The Whanaungatanga day

Last Friday 12 of the people in the enviro group went up to the Kauaeranga Valley to celebrate that everything is connected. All of the groups brought a jar of water and we mixed all of the water together in a giant urn that Mike O’Connell brought along.

There were eight workshops and each child got to participate in four. All of the workshops had an expert who shared their passion and knowledge with us. Topics covered include Lizards, Kiwi, Miranda Shorebirds, Bush Detectives, Water Journey, Wai, Kauri Dieback and Nature Awareness. We all had a very good day and it help to appreciate precocious our earth.

Clean Up Week 12 - 18th September 2016

The Cut

Awaiti Road

Total rubbish collected

Doing our bit! We were shocked at just how much rubbish we collected in our local area.

Sustainability Issues

On Thursday afternoons a group of children have been going out to work on an environmental project using video or animation.  The point is to educate others about important environmental issues in a fun and interesting way. We have made three videos and one animation, they are almost ready to present! Watch this space.

Potting out and pricking out

This week some of the hub children prepared some new seedlings to put into our Trees for Survival unit. These will be ready to plant next winter under another kahikatea stand in our local area. We prepared: Mahoe, Karamu, Cabbage tree, Manuka, Harakeke. The Kowhai seedlings are not quite ready, Beccy Dove will drop them off to us when they are ready. Thanks Beccy!

Kahikatea Tree Planting

Last Thursday we went out to the Corlett's farm and planted 500 tree saplings, we also collected some of the self seeded saplings to put in our irrigation unit. We had all worked hard and did the planting efficiently.

Kahikatea Planting

On Thursday 18th August 2016 we will be planting underneath a stand of Kahikatea Trees on a local farm on Pukahu Road.  This will be the second stand that Netherton School will underplant, it follows on from an action inquiry children did around 'how can we bring native birds back to the Netherton area?'  The school contributes trees grown in our 'Trees for Survival Unit', and is supported by Waikato Regional Council.  Our long term goal is to underplant fenced existing stands on as many farms as we can into the future.  This a real and sustainable legacy the children of Netherton School can leave for future generations.  Photos to come!

Our water feature

Some kids from our enviro group have been planning a water feature, They went to Scrappy Vern's to get some recycled junk to reuse for the interactive water feature. Mr Walton and Mr Paynter are helping us design and build  it.

over the past six months family's have also been donating unused metal.

~A big thank you to Scrappy Vern's and Bunnings Paeroa for giving us submersible pump~

Our Vision for 2016

Our Enviro Vision for 2016

Maintenance

• To ensure that sustainable practises are continued at Netherton School.
• To maintain with the Worm Farm, Pig Scraps and recycling for waste.
• To maintain the Native Area, The Wild Area, the vegie gardens and the Adobe gardens.
• To continue keeping chickens.
• To continue holding a coop stall once per month, selling produce from our gardens.
• To continue with the Bring Back the Birds initiative, working with the community to help build a corridor that encourages birds back to our school grounds.  To continue planting out local Kahikatea Stands and raising seedlings in our Trees for Survival unit.
• To continue to ensure that enviro principles are embedded in inquiry/topic education programmes.
• To continue with the Netherton Eatery (once per term)

Major Projects

1. To plan and build a water feature in our garden.
2. To maintain positive working relationships with other EnviroSchools in our area.
3. To visit The Cut and question - do we need to improve it? Develop it? Promote it? Clean it up?

Waste Audit Term 2 2016

A group of students carried out a waste audit, emptying every bin in the whole school, to see how much rubbish our school produces. We were pleased to learn that more than half of the rubbish (63%) is able to be recycled. 7% of our rubbish includes food scraps and these are given to Mrs Rodley's pigs which is good because the food is not going to waste!! However, 30% of our rubbish does go to landfill and we think we can reduce this amount. Some of the tips to reduce our waste are;

• Separate food from the wrappers and put the food scraps into the pig scraps.
• Try and use nude food packaging instead of food that comes in prepackaged wrapping.

Goldfields visit.

Goldfields’ P1 class have been learning about plants, sensory gardens and nature walks. They had also just had their Trees for Survival unit delivered recently and so we shared our learning and knowledge with them.

We welcomed our visitors with our school pepeha. Firstly, we showed them our paper recycling system and how we earn trees through ‘Paper for Trees’. we talked about bringing back the birds and the kahikatea underplanting we have been doing. We really enjoyed having our Goldfields friends come and visit and we hope to see them again at their school.

Hangi

On the 10th of June, we held a hangi as a part of our Matariki celebrations.

We lit the hangi around six o'clock in the morning. Many kids came early to see the fire being lit. Later in the afternoon we had waiata, then we all said our karakia before we ate our hangi. Many children's whanau came to the hangi as well. A lot of the food was donated and we are very grateful to the families who put down the hangi, prepared the food and helped with the cleaning up. It was a great day that everyone enjoyed.

Koha Table

On the last Friday of every month next to the co-op stall, we have a Koha table. You can put any produce that you have too much of or don't need on it, for other kids to take what they need or to take home.