Finishing the year on a high note!

Last week our wonderfully hardworking Enviro team worked with Kauri for a day reflecting on our progress, past actions and future direction as an Enviroschool.  It was a really fun, interesting and full on day.  We looked at the guiding principles of Enviroschools and then reflected on the things we have done over the past two years to see where they fitted in amongst the guiding principles and to see if we have done enough to recognise all five principles.  After that we deconstructed the Bronze award statement to see if it could be applied to our school.

The good news is...that Wainui Beach School has now achieved Bronze Status 

in our Enviroschools journey!  Fantastic effort EVERYONE!

Here's our Enviro team with our reflection tree at the end of the day.  

The branches represent the five guiding principles, the leaves represent how we have reflected those principles at Wainui Beach School.  As you can see, we were pretty excited about our achievement!  Go team Wainui Beach!!!:)

Sweet Beetroot!

Last term we harvested a small mountain of beetroot from the Room 3 garden!  Last week we made yummy chutney and this week we used some of the frozen grated beetroot to make a chocolate beetroot cake!  Look at that colour!  Yum, yum, yum!

Even MORE Happy Harvesting!

Look at this beautiful head of broccoli we found hiding in the garden!  

We found two of them in fact big and beautiful and perfect for picking!  

We also found some more yummy onions up in the top gardens!  

More HAPPY Harvesting!

We have been harvesting more produce form our gardens!  This time we picked some yummy little cabbages and a beauty big fresh onion from the top gardens.  The children of Room 3 and 4 have been busy weeding and watering theses gardens so they got to take these veg home for tea.

The Quiet Area

Room 4 has been working on the Quiet Area.

We have made wonderful creations outside in the Quiet Area.
We have made.

• Decorated plant pots.
• Hanging decorations.
• Driftwood christmas trees.
• Pumus sculptures.
• Watering plant clouds. (Not actual clouds!)
• Room three has made tyre seats!

We have built a christmas tree out of driftwood and Mr Shand cut a wooden star out. We put bits of driftwood together. It looks amazing!

We also made a pumice sculpture with 27 pieces of pumice starting off big and then turning into smaller pieces. We tried to slide them on by twisting and turning the pumice around on the pole then Mr Shand said we could drill a hole in them. It was way easier than twisting and turning.

Other than that Room Three made a bottle top sculpture. The colours are green, blue, black, orange, white, yellow, red and see through. There are lots of different coloured bottle tops. There are exactly 41 bottle tops. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!!!

Room 2 and Room 3 made seats out of wood, tyres and sacks for the table the school made. The table has korus on it. The colours on the table are cream, green and blue. There are four seats.

Our plant pots have been carefully painted by some people in room 4. The Elmo pot was painted by Teifi Clarke. The Cookie Monster was painted by Hannah Webb and the Cookie was painted by Tayla Kopua. There will be more coming soon painted by some crazy artists in Room 4.

There is even a rain cloud carved out of wood. It was painted by Max, Jaia, Troy, Daniel and Carter.
Hiding behind the cloud there is a plastic bucket with holes in the bottom.You pour the water in the bucket and then it comes down and waters the plant so it looks like there is water coming out of the cloud!

By Teifi, Kaya and Hannah

Bountiful Beetroot!

On Friday we were lucky enough to have Lucy's Mum come in, to turn some of our beautiful and plentiful beetroot that we had harvested last term into yummy chutney!

We needed an onion for the job and luckily there was this beauty in our garden, perfect for picking!

The beetroot was chopped and mixed with our fresh onion and spices.  

Look at that fresh colour!

The chutney is now in the fridge, mellowing.  We can't wait to try it in a couple of weeks time!  Cheese, chutney and crackers...here we come!

Harvesting!

Yay!  This term we have had the pleasure of harvesting some of the vegetables from our class gardens.  It's so cool to see kids with big smiles, heading home with big bunches of silverbeet and grazing on freshly pulled up carrots at lunchtime!

Recycling Action at the Craft Fair

Recycle Action!

What a wonderful effort at the craft fair!  Our recycling volunteers scrubbed, sorted, bagged and composted right through the afternoon to try and send as little of our craft fair waste to landfill.  All in all by the end of the afternoon they had collected 9 bags of rubbish.  Only 2 of these are going to be stickered and put at the gate on Monday.  We collected 5 bags of recyclables, and 2 bags of organic waste that went straight into our new compost bins.  We now also have a collection of 40+ plastic cups that have been washed out ready to be used for dyes etc in the classroom and loads of lovely little sticks from the candyfloss that will make great stakes or signs for the garden.  Reduce, reuse and recycle...fantastic work team!

Living Landscapes!

We have kicked off this term with a series of walks around our school landscape.  First we went up the tsunami hill behind the hill.  It was a hard climb but the view was worth it!  We could see our school landscape clearly from the top.  Doesn't it look stunning!

We finished the week, walking our Pepeha.  We had a lovely relaxed picnic at the Hamanatua Stream and then walked to the top of our Maunga, Maungaroa.  

Bees

Room 6 and some Enviro Kids got to learn about bees. Bee Man 1 and 2 came in and taught us about bees. Bee Man 1 brought a mini bee hive in and the bee hive had a mini window so we could see the bees working. 

Facts:
The girls are the workers and the boys are called a drone. The boys fly round to try and find a mate. When they find a mate they die so the queen can have some baby bees. When you get stung the bee dies because the stinger is attached to the bees tummy and the tummy gets ripped out so it dies. The workers live for about 6 weeks. The queen lives for about 2 to 3 years. If a queen bee dies one of the eggs gets chosen to be the queen bee. The workers feed the chosen one lots and lots of royal jelly. If you have a bee sting you flick the stinger out with your sharpest nail. We each got to keep a dead bee.

We are looking at our dead bees.

Some kids are looking at the mini bee hive.

Tay and Minnie are looking at the mini bee hive.

Bee Man 1 is showing us a dead bee.

Keep NZ Beautiful Beach Clean up

William Collier, Sonny Kahn, Isaac Pillkinton, Daniel Pillkinton, Hannah Web, Kya, Carlos Land and Amy Thomas (Absent: Matias Contreras, Minnie Jackson and Daniel Ryan) went to Waikanae Beach.  

We met at the car park opposite Watson Park.   We met Kauri up there. They were cooking sausages for a sausage sizzle. We also met two dogs named: Ocean and UNKNOWN. 

We started by getting one glove each and one bag between 2 people the groups were: Isaac and William, Sonny and Daniel, Kya and Amy, and Carlos and Hannah. Then we went down to the beach to pick up the rubbish. William found some plastic bottle tops. Sonny found lots of plastic and cans. Amy and Kya found heaps of shards of glass, Carlos found a coke bottle and Hannah found two golf balls! 

Here's Hannah with a big pice of string stuck to seaweed! 

This is all of us at the start burning to go! 

Written by Sonny Kahn and William Collier

Thank you Geoff

Dear Geoff

Thank you for giving us the grape plant and the persimmon tree. We really enjoy planting them. They are planted in the same area as the avocado tree but up the hill. The grape vine is planted by the gate and the grape vine has really good sun light. The persimmon tree is planted by the feijoa tree and its really happy there. We will take really good care of the grape vine and the persimmon tree and we will look after the avocado tree as well. We will water them when they have to be watered .THANK YOU SO MUCH! 

We are looking forward to seeing you again.

From Kavahn (Room 3) and Mahia (Room 4)

Flower Pots, Flower Pots. We Need Flower Pots.

If you have a spare flower pot or pots that you are sure you won’t use please can you donate them to Room 4, Wainui Beach School. Room 3 and Room 4 will use them to develop an area of our gardens. Thank you so much for your kind donation. We really appreciate it.

By Kaya, Daniel and Room 4.

Have YOUR Say

School Community have YOUR say!

Our Enviro Vision!

As part of our Enviro programme we  need to decide on a whole school statement to drive and guide what we do.  

In term 1, Room 4 completed a workshop that looked at the Enviroschools Guiding Principles and examples of vision statements from other schools.  Below is the vision statement that Room 4 wrote for our school.

At Wainui Beach School, we care for each other and respect and sustain the environment. 

Now, we want to know what YOU think...

  

Does this statement cover it for our school?  Do you think this statement sums up how we operate and and what we are trying to achieve in our Enviro programme?

Things we considered in making our statement...our school values...RESPECT and RESPONSIBILITY.  And the Enviroschool Guiding Principles...

Sustainable Communities

Learning for Sustainability

Empowered Students

Respect for the Diversity of People and Culture

Māori Perspectives

A good Enviroschools programme, involves the whole school community.  Please have your say about our vision statement by leaving a comment below.  Thank you!

One Potato, Two Potato

Room 4 has been planting potatoes.

We have to dig trenches out behind room 4 before we plant them.

Carefully, we picked up our new potatoes and placed them into the holes very gently.

                                                                   

So far we have planted  2 rows of potatoes.

Soon we will plant more potatoes and keep working on our potato garden.

We can't  wait until our new potatoes grow!

Thanks for the Grapes

Dear Ailsa

Thank you very much for the grape plants. I love grapes so much! Mr Shand let me plant 1 grape plant. We can’t wait till the grapes grow! There are loads of people who like grapes in our school. There are loads of vegetables in our garden and finally some fruit! Thank you very much again.

From Antonio and Wainui Beach School

                                    Parcels of Parsley

This has been our first parsley harvest this year. Each class planted some Italian flat leaf parsley and it has been rocketing away lately.  It was time to cut it back a bit so it doesn't go to seed and so we can use some of it's yummy flavours!

Room 3 has been helping out with the gardens a lot.  The children of Room 3 cut the parsley making sure each piece had along stem.  They then tied the stems up in bunches and put them in water to keep the parsley fresh.

Parsley is really tasty on eggs and in salads it is full of great stuff like calcium so it is really good for you as well as yummy!

Our school is an Enviro school we will be selling bunches of parsley at school. They will cost one dollar a bunch. We also have been growing other things in the garden.

Written by Zoe Solomon, Kereama Rogers and Mrs Saunders

Rangi and Papa

We have been listening to and exploring the legend of Rangi and Papa.  Through this legend we have been learning about the kaitiaki of our environment and exploring Maori perspectives on the Environment.

The children in Room 3 listened to the story of Rangi and Papa and were then challenged to summarise the main ideas of the story in their own words.

Here is Luca Vita's and Amy's stories....

Rangi and Papa loved each other so much that they wouldn't let go of each other.  When they had children they complained that it was too dark and cramped and scary.  So they tried to push them apart.  All the kids tried to push but only Tane Mahuta could.  They were all excited and blissful but Tawhirimatea liked his father better so he decided to live with Ranginui.  Tane Mahuta wanted to make Papa more beautiful and Tawhirimatea wanted to make Rangi more beautiful.  Tane Mahuta planted lots of native trees and Tawhirimatea made clouds and at night he made a cloak for him that was the sunset.

By Amy Thomas

In the beginning there was nothing but Rangi and Papa and their 6 children.  The children were cramped and decided to move Rangi and Papa apart.  It was impossible, each tried and tried, but it did not work.  Finally Tane Mahuta pushed and pushed and then they were free!  The god Tawhirimatea said, "I will live with Rangi." So he did to keep him happy.  And Tane Mahuta and Tangaroa lived with Papa and decided to make Papa beautiful with lots of trees and birds.

By Luca Vita

The children from Room 3 did a great job of summarising the story of Rangi and Papa...stay tuned for some more of their retellings soon!

Five our our Envirogroup members recently braved some very cold weather and got out and about around Gisborne to find out where our storm and waste water goes.  It was a really fun day full of new information and learning!  We have made a short movie showing our photos from the day and tracking the journey of our water.  Our movie is called Follow the Flow - you can find it on You Tube or by clicking on this link - FOLLOW THE FLOW.

We hope you enjoy finding out about Gisborne's water works as much as we did!

Our Amazing Avocado Tree

On Thursday the  2nd of July, Room 4 went to Room 3 and Mr Thorpe and Mrs Thorpe came and talked to us about an avocado tree. They were going to give us a grape vine, but unfortunately they had wine grapes not table grapes.

We all listened carefully and some people asked some interesting questions and made valuable comments. Carlos and Amy gave Mr and Mrs Thorpe a tour around our school and  had a look where to plant the avo tree.

Finally  they came back with a plan. Room 3 and 4 had a run around the field and went to see where we were going to plant the avocado tree.

We all crowded around Mr Thorpe as he dug the hole.  He put some blood and bone fertiliser in the hole to help feed the tree as it grows.  He put the tree in carefully being careful not to disturb the roots then he scooped the dirt back in and gently firmed the dirt around the trunk with his hand.  He said that at this stage some people often stamp the dirt in with their foot, but this is not a good idea because it can damage the roots.  we then watered the avocado tree and Mr Thorpe put a bed of straw mulch on top to keep the moisture in and to help keep the roots of the avocado snug while they were getting used to their new home.

We love our avocado tree!  Mr Thorpe told us that avocados are a super food and contain loads of really important vitamins and oils we need to keep healthy!  He also gave us some really valuable advice when planting trees and looking after plants....he said....to think like a plant!  This is really good advice if we think about how we like to be treated...shelter, water, food, warmth, kindness...and then we treat our plants the same that they will thrive and be healthy plants.

Thank you Mr and Mrs Thorpe!

Written by Teifi Clarke and Mrs Saunders

All of the kids at Wainui Beach School has been working for three days on their gadget. On Monday we planned, and on Tuesday we started to make our gadget. By Wednesday, the gadgets had taken a brilliant form. Thursday was the time to present our gadgets. 

The purpose of this was to make recycling into better and more useful gadgets, and WBS entered many wonderful creations. It was amazing to see everyone working as a team. 

Well done to all of the students for a fantastic effort!

Tane Mahuta Award

Congratulations to Charlie Keepa. The winner of the Tane Mahuta award. 

This award was kindly donated by Tanya Neilsen's family. It recognises an individual or class that shows a dedication to the Wainui Beach School Environment.

Our Quiet Area Gurus in Action!

The students from Rooms 3 and 4 are going to create a quiet area. 

Our gurus are planning a few things that we could have in it. We have done a bus stop activity to answer some questions that Mr Shand and Mrs Saunders set out for us. The gurus job was to put all the info from the bus stop sheets onto another sheet. Meanwhile, the rest of Rooms 3 and 4 dug out the soil and watered the fruit trees.

Some of the questions Mr Shand and Mrs Saunders set out for the gurus included: What actions do we need to take? What have others done? Who are the people who will use the quiet area? And more!

Our gurus searched through Pinterest and google images. We also looked through some enviro magazines and books.

These are some of the pictures that our gurus drew.

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Look at all their ideas!        

Over here; there is a sofa, a treehouse, a bird bath and lots more.

How to Move a Mountain!

First, you start with a mountain...a mountain of lovely topsoil!  Lovely, but in a pile quite a way away from the vegetable gardens where we wanted it to be!

Then,  you get stuck in!  Some people digging, loading the dirt into wheelbarrows, buckets and bags, some people carrying and tipping, some people sweeping.


There was A LOT of work to do!

After the dirt had been loaded, it had to transported.  Teamwork did the trick.

The kids from Nui Syndicate formed a chain gang and moved the dirt along bucket by bucket, bag by bag from the pile into the gardens!




Some keen boys and girls volunteered to work at lunchtimes and morning tea times to shift the dirt!






It has taken nearly a month and it has been hard work, but slowly the gardens have filled up and the pile has gone down.









We moved the mountain!  Great job TEAM!