Eco Leaders - Garden Bird Survey - tracking the success of our Bird Corridor

For the last three years Sunnyhills School has taken part in The Landcare Garden Bird Survey, to track our local bird population and gauge if our "Bring in the Birds" is having a positive impact. We're hoping to attract more birds to our ecosystem through long term projects such as growing and planting native trees in our Bird Corridor.

Today the Eco Leaders split into groups to collect our 2020 data.

They found:

- blackbirds
- sparrows
- fantails
- silver eyes
- magpie
- pigeons
- tuis
- spur winged plover

You can take part in the survey too: https://gardenbirdsurvey.landcareresearch.co.nz/

Our Nature Space - another look at our Bird Corridor

Year Four have been using their artistic, scientific, mathematical and thinking, social and literacy skills to take a deep look at our "Bird Corridor"; a project on our Western boundary that was started in 2015 to attract more birds to our ecosystem.  The number of birds in an ecosystem is an indicator of it's health.

We used the Our Nature Spaces kit to guide our investigation, which included:
- studying the colours and textures
- mindful looking and listening
- studying the changing night sky above our nature space
- mapping and geo locating our naure space
- creating a giant poster photo of our nature space to annotate.
- finding minibeasts
- setting tracker tunnels to see if we have mammal pests

From our deep study Jackson suggested we enhance our bird corridor with a bug hotel.  Year Four worked together to make his idea a reality.  We used a recycled book case and natural materials we bought from home.

We're hoping also to include a bird/bee bath sculpture next to help our thirsty animals.

What are your feelings around climate change? A flip grid challenge

Climate Change is an emotive subject.  Humans have a huge range of emotions that make our body feel different ways.  We can watch our emotions and manage them.  How does climate change make your feel?  Why does it make you feel this way?  Record your response on this Flip Grid - https://flipgrid.com/018f89f8

☀️🍯🐝 Sunny Honey 🐝🍯☀️

🐝🍯☀️ - SUNNY HONEY - ☀️🍯🐝

Our very own "Sunny Honey" is now for sale at the school office - all natural no preservatives and made by Sunnyhills School's hard-working bees.

Honey is full of healthy anti-oxidants and naturally anti-bacterial. The white 'honey foam' you can see in the jars shows our honey is high quality. Heat gently to soften (not in a microwave), if you want to retain the honeys healthy properties.

$15 medium
$25 large

Congratulations to Stefanie & Georgia from Team Four, who created the winning name and label for our honey. We had many excellent designs to choose from. Well done everyone who entered the Honey Label Competition.

Experimenting with climate change

We have been exploring how salinity affects water density and learning to offer simple explanations of how climate change may impact the oceans’ chemical and physical properties.

We ran a water salinity test to see how salt effects water density ...

We were inspired by New Zealand climate scientists. Watch this video to find out more:

https://vimeo.com/344041126

Team Five's learning how to be sustainable with energy with Vector

Year Five are learning how we can be sustainable with energy. Esther from Vector visited today. She's funny and so informative. Ask your Year 5 GEM what they learnt in her presentation. If you're a Year Five comment below with an amazing fact.

Did you know just one hour of sunlight could power all of Earth's electrical devices for a year? Wow! We're wondering how we can use more sustainable sources of energy in the future.

New Zealand's electrical energy generation is 84% from sustainable sources.  Wouldn't it be awesome if our car fleet was just as clean?

I wonder what solutions to being more sustainable with energy our Year Fives will come up with ...