Sunday, June 7, 2009

Davina Tells Stories of Enviro Heroes










Davina visited our school on the 8 June, to tell us about some Enviro-Heroes.  She told us about David de Rothschild who made a yacht out of plastic bottles.  He was inventive and he thought of a new way to use old plastic bottles. 
Davina also told us about Kamo High School in Whangarei, who were the first school in the world to create a Marine Reserve.  
Another hero is Sophie Smith.  When she was 10 years old, she wrote a letter to a conservation group telling them about the endangered Takahe bird and that they needed help to save them.  Mitre 10 heard about Sophie and her letter, and so they gave $200,000 to help save the Takahe.   
Davina also told us about Susan Smirk who went to Otago Girls High School.  Susan won a competition for her documentary video about eels.  Her Prize was to go to Greenland.  Jinty MacTavish filmed their trip to Greenland and it's environment and she also won a prize for her film.
Davina taught us that heroes identify a problem, they think about different ways to solve the problem, they choose a way to take action and they reflect on their actions like, telling others about it.  She helped us to know that anyone can become a hero for the environment.  


Thursday, June 4, 2009

Our Compost System

We have 3 garden compost bins near our gardens.  Every classroom and the staffroom have compost buckets in them, where children and teachers can throw away their food scraps. Every Friday the enviro-group, World Savers, empty this food waste into the garden compost heaps.  We have fun cleaning out the buckets!  The scraps are covered by garden rubbish or dirt or leaves to keep the pests away.  The food rots down into beautiful, healthy soil.  Then we can spread the rich soil around our plants to feed them.

Macandrew Bay School Edible Garden


Our school edible garden has many vegetables in it, such as, cabbage, potatoes, silver beet, zucchini, beans, bok choy, spinach, broccoli, and beetroot.  We have fruit, such as strawberries, berry bushes, apple, pear, and plum trees.  We grow lots of herbs, too.  The Room 1 children collect rain water off the school swimming pool roof and we use this water to water our gardens.  


Caring for our school edible garden


This is Room 5 out in our school edible garden.  We like to care for it. We pull out weeds.  We have planted broccoli, cabbage, spinach, silverbeet and bok choy to grow throughout the winter. We can see how well they have grown, already.  It is fun to see the plants growing well.

Collecting Sunflower Seeds


Here is Room 5 collecting the sunflower seeds.  We pick the seeds out of the flower and then we gather the seeds in a container.  We will dry these seeds and keep them for planting in the spring.

Shared Lunch - Thanks for the Potatoes!

Room 5 had a yummy shared lunch.  We ate potatoes with butter and we collected fresh green spinach, bok choy, and silverbeet.We cooked it all up in the staffroom and then we shared it for lunch.  Yum!
 Mrs M. Wells gifted us the delicious potatoes to say thank you for our paintings about vegetables.  She showed our paintings at a Horticultural Exhibition at the beginning of Term 2.  She liked them very much and she also baked some delicious cheese and herb scones for us.  Thank you, Mrs Wells.