Video - Keas Open a Weta Hotel at Sunnyhills School

Thanks again to our Year 3 Keas for the gift of a weta hotel. Check out this video of their adventures finding just the perfect spot and stay tuned to see if we have any weta guests moving in.

Room 24 made these origami whales

Room 24 made these origami whales as a follow up to Project Jonah with Room 19.  They are going on to write facts and publish them on a larger version next week

Teach the Teacher - Liam tells us all about bobbits

Wow, today Liam told us all about bobbits, as part of a SeaWeek studies. Do you know what a bobbit is? Mrs Daniel and Room 22 didn't either:
It's a worm or sand striker that lives in the ocean floor and ambushes fish. Cool!

We can't wait to find out more about the creatures that live in our moana and how to protect them.

Do you know any weird, rare or wonderful sea creatures? Comment below 🦐🦀🦈🐋🐠🦑🐡🐢

Action Learning in Action! - Sunnyhills Farmers Market Supporting Pest Free 2050 & The Squawk Squad

This term the Sunnyhills learners brought together our edible garden project with our action learning plan to encourage more native birds by holding a Farmers Market to support the Pestfree 2050 project. We've been selling the vegetables, herbs and fruit we've grown to our community and using the money to support The Squawk Squad, who trap pests to protect native birds.

The Squawk Squad were pretty impressed with our efforts!

You can support the Squawk Squad too: https://squawksquad.co.nz/

Action Learning In Action!

Identify the Current Situation -  Learning about native birds - DOC Expriencing Birds in Your Green Space, The Manaki Whenua Landacare Bird Survey, Bird of the Year

Explore Alternatives - research trees to attract birds and how to trap pests that can harm them.  Visit from Ruari a pest expert from DOC

Take Action - plan a new bird corridor to plant new trees for the birds, farmers market to support trappers in reserves, hold a Pestival to promote trapping in the local community, setting and checking rat traps,

AND Treemendous Trees Video Application - view below:

Update - our application was unsuccessful, but Mrs Venville has managed to get 1200 from Gecko Trust to start our bird corridor!  She's planning a working bee to start the work with the help of all our whanau.

Reflect - still no rats caught in our traps, but some local families are catching them.  We think maybe the local cats keep them under control.

Planting Our New Native Trail

Our Community is amazing!

Thanks to parents and students we have planted 1500 natives to create a new Native Trail that runs along the bank behind the school pool and hall.  This extends our bird corridor and brings in more native animals such as skinks.  A huge thanks to Fraser and The Gecko Trust for supplying the plants and teaching us about each species.

Fruit Trees In Schools Launch

FRUIT TREES IN SCHOOLS

The Sayer Family & Mrs Daniel attended the 'Fruit Trees in Schools' breakfast time launch, at Farm Cove Intermediate.

Thank you to the Howick Local Board & Kings Plant Barn for providing our school with a fabulous variety of new trees, including for the first time a fruiting cherry tree.

We loved the opportunity to explore FCI's edible gardens and learn about their bee hives as well.

Sustainability Challenge

Sustainability Challenge

Yesterday the Enviro Group took part in a sustainability Challenge at the Botanic Gardens.  We had to work strategically as a team and complete enviro challenges at stations to earn points.  Points could also be scored by finding clues.  We needed to read a map to locate these which was not as easy as we thought it would be. Matching the stream life to the pictures and description was really difficult.  So was the marine life activity - but we got there.  One of our groups came 4th which was a massive achievement as there was over 300 team taking part.  Fortunately the rained stayed away though our shoes and socks were soaked.  Here are some photos showing some of the challenges we completed.

                                           Planting lavender

                                                     Identifying river creatures

                                          Identifying marine life

                                                    Collecting clues

                                          How seeds are spread

                                          Finished

                                          Well deserved rest and lunch

                                                    Ready to start

                                                    Looking for fossils

                                                    Identifying river creatures

                                                    Naming the parts of a flower

                                                    The worm Farm challenge

          Such fun.  Got back with 3 minutes to spare and no penalty point incurred

The Greenfingers Gang - feed, weed, harvest & eat!!!

Look at our delicious carrots we grew! So long! So straight! So fat! So crunchy!

Our apples are growing bigger and BIGGER!

We noticed the new lemon tree leaves were a tad yellow, so we fed them up on worm tea.

Bring in the Birds - A Senior School Enviro Project

This term the Senior School have been exploring the concept of ecosystems and investigating how we can attract more manu species into our school environment. Some of our hard work is on display in the school hall.

 Which is your favourite type of bird?

Now we know what each species likes to eat and where they like to live, our next steps are to plan an area for our manu.

Room 3 Discover Some Mini Mates

Today Room 3 had our first Eviro lesson with Mrs Daniel. We went to the edible gardens to learn more about fruit, veges and how Sunnyhills is growing sustainably.

While we were there we learnt lots of Te Reo Maori names the fruit and veges and how everythingis interrelated. Do you know what an aporo is?

With our super powers of observation we noticed lots of little mini beasts in our gardens. Mrs Daniel said some were garden helpers. There were lots of curious questions, so next week we're going to break into buzz groups to research what we saw. Stay tuned for when we report back!!

Look what we found in our next lesson:

Finding fun fruit facts with Room 15

Today Room 15 had their first enviro lesson. We had to hunt down fun facts in the edible gardens.

Here's what some of the tamariki thought:
Andreas: "I found out tomato leaves are poisonous".
Rubi: "I learnt my first Maori word because I came from Australia. Aporo is apple".
Ryan: "Capsicums come in three colours".

Everyone agreed it's fun to learn outside. We want to do more scavenger hunts, weeding and grow our own veges. We're also  looking forward to eating the rock melons that are growing!