Planting out the seedlings

Here are the students in Room 2 and their big buddies from Room 12 planting out the 'Little Garden' seedlings in the round planters by Rainbow Playground

Bats - Pekapeka and the bat house

There are three species of bats in New Zealand, the long-tailed bat, the lesser short-tailed bat, and greater short-tailed bat. (http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/bats-pekapeka/)

Sadly the greater short tailed bat might be extinct. The other two bats are in danger of extinction as well. We have a bat house in our Totara tree. We hope we can encourage bats to come and live in it to help save them.

We haven't seen any bats yet...but we are hoping

New World 'Little Garden' campaign

The supermarket New World has launched its ‘Little Garden’ campaign. Four classes in our school were lucky enough to receive a whole Little Garden set. 

We all planted our seedlings and waited to see whose would grow biggest and best. 

Room 2 had a bit of a mishap and their plants fell over, all the name tags were mixed up so now it will be a surprise crop! 

Room 12 and Room 13 had a bit of a competition. Edie in Room 12 took the seedlings home over the holidays so they had a bit of an advantage. Maybe the seedlings from Room 13 had a bit too much sun…

Here they are beside each other…verdict: Room 12 wins

Room 12 and 13's seedlings

Room 13

Room 12

Room 12

The Enviro-team and Jenny took all the seedlings and planted them in the kitchen garden. We can’t wait to see how they all grow.

Kitchen Garden

Development of the Kitchen Garden. 

Hamilton East has a wonderful space behind the hall that we use as a kitchen garden. We grow produce, have some fruit trees and have a composting area. 

Parts of the garden are working well but we have a whole area that is not being used and is looking messy. We would like to create an area that students can sit in as well as do gardening in. Ms Jones has an exciting vision for this part of the kitchen garden: we can build a wall that students can sit on and sketch parts of the garden.

Looking down towards the entrance to the hall

Here are some photos of what the area looks like now 

The end of the garden by the old dental clinic

By the entrance to the hall

 This is Ms Jones' vision created on photoshop.

Students can sit on the seat and the wall creates a planting area above

Ms Jones applied for funding and we were able to build this fantastic wall!!

Here are some photos of the process of  building the wall.

Looking good!

Now whole classes can come down and enjoy the garden and learn about growing plants and sustainability.

For our inquiry we all made movies about Turangawaewae - Our place. This is the movie Room 2 made about needing to look after our drains and making sure rubbish doesn't go down them.

Turangawaewae movies

A group from Room 12 made a movie about their ideas and plans for the Nature Trail.

A visit from Enviroschools

Robyn Irving from Enviroschools came and talked to our Enviroschool committee  about what we need to be doing to gain Green Gold status. She described the journey as being like the Waikato River, all the ideas and actions are continually moving and progressing…we had to place different labels onto the river to show where we thought we were in our journey, here is a photo of our awa and our ideas about where we are in our journey.

This was a good exercise to get us thinking about the process of being an enviro school and where our goal and vision lies.

 The labels had words such as :

'committed to the journey

initial steps

empowered

courageous

exploring

laying foundations'

Words like 'initial steps' we placed at the beginning of our journey (our awa) but words such as 'exploring, empowered, and courageous' we felt should be found all the way through to different levels. We want to be feeling empowered and courageous in different amounts at different times.

On the enviro schools website it states 'The journey starts small, it ebbs and flows, sometimes quietly moving, sometimes racing along. (http://www.enviroschools.org.nz/how-enviroschools-works) . This is exactly how it feels to be working as an enviro school and the pace of progress depends on many factors; environmental - such as the season and the weather; professional - such as what is happening in classes, assessment and report writing time or a school show.