Environmental Education

2012 Environmental Education

May 2012

On Friday 11th of May 2012, 2 groups of children from Nikau and Kauri worked with Sue (Finn's Grandma, not the principal!) to plant out flowers and ferns we had kindly been donated by Bunnings. Every child partipated with gusto and were very excited to find little treasures like cherry tomatoes. What really topped the excitement scale was the finding of worms... everyone was delighted with this as it tells us soil is in great condition.

The question of the day was' "When can we do it again?"

News from the Garden
23 February

A group of us have taken on the upkeep of the school gardens. At the moment we work together on a Wednesday morning. This week we harvested our first lettuces from the school garden. We enjoyed eating our lettuces in rice rolls which we made with Sue.

We found working with the rice paper a little tricky as once the papers were wet they ripped easily. Rolling and folding them wasn’t as easy as we first thought either!

We each helped to prepare the vegetables and then we each made a rice roll which we dipped in soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce before eating them. Gail, Davina, Amy, Mel, Kristin and Ray also got to sample our rolls and they were really impressed with them!

The rice rolls were crunchy to eat because of the pepper, lettuce and mung beans in them. I think it would be great to have rice rolls as a lunchtime option. Next summer it would be great if we could grow, harvest and eat apple cucumbers.          Gloria

It was cool getting to grow and eat our own lettuces. I’ve watched my dad make rice rolls on Christmas Day. It was fun making my own for the first time. I think we need to try growing strawberries and more tomatoes next summer.          Stevie

Saving the Earth, what could be more important than that?? Where would we live if the Earth didn’t exist?? Who tries to save the Earth?? Well I don’t know the answer to the first one or the second one, but I do know who tries to save the Earth! The answer would be the Year 6’s of Ruma Kowhai and Rata! Imagine them making this earth a better place to live in by growing plants in our school’s garden! You probably don’t know that every Wednesday we work hard gardening, composting, recycling and believe it or not..... cooking!! Yes cooking, the very first harvest! These are pictures that I took of my other Year 6 friends cooking some Vege Springrolls in the staff room with our amazing principal Sue, while the Year 7 and 8’s were at Technicraft! The lettuce and cucumbers were actually from our garden! We had such fun, and the spring rolls were absoloutely amazing!!! We are actually thinking of selling these as a school fundraiser just like the sausages except they are spring rolls!!

Gardner and reporter – Kintaka Lim

2011 Environmental Education

In Ruma Kowhai the Y6’s have done a project on worms. Now we have a worm farm. During their inquiry they have learnt lots.

First Mel brought in some of her worms and we touched them, smelt them, watched them and from that many questions arose. We then we searched on the internet and through some KCC magazines and started researching about them. We found out all the answers! Then we started to make a poster and other ways to present what we learnt. So now we are the worm experts of the school. Check out our display in the library.

From the kid’s point of view: we really appreciate that most children are respecting our hard work to make Te Aro a greener place. Thanks to all the parents that have contributed throughout the project.

And a special Thank you to Mel for being an awesome and fun leader. We are happy to work along-side you!

Wednesday 15 November will be remembered by us all as the day we planted our seedlings!! Seedlings that we had grown from little seeds; watered and nurtured ready for our first Enviro Expert Group food garden. We planted tomatoes, basil, cucumber, lettuce, peas, beans, calendula and zucchini. We have already started to plan how we will eat this kai and can not wait to continue growing these little plants to become the biggest and healthiest they can be. We were very lucky that Capital Compost delivered our compost/garden mix for free to help lower the costs. So one garden is planted… 4 more to go!

From the Enviro Experts Group