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!

THE BIN ACHE!

Ella and Anna made a movie to remind us how to use our classroom bins.

Room 9 - What we Like BEST About our Place!

In Room 9 we are starting to think about our place or our ENVIRONMENT.

The children of Room 9 thought carefully about the things they like best about our school.  Nia said she liked the flowers and trees, lots of kids liked things in the playground like the slide, one or two said that they liked the milk and William said he liked our lovely Principal.

After that we talked about nature.  We made a list of things that we might collect in our natural environment at school.  We went on a nature walk and collected bark with lichen on it, flowers, leaves, cones and twigs.  It was fun!  We made a big collection then used the items in our collection to make pictures.

Introducing Larry!

This handsome creature is Larry!  Larry is Tidy Kiwi's cousin and he is on the hunt for litter free lunch boxes! Theses are lunch boxes free of packaging and wrappers that end up in our rubbish bins.  

One day during the week, monitors from each room will be asked to check the lunch boxes in their class to see how many litter free lunches there are.  This could happen any day... so kids, try and have a litter free lunch box every day...just in case!  The class who has the most litter free lunch boxes for the week will be presented with Larry at assembly on Friday.

Let's see which class gets Larry first!

Helping out our gardens!

Today Room 3 decided that we should help out our school gardens!
We were split into groups.
One group did the hangi gardens.
First, two people were given spades and their job was to dig out compost into buckets the other people were holding.
Then those buckets were carried up to the gardens, where the contents were tipped onto them.
We then watered those gardens.

The second group raked the other garden.
This made some mess on the ground, so someone got a broom and swept it into the wheelbarrow.
Then the wheelbarrow was taken to the compost.
The third group watered the fruit trees.

Then there was a big pile of soil brought in that had to be taken to the class gardens so we set to work. Three people were given spades to shovel out the earth. Four people were given a tarpaulin. Their job was to get the compost to the gardens.

Let's Talk Tairawhiti

Today I got to go to a really informative Enviroschools workshop called Let's Talk Tairawhiti.  The workshop was all about empowering students by showing them how submissions are made to council.  Lila, Terri, Teifi and Abby came with me and we spent the morning looking at proposed and current projects that the Gisborne District Council are involved in.  Councillors Josh Wharehinga, Pat Seymour, Larry Foster, Rehette Stoltz and even Mayor Meng Foon all come to help us out with the activities and talk to us about the work that council does.  After morning tea, Mayor Meng Foon showed us around the council building and we even got to sit in the important looking leather chairs in council chambers.  We learned many things throughout the day, like did you know that Gisborne has a designated dog park and a public piano?  We also learned that the council is really interested in hearing from us all, including our youth.  

Now the girls know all about how to get ideas across to council they are going to share what they know with everyone back at school.  They came way from the day powered up with knowledge of just how to communicate with the council and loads of ideas....

...so watch this space!

New Scooter Racks!

Last year, the students in Room 1 started looking into how we could improve our bike rack area as our bike racks were difficult to use and bikes more often than not simply ended up being lent against the tanks or left lying on the ground.  After visiting other schools and searching the net for inspiration they thought that not only did we did new bike racks but we also needed a place to park scooters and rack skateboards.

SO....last week we were very excited when Eva's Dad Greg came into school to help us build some new scooter racks.  Mrs Saunders had got the idea for the scooter racks from Te Wharau school and Greg, who is a builder very kindly agreed to help us make some racks for our school.  Under Greg's supervision some lucky kids from Room 3 and 4 got to sand, saw, chisel and drill holes to make some super racks!  The racks will be installed on the decks outside the classrooms.  There are 2 racks for Nui and 2 racks for Wai syndicate!