Arbour Day 2018

It was a perfect blue-skied first day of winter.  

Our enviro agents and Ms Jones went to Waiwhakareke Reserve to plant trees on Arbour Day.

Over 1500 people from schools all over the Waikato turned out.

 We planted over 17,500 native trees.

We were given some native trees to take back to school to plant on our nature trail.

 Last week some of the enviro agents planted the trees with Sonja. We planted a grove of rewarewa above the shed on Putikitiki.

Our wonderful parent leader Sonja.

It was a slippery muddy slope to work on!!

We planted a little group of lancewoods at the top of the bank.

Butterfly tagging

We are taking part in a Monarch Butterfly tagging scheme this term.

We have been given lots of small stickers with a code on them, that we have to stick onto the wing of a monarch butterfly. We then put the details from the sticker into a database and if someone else finds it and sees the sticker and adds in the details, we can see how far it has flown.

You have to be really careful when you stick the sticker on the wing so you don't damage the butterfly.

If you want to have a look check out this link!!

Kitchen Garden

Our Kitchen garden is alive and kicking. We are lucky to have Jennie coming in each week to to do gardening with our enviro agents.

Look what was harvested today!!

1. 

   Delicious!!!!

Bioblitz day!!

The 2018 Enviro team spent an afternoon at Rotopiko Wetlands ato take part in the Bioblitz. This is an event where scientists get togther to count and study all the species that they can find, it is a bit of a stock take of species in New Zealand.

We had an amazing time learning about different fungi and insects and hunting for our own insects to show the scientists. We also learnt...

• about the different predators that we have in New Zealand
• how to work out the age of a tree without chopping it down to count rings (you measure right around the trunk)
• how people climb the trees to check out what eco systems are happening at the top 
• how to catch different insects and identify them

It was a fabulous day, check out this video and photos and a big thank you to Monica for inviting us and showing us around!