Green fingers Gang - harvest kohlrabi, cabbage and broccoli

The Long History of Tea with Year Three

We found out tea was first used in China 6 thousand years ago. It's the second most popular drink after water. Wow!

World wide there's only really two words for tea - either a variation of the word cha or a variation if the word tea.

Jaylee can write cha in mandarin:

What did we learn about the history of tea?

The leaves for tea come off a type of tree and they started collecting and grinding them -
Connor

When they pick the leaves they make a cake and then mix it with hot water and that
became tea - Jaylee

I did not know that it came from China - Theo

For a while they could only grow the tea leaves in China and then an English man stole
tea plants and growers and started growing tea in India - Indie

Tea won’t cure poisoning - Jayden

Tea has all different flavours - Evelyn

Tea was invented 6 thousand years ago - Janessa

A guy from England smuggled tea trees in to India - Andrea

Tea moved to different countries - Indie

The British wanted to grow tea as well - Indigo

You can use tea to make medicine - Indigo

There’s only two ways to say tea -Zoe

China and England had a war over tea - Claire

Next week we're going to learn about a very local type of tea discovered by Maori ...

Being Regenerative Gardeners with Year One

 Today Year One looked at life cycles and how to be regenerative gardeners. We read Old Huhu by Kyle Mewburn and then we watered and sprayed our vege gardens with worm tea. Our worm tea is full of microbes and nutrients so our plants will be healthy and strong.

Mrs Daniel visited the For the Love of Bees gardens yesterday and found out lots about regenerative gardening from Sarah Smuts Kennedy. You can find out more about For the Love of Bees on Facebook  Instagram or visit their website.

Hopefully we can fundraise to have Sarah visit our school.

Packets for our sunflower seeds

"We've been making seed packets so we can put the sunflower seeds in them. We're going to sell then" Ellen Year 2

"The flowers are are for the bees so they can drink them and make more honey for next year" Frida Year 2

"We've been drawing sunflowers and colouring them in" Jackson Year 2

"If bees sting they die" Ava

"Bees make our honey and beeswax" Emme

"Bees help us grow more flowers and fruit" Ruby

"We've been making bee booklets" Iyra

"I really enjoyed growing and drawing sunflowers and popping out the seeds" Addison

"We had fun getting the seeds out and counting them" Rabab

"Boy bees help the queen have babies and the girls do all the work" Chloe

Week 2 Update

Today we carefully counted out 25 seeds for each packet. We've realised we must have thousands of seeds so it could take a very long time to package them all. 

Helping out our nectar feeders in the bird corridor

https://www.temotukairangi.co.nz/planting/fruit-nectar-calendar

Our Eco Leaders are investigating how we can help our nectar feeding birds in winter when there's not much food around.  Cate our Enviroschools coordinator said we can help the white eyes by leaving out grapefruit cut in half.  We made holders for the grapefuit simply with a nail and used some of the citrus fruit from our orchard.  We wonder if they'll like lemons too ...

Next we're going to use the link above to survey the trees we have in the Bird Corridor to make sure the nectar feeding birds like white eyes and tuis, have food year round.

Do you have food for the birds in your garden?

Exploring Putatara - Our new resource

https://putatara.education.govt.nz/#/home

We followed the link above to watch the video  and learn about Putatara,  an exciting new Education for Sustainability resource.

Here is Room 12's response:

We start each year by exploring our turangiwaewae, which empowers us to act as kaitiaki. Whakapuawai - we think and act for our whenua and record our endeavors - check out our blog  https://shsenvironmental.blogspot.com/?m=1

"Education for sustainability makes me feel super! It looks like nature and green gardens. It smells like rain and a cup of tea. Enviro lessons sounds like chirpy children and birds. It tastes like our own Sunny Honey!" - Room 12 Year 3

Terrific Tea with Year Three

Year Three are studying tea this term, because last term Brian from Room 12 suggested making tea with the mint we're growing. Awesome idea Brian!

Today we brainstormed our prior knowledge and began to wonder about what we'd like to find out...

Masan - Why does tea make us warm?

Cameron - What type of tree produced the leaves in the tea bag?

Elliot - Who invented tea?

Eric - How are tea bags made?

Edward - Why is tea so famous?

Paul - Is tea healthy?

Olive - How many different tea flavours are there?

Dylan - Is coffee tea?

Vian - Why do so many people drink tea?

Amana - How do you make tea?

Ben - Can you use any leaf to make tea?
Emma - How do you make tea?
Charlie - Why does tea need hot water?
Molly - What does mint tea taste like?
Jayden - Can you use sugar on it?
Ethan - what does basil do to it?
William - can you use any seeds?
Jaylee - Can you use sunflowers to make tea?

Cameron - Who was the first person to taste tea?

Next week we're going to investigate the history of tea to answer
Cameron and Elliot's questions.