Last weekend Ms Daniel went on a foraging expedition in Murphy's Bush. She learnt about edible and medicinal plants and fungus.
Ms Daniel was able to bring back a log covered in medicinal turkey tail fungus. Today the Eco Group looked at the fungi and wetted down the pile of rotting wood that it has been placed on.
Turkey Tail is a woody funghi and when it's boiled for an hour creates an immune boosting tea.
Today, Jess from the Young Ocean Explorers visited Year Four. We were amazed to learn about Jess' career as a marine biologist working with Kelly Tarltons. One career highlight was helping to save a three flippered turtle called Waiwai Toru. Jess also worked with NanoGirl and now is continuing her science education pathway with the Young Ocean Explorers.
Jess gave a fascinating presentation that included a quiz, videos, a smoke machine and even giant bubbles. We were able to explore how animals communicate with sound under the sea and hunt with air.
What did you find out Year 4?
Jaxon "Whales breathe air and they sing by humming"
Leo "I liked hearing all the animal sounds"
David "Whales use sounds to find their friends and family"
Ken "I enjoyed when Jess put smoke into the giant bubbles"
Valentin "I found out seaweed can grow 70cm per day"
Lucy "Jess made a smoke ring push a cup off my hand. She gave me a poster"
We were sad to hear that while 30% of land is protected in NZ, only 0.38% of the sea is protected. What could we do to protect more of the sea?
"Build a robot to clean up rubbish. We've been working on that in digi.
Special drains that can't let rubbish out or in
Use a magnet that attracts the rubbish
Make more marine reserves
Put posters up that we make
Write letters to the Prime Minister
Call DOC 0800 DOCHOT if you find a sick animal on the beach."
Next time, we're going to write letters to the Prime Minister, toconvince him to protect more of the moana.
Today Year Five thought about how we can independent active travelers. We want to be able to walk, bike and scooter more, because it's good for our bodies and good for the environment, but we need to be safe too.
We began our lesson by checking our class rankings for The Wednesday Challenge. Every Wednesday we try to use active travel more and log our results in an inter school and inter class competition. WELL DONE to Room 1 who are currently in second place.
Next we created a giant jigsaw puzzle. It was great fun to work as a whole class team. We timed it to make an interclass competition:
Room 2 - 5 minutes 41 seconds
Room 1 - 7 minutes 23 seconds
Room 3 - 6 minutes 38 seconds
Then we looked carefully at the picture we had created and identified children who we being unsafe. We marked them with red flags. Lastly we labelled the children with flags to describe what they should be doing.
To review we completed questions in our digital workbook.
Next time we're looking forward to taking part in Civil Defense's "Disaster Readiness" Competition.
Today Year 3 learnt that nature isn't always kind, but we can be prepared.
What are some of the natural disasters we know?
Zoey "Tsunami & flood"
Rhyden "Hail, lightning, earthquake & fire"
Margaux "Whirlpool"
Shion "Volcano"
Isla "Slips"
Elsie "Hurricane"
Christina "Snow Storm"
Billie "Bee swarm"
Jack "Coconut falling on your head"
Mahina "Sandstorm"
Amelia "Cliff crumbling"
Milan "Cyclone"
Sammy "Tornado"
Ciaran "Forest Fire"
We revised the things we can do in the event of a natural disaster:
- drop, cover & hold in an earthquake
- ring 111 in an emergency
- learn your address and parent's phone number
- check heavy objects in the home are secure
- learn the tsnami alarm that tells us to move to high ground
AND lastly please discuss a fire evacuation plan at home with our families.
By completing these activities we are in the draw to win an iPad from Civil Defense. Fingers crossed!
Today, it was the turn on Year 6 to work on their readiness for Natural Disasters. We're hoping to be one of the lucky schools selected for a special assembly and ipad prize draw. We took part in Civil Defense's Get Ready School Challenge: Look out for more information coming home with your tamariiki. Does your family have a fire evacuation plan?
https://getready.govt.nz/involved/schools-challenge Get Ready School Competition
Today, Year Five helped Ms Daniel conduct our waste audit to see if we are being successful in diverting waste away from landfill.
First we played a game to see if we knew the right place to put our waste. We had to choose between:
- paper recycling
- soft plastic
- comingled recycling
- general waste (red lid bin)
- food scraps / hot compost
- garden compost / worm farm
- hazardous waste
- op shop
There's so many places we can send our waste to be reused, composted or recycled so our world doesn't fill up with rubbish.
Afterwards we did a reading comprehension to analyse the results of the last waste audit.
Lastly we sorted all the waste from one day and weighed it:
Hot Compost 3.25kg (2.22kg in 2024)
Soft Plastic .35kg (soft plastic not collected in 2024)
Paper Recycling 1.25 kg (5.9kg in 2024)
Comingled Recycling 0.2 kg (0.1kg in 2024)
General Waste 1.25 kg (3kg in 2024)
Concerns -
compostables in waste 0.2 (Puka tea bags are recycleable) (0.72kg in 2024)
contamination in paper recycling 0.01 Room 1
contamination in recycling 0.05 (Up and Go boxes can't be recycled)
Can ice block sticks be composted? Yes :)
Recycling in waste 0.05 (1.08kg in 2024)
Analysis:
Last time we had 3kg of landfill waste and this time we had 1.25kg. What a dramatic drop! One reason may be that we made it a school rule that the Wednesday pizza boxes had to go home.
Total diverted from landfill went from 8.22kg to 5.05kg. This is because there was much less paper in the paper recycling bins (5.9kg vs 1.25kg), so that's good news.
Contamination dropped from 1.81kg to 0.35kg. That's another huge drop! Teachers and students on the whole are putting waste in the right bins.
We still have some work to do. We are not perfect. The Eco Group will analyse more and see what actions we take to improve the contamination rate. We can't wait to share our awesome results with other Enviroschools.
Today, Year Three were back out in the Mara investigating kai. First we observed the differences since we were last there in March:
Zoe "The leaves had gone from the fruit trees. Last time there was lots of fruit and leaves"
Augustino "Cabbages were growing"
Evie K "There was no more leaves on the apple trees and no more apples"
Isla "The leaves will come back in spring"
We tried silver beet fresh from the garden.
Next we thought about the differences between home grown kai and kai we buy in the shops. Kai we grow at home is fresher and takes a lot less energy to transport and store so it's better for the environment. We can't grow all our kai, but it's great if we can have a couple of fruit trees or a small veggie garden at home.
We created diagrams to show the differences between homegown and store bought kai.
Lastly we thought about the senses that we use when we eat and created a vocabulary bank.
Next time we are looking forward to finding out the groups we can put kai into and how the different food groups are good for our bodies.
Room 7 had a slightly different afternoon because they had the big job of collecting all the bins from around the school for tomorrow's waste audit. Also, when they were in the Mara Kai they say a HEDGEHOG. At first it was curled up and then it was waddling around the garden. This led to some hedgehog research. Did you you know they can swim? Their quills act like a life jacket as they are filled with air. Unfortuanatley they below in England - they are now considered a pest in New Zealand.
Next time we will be doing a special Civi Defense lesson, then we are looking forward to finding out the groups we can put kai into and how the different food groups are good for our bodies. The children want to end this unit by making kumara soup from the mara.
