Mapping the School - Enviroschools

 Building on the work we have been doing in measurement our Maths for the last few days has been centred around trying to accurately map the school. No mean feat! We have been estimating distance and dimensions, noticing the actual size and shape of things and identifying the parts of the school important to us. 

                                   A couple of examples of fine maps.

We are working with Chloe our Enviroschools educator, looking more closely at the natural environments within the school.  Students were invited to connect to an Atua, an idea to help notice and connect them to the Taiao or environment. We are thinking about Tane and Tangaroa for our project in The Arts too.  More on this later. 

Ethan Q: My special place is the fairy garden. It is a relaxing place and I enjoy it. The breeze is as nice as a little fan and as cool as an ice block. I chose a rock on the ground in the fairy garden because it reminds me of a calm gentle forest. The fairy garden is a relaxing place and we play camouflage there.

Fabian: My special place at this school is the pizza oven and I chose a rock because on the floor of the pizza oven there are lots of rocks there. It is also very fun to play around there (when there is no fire going) there are also trees close so you can climb them if you are waiting for your pizza. It is also really nice there.

Zor: I like climbing a tree at school because first of all trees are a part of nature. I also love to climb trees, but in New Zealand, I find it harder to climb. I want to get better at climbing trees. Trees are fun and sometimes when you don’t know what to do try climbing up a tree it’s relaxing. Sometimes it’s better to relax and enjoy it. I like to climb trees because you can see lots of things and it’s a wonderful view.

Nature Art - Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy

We were inspired by a British artist - Andy Goldsworthy We are thinking about the Character Strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence. 

Our criteria was to be creative, take a good photo and give our piece a good name. What do you think? 

By Soma, Chloe, Marigold, Zoe and Charlotte

The Beauty of Nature by Lucca, Leo K and Ethan B

Nature's Circle by Otto B, Tommy, Marlon, Haru and Shuyang

The Campfire of Gratitude by Willa and Esmé-Rose

By Cam, Jasper and Sammy

The Campfire of the Village by Hannah and Ethan Q

Heart of Nature by Finn and Archie

By Amelia W and Marcia

Best Friends Fur-ever by Scarlett and Rézi 

The Flower of Fire by Willow, Nikita, Cara and Violet

Nature's Cold Sun by Greer, Amber and Bella

The kai of Whetukairangi by Samuel and Tui

Firefly's Holiday Home by Monty, Lakham and Jack

By Henry and Liora

Natural Circle by Oscar

The Ant Kingdom by Rowan and Teddy

The Four Leaf Clover of Creativity by Locky, Leo M and Zen

The Mona LEAFa by Nicolas, Luca and Oli

Gardening on Green Day

On the 13th of December is Green Day (Aka: Environmental day, Garden day).

On green day, everybody is encouraged to wear green and bring in seedlings such as zucchini, carrot, broccoli & lettuce.

On green day, lots of people have the opportunity to get into the school gardens and get their hands dirty. Unfortunately, because of the rain, only a few people got to get into the garden.

In the garden there was lots to be done. We had to replace all the soil in the garden boxes, pick out all the roots/ weeds that were in the soil and then plant, and finally, unreel the hose and water the new plants.

I got to help organise Green Day, be a journalist and actually get into the garden.

By Olive

Green Day

Meet the "Green Team"

We are organising Green Day! This will be next Tuesday (14th December)! Everybody in the school will be involved getting our gardens ready so that when we return in 2022 there will be fresh produce.

We are also making a steaming compost heap! Fun!

We would like to involve everyone in the school who is keen and will be involved in planting, weeding, watering and piling on scraps on the compost pile. 

Autahi and Tautoru will be working in their own garden spaces.

Bring compostable materials: Dry leaves, any bunny/ chicken poo, seaweed, fresh cut grass, any compostable material... 

Bring along a seedling or two: tomato plant, beans, zucchini, lettuce, herbs...

Wear your green-est outfit!

From the Green Team

Our Green Team have been collecting seaweed on the beach for composting!

Collecting leaves for composting

Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence- Art Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy

We have been inspired by the artwork of Andy Goldsworthy and have created our own environmental art. We have been thinking about the Character Strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence.

By Marnie and Cleo

The Character Strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is about an emotional experience, and appreciating beauty around us and in other people's skills and talents.

We have been doing close observations of precious things in nature, looking at all of the wonderful colours, shades, shapes and uniqueness of the objects. 

By Sam, Finn and Alex

This is our child developed Character Strengths poster:

Positive Purpose Environment Group

Our Positive Purpose Environment group had a productive day yesterday. 

During lockdown, we weren't able to get into the school premises. That meant the shade house, and all the wonderful things inside, couldn't be maintained. We have tidied it up and things are back on track! We now have some great new shade house specialists being trained up. He tino pai! 

Our gardens are also looking much more lively, and are now home to many different science projects that are part of our new cycle of Inquiry. 

We have also carried out some maintenance on our whare at bottom grass. A team of students have re-cladded the roof and front wall with timber, palm fronds and toi toi. Feel free to check it out and have a peek inside next time you're around!

We're also preparing some different types of fertiliser to be used on our gardens and for our investigations. We've heard seaweed is a great fertiliser, so we're chopping it up and getting it on our gardens!

Exciting stuff - ka mau te wehi!

Break down time

In maths we have been looking at how long different items take to break down and drawing timelines to show this. There have been some surprising results, like a computer takes 1,000,000-2,000,000 years to break down and a plastic bag 500-1,000 years.



We have also reflected on this and how we can do things differently given what we've learned. We looked at things our whanau did at the fair to have less plastic rubbish and were grateful for the steps they took to look after our environment. We did some quick writes about these.






Quick writes

Plastic
Why is plastic free peninsula a good idea? Because it is helping the environment stay clean and reduce the amount of plastic in the world that will reduce the amount in the sea. Every individual needs to change the amount of plastic they and the world are using because otherwise the world for the next generations will not survive the world with the toxic fumes and plastic which can kill you. I believe that we can help and pick u the amount of rubbish in the world we need to think as a world to put the rubbish in a safe place for everyone not just distribute the rubbish everywhere we can make that one place safe and help save the world. We need a way to clean the oceans and a safe place to put it. Singapore has a law for not littering and it is a very clean place.
WE NEED TO KEEP THE WORLD CLEAN!!!
By Orla


Why is plastic free peninsula a good idea? Plastic free peninsula is a good idea because less bird, sea animals and ect won’t die thinking that plastic is food that they can eat. Some people are doing these things that there saying that there not going to use plastic it a store or something, like new world said that next year they are not going to use plastic bags and instead you bring your own reusable bag otherwise you have to carry your food or things to the car with no bag. Lots of people are taking plastic free peninsula very serious so then they do something to help the world. Here a fact in Singapore if you litter or drop plastic and leave it on the ground you could get locked up so that’s why Singapore is very clean. These are some of the reasons why I think plastic free peninsula is a good idea.
By Eva


Because plastic is making animals sick because the are eating plastic bits which kills them because they can't get treated, but another bad thing is that we end up eating the fish that have little plastic bits which is GROSS! But on the positive side at the Worser bay school fair we didn't use plastic bags in the clothing area, instead we used paper bags and a lot of people brought their own bags. And we used paper plates, cups, bowls. And we sorted out the rubbish into bins like Plastic, recycling and paper. And in Singapore there is a law that you can't litter and you can be locked up!! Done Done Done! SO DON'T LITTER!!!
By Daisy


Quick write Plastic Why is plastic free peninsular a good idea? I think/believe that if we didn’t have plastic free peninsular we wouldn’t have as much creatures like seagulls, fish and whales there are over 3 massive islands that are filled with plastic all together it is about the same size as Australia and 50 years ago all that wasn’t there. In Singapore your not allowed to litter and if you do you you will get locked up.
By Maddie