Year Six Planting thanks to Tamaki Estuary Environmental Forum

 Today, Year Six started planting the native grasses that were donated to us from the Tamaki Estuary Environmental Forum.  You can check our their good mahi by the Fordyce Entrance.

Year Three Matariki Hangi Prep and Rongoa Research

 

Today Year Three started their day by going to the hall to help prepare our Matariki Hangi.  The tamariki showed wonderful persistence and skill as they took turns peeling the kumara and potatoes.  We carefully listened to how to chop the kai with big knives safely and then very carefully cut. Well done Year Three! Nga mihi nui to all the parent helpers. We can't wait to eat our hangi tomorrow.

Afterwards, in Education for Sustainability we researched how Maori have used native trees and plants for medical treatments.  We created diagrams in our books to record our learning, then went on a hunt all around the school to find these special trees.

Next time we are going to drink kawakawa tea with Sunny Honey.  It's great for tummy aches and inflammation.

Year Four Matariki Cabbage Harvest

Today it was Year Four's turn to harvest kai for our Matariki Hangi.  We dug about for the last of our kumara and harvested big round cabbages.  The worms in our worm farms will be very happy, because they got all the spare leaves and stems. They'll make lovely compost for growing more kai.

We also reviewed how Maori brought Kumara to Aotearoa. Then we learnt how Chinese immigrants, Mr & Mrs Gock helped the kumara by developing a disease resistant type by watching this mini doc.

What did you learn today?

Harvey "Black rot can rot the kumara when it's too wet"

Maymay "Whakaoterangi brought kumara"

"The leaves of the kumara are heart shaped" Ella

"Mr and Mrs Gock helped the kumara from black rot" Ciara

Ella "When the leaves are yellow it's time to dig up the kumara".

"Mr and Mrs Gock gave the new type of kumara for free to NZ farmers" Alice.

Year Three Matariki Kumara Harvest

 

Today Rooms 7 & 8 continued our Matariki Kumara Harvest. We learnt all about how important the kumara is to Aotearoa. The yellow leaves told us it was time to harvest. First we pulled out the vines and put them in the compost. Then it was great fun taking turns trying to find the kumara under the soil. Valentin found the biggest one. We can't wait to eat them in our school Hangi. 

Year Six 2025 Matariki Kumara Harvest

The kai we planted in koanga is ready to harvest! In just 45 minutes K1 had dug up enough kumara to feed the Kauri Hub for our Matariki Hangi and there's still more to come. Hopefully enough for the whole kura. Tu meke! #Enviroschools

Year Six also researched how to grow and harvest kumara and the history of kumara in Aotearoa. We were amazed to hear about Whakaoterangi, the wahine Maori who bought kumara to Aotearoa in the 13th centuary. We also learnt about Mr & Mrs Gock, Chinese refugees who helped breed a disease resistant kumara and then gifted it free to the farmers of Aotearoa. You can find their heart warming story here

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Find K2's Instructions for how to harvest Kumara here

Find K2's Biographies and Fact Files here

Kumara Recount's by K1:

Written by Annie , ALEXANDRA , YUMI

Yumi’s experience:

Digging up the kumura is a really fun experience, we even found like about 30 kumara in the garden beds. Annie, Alexandra,Lisa, Mia, Stella and me, worked as hard as we could while laughing and having fun!🍠   

Written by Annie

Our group made a very interesting meme. Everytime we are digging and trying find a kumara , when we saw  purple roots and when we pulled it and it broke then we would just say “ it’s a worm , 😈die!”Our group harvested 30 kurmaras!We were all amazed at how many kumaras we dug up in total with the whole K1.

🍠Written by Alexandra🍠

At the Edible gardens, we helped Mrs Daniel pull out the kumara and vines out of the garden beds. We go put in groups of six. I was with Lisa, Yumi, Annie,  It was a hard process but we got through it. 

Kumara stuff 🍠

Today I learnt that kumaras are SUPER DIRTY!

We got dirt up our eyes and NOSE . It was super annoying and disgusting.

We got big ones and small  ones and looong skinny ones.

 In a couple weeks we will have a hangi with the kumaras we dug out.

In my group we dug out a lot. Aiden

Harvesting Kumara

We learned how to pull out the kumara from the garden.

When we were pulling out the kumara we found clay it was very fun to play with.

What we could do better  was to be more careful whilst pulling out the kumara.

We found some very interesting shapes and sizes of kumara. In fact someone even found a massive one!

At the end we felt so good because we harvested so many wonderful kumara that we will eat for the hangi.

(we also planted some onion seedlings at the end!)

Gabby,Olivia a,Aiden,Evie,Jake b and Emily.