Our Year Ono Eco Leaders joined other schools and TipunaMaunga Trust, to help continue the native planting and regeneration at our maunga, Ohuiarangi.
It was muddy good fun! Thank you Tipuna Maunga Trust.
Tuesday, 29 June 2021
Landcare Garden Bird Survey
Each year we take part in the Landcare Bird Survey to check the health of our ecosystem and track if our measures to attract more birds are working.
The biggest groups of bird species we Room Rua discovered
Sparrows - 16
Starlings - 2
Thrush - 3
Tui - 2
Fantail - 2
Blackbirds - 6
Goldfinches - 2
Myna - 1
Magpies - 2
Silvereyes - 2
Yellow hammer - 1
Wednesday, 23 June 2021
Carbon Crunchers - Waste & Water
The carbon footprint calculations continue! Today we worked out that we fill 41 4.5 cubic metre bins per year. The carbon equivalent of this much waste is .... we stuggled to find this so have asked for advice from Nigel Zhang
We also started a Google Slideshow so we'll be able to share our work with others.
Well done to these Litterfree Lunch Legends & Tracking our Progress
Room Tekau ma Whitu
Room Tekau ma Iwa
Room Tekau ma Waru
We're tracking our own progress Litter Lunch Spreadsheet
There's improvement, but there's still so much litter in our lunchboxes and around the playground ðŸ˜
We wondering how we can encourage more litterfree lunches at Sunnyhills School...
Next week we're going to make packet monster posters.
Wednesday, 16 June 2021
Sunny Honey Treats
Year Two made Sunny Honey Treats with the honey we harvested from our hives.
You can make them at home too:
Sunny Honey Treat Recipe
Ingredients:
3 Cups Puffed Rice Cereal
1 Cup Sugar
2 Tablespoons Sunny Honey
Cupcake Paper cases
150 g Butter
Method:
1 Melt butter, sugar and honey and boil for 3 minutes
2 Take off heat and stir through puffed rice cereal
3 Spoon carefully into paper cases
4 Allow to cool and eat
Our Sunny Honey is for sale at the school office $15
Our carbon footprint - The Carbon Crunchers get calculating
Today the "Carbon Crunchers" group continued calculating our school carbon footprint.
Our Carbon Footprint Calculations
We took the data we already had for our power use for a year and calculated the carbon equivalent.
Next we used the school van's log book to work out how many km it had done one in a year, then we worked how much diesel that took and finally the carbon equivalent.
Lastly we found out from our property manager how much petrol our power tools use and worked out the carbon equivalent.
Next we need to work out our carbon foot print for our water use and landfill waste. Finally we'll add it altogether to work out our school's carbon footprint.
We'll need to work out a way to effectively communicate our results and what steps we can take to reduce our emissions.
Stay tuned!
Left to right - Noah, Bokai, Yifan, Michael & Peter
Team Wha Go On a Litter Hunt
Room Tekau ma Whitu went on a litter hunt. We found litter all around our school. It made us feel sad because people are chucking it in places where we can't reach it and it can hurt the sea animals.
We put the litter into groups: classroom, construction, plasters and food.
The two biggest piles were classroom and food wrappers. The classroom litter was mostly paper so that will break down. The food wrappers were made of plastic. That's bad because it won't break down.
We wondering what we can do to reduce this waste:
- naked lunches (nine children have these today)
- ask EziLunch to not use plastic forks
- can we get biodegradable plasters??
Room Tekau ma Iwa Results:
This is the litter we found
We put our finds into three piles: classroom, food packaging and miscellaneous.
Food packaging was by far the biggest pile!
Room Tekau ma Waru saw all the food waste rubbish. We decided that lots was coming from lunchboxes. We looked in our lunchboxes to see how much waste was there ... we found four children had a litterfree lunch. Well done to them! Unfortunately we found when we counted all the single use plastic wraps in the rest of the lunches there were... FORTY THREE!
What could we do to change this?
- we could pack litterfree lunches
- ask who packs our lunches to not use plastic
- at home take off the plastic wraps and put in soft plastic recycling
- use bees wax wraps instead of gladwrap
We're going to measure again next week to see if we can change our habits ...
Continuing our Carbon Footprint Project
CARBON FOOTPRINT with Nigel Zhang - Mr Tuatara
Our notes:
MAGIC method
M - Measure (thumb - most important)
A - Analyse (pointer finger) where you can save our carbon footprint
G - cut (longest finger) mitiGate
I - ring finger - core business - Integrate carbon footprint into core business
C - Communicate - extend activities to community
Carbon is everywhere. Identify where the carbon is.
Children and teachers driving to and from school x distance x days - should we measure??
Electricity
Make list of electricity consuming devices then measure high usage devices - this must be measured
APRIL ELECTRICITY - 8126 kw/h x 0.1014 kg carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour (kgCO2e/kwh) = 823.9768 kg of carbon dioxide ( that's a lot of carbon!)
That's 101 686 rugby balls equivalent we filled with carbon in one month with our electricity use. What would that look like filling our library?
Can also look at water use as that creates carbon.
Different gases have different effects on global warming. Methane is much worse than C02 for example.
We talk about carbon equivalent
1T of C02 contributes to one centigrade increase in temperature - global warming potential value
Are our fridges the most climate friendly?
Need to analyse school van log book and calculate carbon footprint.
Power tools - how much fuel has Mr Lesley used this year??*
So we need to measure Direct emissions eg van and indirect emissions eg power bill. Possibly measure other indirect emissions eg teacher and child commute
Get figure and communicate to BOT and community
Carbon Footprint Crack Team needed - Efan, Bokai, Michael
*Update from Mr Lesley - he uses 5 litres of petrol a month.
Tuesday, 15 June 2021
Sunnyhills School Moth Plant Hunters
Sunnyhills School Moth Plant Hunters Roman, Chase and Team TAG (Aimee, Tamzin and Georgia) were acknowledged at the Howick and Pakuranga Cluster meeting. What fabulous Eco Warriors they are! Team Roman Sayer collected 1,080 pods, The Chase, 437 pods and Team T.A.G, 346 pods as well as finding the thickest vine 1 cm. What a great example they are setting for everyone. A big thank you to all the other Sunnyhills Teams who competed by collecting pods. You all did an amazing job.
Tuesday, 1 June 2021
Green Garden Pesto
Team Toru have been learning about the herbs in our garden. Today we made Green Garden Pesto with our parsley, sorrel and lemons.
We added olive oil and garlic and whizzed it all up. Yum!
