Edible Garden Working Bee

Drone Aerial View

Today enthusiastic whanau pitched in to help work on our Edible Gardens. Wheelbarrows, spades and rollers at the ready, young and old managed to finish muching around the beds and stain the fence black. Those with a super steady hand worked on our colourful garden signs too.

A little history:

Edible Gardens August 2016 - 12 beds

Edible Gardens August 2018 - 36 vege beds, orchard, Trees For Survival Seedling House, rain water tank, garden shed, worm farms, compost bins, irrigation, pathway, teaching area

This project began in 2015 when the senior school students began planning a replacement for our small vege patch, in the Senior Courtyard, that was due to be demolished.

Three years later with lots of research, experiments, fund raising, grants, u-turns, working bees, help from community partners and every child's involvement our Edible Gardens vision is close to completion.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who came today - your hard work and great attitude had amazing results! The Edible Gardens are going to be a wonderful place to learn for many years to come.

We're now reflecting on our next steps...how to celebrate our achievement... skink suburbs ...bug hotels... honey bees or chickens. The action learning never stops.

Thanks to Mr Trembath for the clever drone footage:

Barking the Western Boundary on Sunday - Taking Action On Our Bird Corridor

A big thank you to all the wonderful families who who joined the Mrs Venville, Mrs Driver, Mrs Knofflock and Miss Fullard to weed and bark our new native trail.  We had perfect weather not too hot and the promised rain held off.  Mrs Steel got our yummy morning tea ready for us and even Mr Venville came and helped.  Many hand make light work as students and parents beavered away.  All done by 11.30 and it looks AMAZING.

Mrs Venville xxx

Room 24 made these origami whales

Room 24 made these origami whales as a follow up to Project Jonah with Room 19.  They are going on to write facts and publish them on a larger version next week

Karthiga, Angie & Nessa Helping Save Our Native Birds in the Weekend

An amazing project by three of our amazing Eco Warriors. We're so proud of you! 

The project in their own words:

Starting to Bark our New Native Trail Area

On Tuesday we made a start on barking the New Native Trail Area.  Room 3 spent the whole morning working with classes from all levels of the school so that everyone has the opportunity to contribute.

Cluster meeting

           East Auckland Enviro Schools Cluster Meeting

Our final East Auckland Enviro Schools Cluster Meeting was held at East Tamaki School.  The meeting provided an opportunity to celebrate our Enviroschools achievements with the cluster and network with local Enviroschools key teachers. 

We toured East Tamaki's Native Trail and garden areas after students had shared the journey of it's creation and how they are involved today with it's maintenance.  We also found out more about the Mayors one Million Trees project and had a go at Tree yoga!

                              Bike trail runs around the edge of the Native Trail

Travelwise Success – Silver Award

                                      Travelwise Success – Silver Award 

On Wednesday Mrs Venville and Mrs Wallace accompanied our 6 Travelwise leaders to a function at The Cloud to receive recognition of our efforts and plans to improve safety and education with travelling to school. The event included a transport and emergency services challenge around the Queens Wharf and Wynyard Quarter areas. In our first year of the programme we have been awarded Silver Status! Go Sunnyhills! Thanks to all those learners and families for supporting the school with safe parking, walking school buses and scootering/biking safely to school too!

Planting Our New Native Trail

Our Community is amazing!

Thanks to parents and students we have planted 1500 natives to create a new Native Trail that runs along the bank behind the school pool and hall.  This extends our bird corridor and brings in more native animals such as skinks.  A huge thanks to Fraser and The Gecko Trust for supplying the plants and teaching us about each species.

Travelwise Leaders - Time Zone Mapping

Travelwise Leaders - Time Zone Mapping

Today the Travelwise Leaders worked with Constable Merv, Mrs Venville and Marianne and her team from MOT to create a Time Zone Map.  We split up and walked four of the popular routes to school recording where we were after 5, 10 and 15 minutes.  Marianne has taken the data away and will create a walking time zone map which we will share with the community.  This part of the Travelwise Leaders initiative to encourage our school community to walk rather than travel by car to school.

Sunnyhills Gets It's Travelwise sign!

Sunnyhills Gets It's Travelwise Sign!

Sunnyhills had a special visit on the last day of term 2 from Max the Pukeko and Marianne from the Ministry of Transport. The school was presented with it's very own Travelwise sign.  Some of the students who use walking school bus received merit certificates and special key rings to acknowledge the number of walks they had done.