eggs and lizards  

Tyler with his kowhai he grew from seeds

Visit to our native garden 

        

     

How many native trees can you name?

In the last session we designed a lizard friendly garden using a special corrugated lizard shelter. 

Some students opted to take these home and set up a lizard sanctuary for native lizards at their house.   

In order for these to be successful the lizards also need to have access to food - native plants and creepy crawly bugs, water and plenty of places to hide from predators.  

At the end of the session we visited the Year 3/ 4 'lizard lounge' area by the hall. We thought about if it had everything the lizards needed and what feedback we could give the year 3/ 4 group. 

     

Chip Packet Initiative

Save those BIG chippy packets! 

In conjunction with Botany Downs Secondary College, we are recycling LARGE chippy packets and making them into something useful - a thermal blanket. These are given out to homeless people to provide a little more warmth this time of year. 

This is a great way to help people AND recycle. 

If you have any at home please drop them at the school office in the special box. 

For more information click HERE. 

Room 17 & 2 Garden to Table - round 2!

 This term Room 17 and Room 2 have returned to the Garden to Table programme to have a whole term of gardening and cooking! 

Many favourite dishes have popped up and some new favourites too. 

The garden is starting to show glimpses of spring with lots of produce!  Lettuce, onions, rhubarb and lemons to name a few. 

For our latest recipes see HERE 

THANK YOU Paradice

 For a few years now we have been lucky enough to have received vouchers from PARADICE to hand out as Enviro prizes. These are handed out as part of our 'Wrapper Free' initiative. If your name is pulled out the prize draw then you win 2 vouchers for ice skating, mini golf or laser tag! 

To thank our wonderful sponsors Paradice for their support we made a poster to present to them. 

Room 9 & 10 classes Cooking Time!

 This week the final two classes from year one had their 'Garden to Table' cooking lesson.

They loved collected the leaves and 'plants' (herbs) from the garden to use in our recipes.

We ripped up the leaves and herbs into tiny pieces to sprinkle on top or mix in. 

We used spinach, silverbeet, thyme, rosemary and parsley. 

We made:

* Pizza with herbs and greens

* Herby bread chips

* Monster green pancakes. 

The recipes can be found under the 'recipe' tab.  

Year 3/ 4 Adopt A Park Term 2

This week our year 3/4 Enviro team walked down to William Green Domain for our 'Adopt a Park' visit. 

This term we were focusing on tree planting in the park. 

Led by Ranger Anna from Auckland Council, we planted native grasses by the stream. We planted over 100 in less than one hour! 

We learned about how planting by streams and rivers is helpful to stop soil eroding (slipping away) into the waterways during heavy rain. 

I liked tree planting and I liked jumping on the spade and getting the dirt out (Aimee) 

Planting trees together was fun and I liked it when we took the worms out and gave them a new home (Blake) 

We found so many massive worms! I loved looking for them! (Dané) 

It was fun learning about the trees and how to plant (Jaylani) 

I had so much fun, I liked tree planting (Yasasmi) 

Year 1 and 2 Cooking Time!

Today the year 1 and year 2 students had their turn at cooking! 

Everyone came to the garden and collected the produce. We had spinach, silverbeet, thyme, parsley and rosemary. 

We made pizza and herby breadsticks. 

"I loved the pizza" 

" The monster green pizza was my favourite"

" It was fun grating the cheese - I wanted to eat it!" 

"Pulling out carrots was the best part - they were SO big!"

2 of our amazing Year 5/ 6 helpers 

We grow amazing carrots! 

There was lots of learning going on too! 

>  kitchen skills - such as ripping, chopping, stirring, mixing, kneading 

> naming vegetables and herbs 

> Taking turns and cooperation

> Sharing and using kind words and manners (yes even we didn't like the food!) 

See below for the 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.