Year Five Spin the Carbon Cycle

 

In between showers, Year Five helped our Ngahuru Mara Kai (autumn food garden) by collecting hot compost and moving it into our mara kai.  We planted our Tukurua (winter) crops incuding kohlrabi, spring onions, kale and callendula.  Then we watered with worm tea.  

Lastly we harvested feijoas and carrots to eat. Next time we meet we'll be diving back into our sea studies.

Breaking Out Biochar

 This week Sunnyhills were gifted a bucket of biochar at the Enviroschools Cluster Meeting.  Room 2 started sprinkling the biochar into our hot compost.  This will supercharge it with microorganisms so our compost will be even better for our mara kai.  

After morning tea Room 2 worked hard filling the new garden beds with soil, We potted up the hue seeds we were given for hosting the Cluster Meeting as well as planting seed bombs and a mystery seedling. What a lovely day in the garden.  Thank you for your hard mahi Room 2!

K1 Promoting our Composting Community

 Thunderstorms scuppered K1's plans to plant native trees, so we took up the challenge of trying to get more people using our Community Compost Hub. 

We reminded ourselves of how & why we hot compost at Sunnyhills then brainstormed how to get greater engagement from tamariki, staff and the wider community.

Next we broke into groups to create our campaigns. The results included:

- Kahoots

- posters

- mailbox flyers

- computer games

- slideshows

- Eco Leaders walking around with compost buckets at lunch eating

Mrs Daniel also posted on a local community Facebook page.

We'll monitor if our volumes of compost increase, to see if we've been successful. At the moment our hot composters are one third full.

Year Tahi Growing Kai

 Year Tahi are learning how to grow kai.  We fed the mara kai with our own compost made with lunchbox scraps. Next we planted seedlings and watered them.

What's this??

Room tekau ma tahi found a germinated avocado seed in the compost. We potted it up. When we're grown ups perhaps we can pick the avocados 🥑 

Next time we're going to make vegetable soup.

Hot Compost Harvest

 The hot compost we began making in Easter with a grant from the Waste Minimisation Fund and The Carbon Cycle Company is ready! 

The Eco Leaders spent time spreading the beautiful nutient rich compost on our Edible Gardens on Friday.

It makes our seedlings so happy! What a wonderful way to deal with our waste.

If you have contributed to our composting system with waste from home, THANK YOU. And if you would like some compost for your gardens please email christined@sunnyhills.school.nz

Thank you to our Composting Community

 A big thank you to Evie's whanau and all the other families contributing to our hot compost collective.

Everyone can bring any food scraps to be composted. Simply place in the wheelie bin by the Fordyce entrance and cover with a handful of mulch. 

We can turn food we don't want into food we do want and help fight climate change!

Exploring Whanaungatanga - Compost Can Reverse Climate Change - Our Inquiry Including the Maori Perspective

Kauri Whanau have been looking at the nutrient and carbon cycle and how our compost can reverse climate change. Whao! What? How? Why? Put simply everything is interrelated - we can't take carbon out of the earth's carbon bank in the ground (oil) and put it into the atmosphere (by burning oil) without consequences (climate change).  Luckily composting returns carbon back into the ground and can restore the natural balance.  Compost isn't just about zero waste and tasty veges it can reverse climate change. The following video is a great explanation:

The learners in Kauri Whanau had fun coming up with mimes and plays to act out the nutrient cycle. There were lots of dramatic deaths.

As an NZ EnviroSchool we always try to include the Maori Perspective in our learning in The Green Room.  The concept of whanaungatanga or inter-relatedness of all people and nature is central to the Maori belief system. One way to explore this idea was to look at the family of Papatuanuku & Ranginui.

Kauri whanau worked collaboratively to read the story of Papatuanuku & Ranginui and their children and then create a display of these atua and how we can relate to them.  The following is just a sample of their work.  The full display is up in The Green Room, for everyone to enjoy, just in time for Matariki.

Cameron notices a wriggly worry with our worm farm - Action Learning - Reflection

UPDATE FOR THE BLOG BELOW

A massive thank you to Mrs Trembath and Room 14 for our sturdy new worm buckets for kids to put their lunchbox scraps in.

Room 14 do an amazing job feeding and watering our worms each week, so we can return nutrients to our edible garden. You rock!!

Special thanks to Sticky Bambam for the sicker labels!

THE WIGGLY WORRY

Today, while Year One were learning about what to put in our worm farms and why we have worms at school, Cameron noticed a problem; the bins children put their lunchbox scraps in are all cracked and broken. Also, they don't have any labels or instructions. Sounds like an issue for our Going Gold group to resolve. Good spotting Cameron! We're always reflecting on ways we can keep our sustainable practices running smoothly.