Celebrating Conservation Week with Rotorua Island Educators

Today Year Three celebrated  Consservation Week with a visit from the Rotoroa Island Educators Rebecca & Alison.  We learnt all about the how our unique native birds are being protected on this sanctuary island.

After a presentation about why New Zealand has so many flightless birds that are found no where else in the world, we had fun with some hands on activities:

- Endemic Animal Bingo

- Native Animal Who Am I? Game

- Native Bird Memory Card Game

- Match the adult with their baby photo game

- Feather investigation with magnifying glasses

- Match the population number with the endangered species.

It was so much fun and we learnt lots:

"I learnt that the ecosystem can be helped in many ways.  Also the baby sea creatures look very different from their adult forms" Lucas

"Kereru are purply blue" Ciaran

"There are only 35 -40 Fairy Terns left, so we need to protect them" Reyna

"It was a huge mistake to bring possums, stoats and rats to New Zealand" Evan

"The baby birds don't look like the grown up birds" Milan

"When you cut down trees you're losing animals' homes" Abby

"If we grow more plants we are taking care of the Earth" Sri

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge Rebecca & Alison.  We love learning from the experts!

Maybe you can visit one of our sanctuary islands with your family next school holidays.

Year Six Estuary Inquiry Begins - Get Thinking

Today, Year 6 began their estuary inquiry.  First we discussed our prior knowledge and experiences: 

Lucy "On Great Barrier there is an estuary you can swim in with a slide and a boat you can play in"

Maya "I go to Little Bucks everyday and climb up the mountain"

Renee "My house is really close to the estuary and I walk my dog there"

Brayden "I had my birthday party at Snakes and Ladders playground on the estuary"

Lacey "At Snakes and Ladders I find crabs under the rocks with my brother"

"I walked along the Bucklands Beach estuary on the board walk" Fay

Alysia "I ride bikes along the estuary"

"At Cooks Beach I like swimming across the estuary" Emma

Next, we watched a video of our local estuary and read through a slide presentation from DOC.

We tested whether we could identify estuaries with a Kahoot

Afterwards we created a mind map to inform our next steps. Check out our mahi here.

When we had finished we got to eat feijoas from the school trees.

Next term we'll use our wonderings to form inquiry questions to research about our local environment.  Then we'll be able to identify any issues and come up with actions to help our estuary.

Moth Plant Competition

 🌎🌱 Registrations are open for the annual moth plant competition. Help eradicate this nasty weed and win cash prizes. Find out more here: https://pfhw.org.nz/our-schools/moth-plant-competition/

Today Year Four entered the moth plant competition.

We went around the school with our gloves on finding and pulling moth plant seedlings. We found some pods too.

Room 4:

13 pods

5 pods

46 seedlings with roots

10 seedlings with roots

We’ll photograph our finds and send them in for our chance to win spot

Prizes 

49 seedlings with roots

Room 4 got 105 seedlings with roots and 18 pods.

Room 6 found 61 seedlings with roots.

So far that is 166 seedlings with roots and 13 pods from our school.

Dispose of plants and pods in landfill. Not compost.

Room 5 got 21 seedlings with roots and 13 pods.

Altogether Year 4 removed 26 pods and 187 seedlings with roots from our school grounds.  Well done Year Four!

Year Five Ready Steady Go for WOW Week

 Today Year Five celebrated WOW Week by focusing on how active travel is good for our bodies and the environment.  We discussed active travel and completed a quiz in our new online handbooks.  Then it as time to work together as a team to make a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Just for fun we timed how quickly each class completed it:

Room 2 : 8min9sec

Room 3: 9min 1sec (half of the children at Kapa Haka) 

Room 1: 8min30sec

We flagged the puzzle with green environmental facts and yellow health facts.

Thanks to everyone who walked, biked and scootered to school today.  It's good for our bodies and the environment.  And at the moment it's also very good for our household budgets! 

Will you walk to school next week?

Year Three Kai Inquiry

 Today Year Three began their inquiry into kai by talking about what we had for breakfast in a sharing cricle.  There was lots of fruits, breads, porridge, cereals, eggs, and milk.

Next we used kai cards in groups to talk about our experiences with different kai and how we can group food. Some groups used colour to categorise while others used sizes, how they are eaten and one group even put them in alphabetical order. We shared our experiences of different foods like taro, tofu and dahl.

Afterwards it was time to go on a kai hunt to see all the food we grow at school with our very own compost.  We spotted kumara, slilverbeet, feijoas, strawberres, quince and apples.  We picked the apples and feijoas to try later.

Back in the classroom we designed a cut and paste menu,  We were careful to select at least five fruits and vegetables and a variety of different colours and types of food.

The apples and feijoas were DELICIOUS.  Next time we are looking forward to finding out about the journey our kai can take.