Year Five Spaghetti Squash Seed Savers

 

Today Year Five set to work saving the spaghetti squash seeds we had harvested at the beginning of term.  

Do you remember the spaghetti squash we grew over raumati/summer and roasted? https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5234492709449203093/605536775667702119 We had collected the seeds from inside and dried them out.  Now it's time to store them for planting in our own mara next koanga/spring. Free kai!

We looked at various seed packets to see what a successful container would look like:

- a paper envelope with no gaps

- a title and picture

- instructions for growing that included when, where and how.

We had to think carefully to create our own seeds packets using A4 paper, glue, scissors. When we were sure it had no gaps we decorated it with pictures and instructions.  Lastly we filled them with six seeds each.

Now we can grow our own spaghetti squash or gift the seeds to some gardeners we know as an Easter surprise.

We're looking forward to continuing our Ready Steady Go Sustainable Travel topic next term.

Year 3's Pumpkin Party

 

Today, Year 3 read Stone Soup. The magic ingredient was sharing. That gave us an idea. We used spring onions, pumpkins and herbs along with salt, stock and dried herbs to make our own magic soup. Yum! 

The pumpkins that were harvested, roasted and frozen:

Visiting Our Lady Star of the Sea

 Ms Daniel visited Our Lady Star of the Sea for inspiration from another Enviroschool.  Check out these amazing actions:

Bug hotel

Bath worm farm

Natural play and loose parts play

Mosaic

Huristic play

What could we do?

Year Six - What is an estuary?

 

Get Thinking - What is a estuary?

Vienaa "Like a lake and a beach close together"

Vida "The water flows and animals live there"

Blake "There's no waves and it's calm"

Toby "It's some sort of water way"

Explore - We explored what an estuary is with reading this slide deck from DOC https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IDYU3SVQm20oeH1TgMS7hC9BxXX8lofLY5x_2Dw6HiM/edit#slide=id.g2303cdbe46_0_0 

What do we see at the Roatary Walkway alongside the Tamaki Estuary?

"Baby fish and birds"

Alexander "I saw crabs"

Blake "I've seen eels there"

Gracie "Lots of mud"

Vida "Trees"

Toby "weird water trees like mangroves"

Hazel "I've seen herons; birds with long legs"

Cody "There's a lot of kelp dried on the shore"

We created charts in our book with the headings "I know...", "I wonder...", "My experiences..." and "How I can find out more"  We'll use these to set the course for our Estuary Inquiry. We used field guides to illustrate our charts. 

Next time we'll read about the estuary wildlife and discover why they are important. 

Year Four Dive into the Hauraki Gulf

Today Year Four began an inquiry into the beautiful marine park on our doorstep - The Hauraki Gulf. 

To begin we watched an awesome video by the Young Ocean Explorers: https://www.youngoceanexplorers.com/yoe/video/996166153015#cplayer Which animals did you see?

Hunter "I saw sharks, jellyfish & big whales"

Constance "I saw octopus, dolphins and orca"

Ella "I saw a crayfish"

Aliana "I saw a fish"

Camelia "I saw a marlin, a bottle nose dolphin and a sea turtle"

Jasper "I saw a manta ray"

Georgia "I saw a lobster and a stingray"

Ciara "I saw a black pertrel, a gannet and a whale"

Harvey "bronze whaler shark"

We located the marine park on a map and where Sunnyhills is located as well.

Next  we researched the English meaning of some of the place names:

Quinn & Zoey - Whangaparoa means bay of whales

Eloise - Whangamata means bay of hard stone.

Payton - Waiwera means hot water

Allan - Aotea means white cloud

Alsonso - Rangitoto means bloody sky

Waiheki means trickling water - Milana & Jessica

Flynn - Motutapu means sacred island

Hauraki means North Wind - Edwin

Afterwards we read a KCC Magazine all about the wetlands found in the Hauraki Gulf and did a Kahoot Quiz to test our comprehension.

Lastly we thought about how we can protect the marine park. Plastic litter is a big issue and we can help by bringing a litter free lunch.  The children with litter free lunches went into a prize draw for Paradice vouchers.

Well done to the winners:

Room 6 Zoey & Max - 14 tamariki had litterfree lunches  WELL DONE for the most litterfree lunches in the year group

Room 5 Harvey & Camelia - 12 litterfree lunches. 

Room 4 Anderson & Vivaan - 13 litterfree lunches

ROOM5 collected a WHOLE BUCKET of litter in just 10 minutes.  Almost all of it was from lunchboxes :(

Have you seen our new window display?