Almost Finished

It Works!

This week Phoenix, Nicola, Tyrone and Hayden worked hard to make sure that each bucket that gets filled does the right thing so that the water can travel down and then around the Interactive Water Feature. This was the PLUS for the day! MINUS was that there was an accidental knock that resulted in someone falling off the ladder, but there was no harm caused, luckily. INTERESTING - we learnt that one of the metals in bad for our skin. 

Interactive Water Feature - Update

The team has been busy cutting, welding and testing all of the parts to check if they are connecting properly. It's getting very exciting as we can see real progress every week. This weeks challenge was getting the bucket to tip the right way. We had to remove the bearings and turn the bucket around in order to get it right. The trial and error is all part of the process.

Kahikatea Stand Number Three

In early July we ventured out to continue our crusade to entice the native birds back to the Hauraki Plains by underplanting Kahikatea stands.  The Ball family had prepared the stand on their farm by fencing it off to protect it from stock. 

We used mainly plants that we had brought on from seedlings in our Trees for Survival Unit, plus a few others from Warren Coffey (Environment Waikato) who is working with us. Altogether we planted just over 440 plants in this stand. It was easy digging as the soil was pretty wet and we were lucky with the weather, only having a short lived shower as we worked. Everyone worked solidly and we got the job done with great teamwork. Thank you to Whaea Beccy Dove, our facilitator, Warren Coffey and to Heather and Steve Ball for allowing us to plant out their stand. We will be back in late spring/early summer to check on the plants and possibly to mulch.

Interactive Water Feature

Four children join Mr Paynter every Friday to continue building our Interactive Water Feature. It's going well. Each time we go, we learn something new, we hit challenges but we perservere and we get closer to completing it each time. Getting the tipping bucket just right has been our latest challenge. We love how the water will spray from the pipe and we are proud that our water feature will use caught water that is recycled.

Netherton Eatery

In 2017 the Netherton Eatery is up and running. The Eatery has been open twice so far and we have had heaps of nice feedback from the students, and they have been enjoying the changing menu. The first menu was pizza, muffins, Milo, quiche and wraps, and the second menu was the same except instead of quiches it was soups and scones. And parents don't have to worry about their kids eating unhealthy because only healthy foods make it onto the Eateries menus. So far the profits which equals $421 have been put into savings ready for our bigger plan which we are brainstorming at the moment.  Hopefully the eatery continues to be a success and many more people enjoy the delicious food.

Worms!

We are now into the second term of the 2017 school year. The worm farm is up and running and producing juice to sell at the co-op stall (Last Friday of every month). Today we took our first look into the worm farm and it seems that somehow citrus and some cooked scraps have made their way into the worm farm. Worms do not like citrus or feijoas and we are not to put any cooked food in there either. Two Worm monitors have done a presentation in assembly about what food scraps can be put into the worm farm.  Hopefully after informing the children the worms will get the food that they need and the farm will carry on producing so we can sell Worm Juice to help people grow their gardens.

Room 3 Veggie Gardens

Room 3 recently have planted some winter veges in our gardens. They planted Cabbage, Lettuce, Rocket, beetroot, celeriac, oregano and parsley. The vegetables will be sold at the Netherton Eatery which happens once a month. Perhaps they will make soup, or pizza with herb toppings!

The last sun flower activity

10 kids did an activity about sharing the sunflower seeds among everyone. There were 88 seeds to share, They had to discuss how many they each got. First they picked  as many seeds as they wanted from a container,  some chose 1 while some choose up to 17, then they had to get in a line from smallest to largest. (of how many seeds they took.)

 There was a discussion about whether it was fair, they put them in a pile and first the kids took 5 then they took 2 more which made 7, then there was a pile left which from that pile everyone got one extra so they were all fair.  This happened without any input from the teacher, they discussed solutions among themselves.

They  discussed that if the seeds that they got were the last on earth how would they use them and why. There so many different ideas, all were great! Some said they would plant them and gather the seeds from that plant and they would sell them! One person said he would keep a third, plant a third and then hide a third!

Together they pondered...what if the seeds were another limited resource natural resource - water or land?? Or an endangered native specie??  How would these things be treated? How can they be valuing the earth so that it's left better than they found it?? Someone said that humans have created the problems on Earth. There was also a discussion about pollution and the effects on habitats.

They all enjoyed the discussion and they said they would love to do something similar again. 

Reported by Kaitlyn and Caitlin.

Interactive Water Feature

Throughout the past 2 years we have had the idea of making an interactive water feature that fits the criteria we set…..

The water feature must:

• be strong and manageable
• be cheap and use recycled things
• put caught water into a cycle
• safe for all people and nature
• student interactive
• have attractive & decorative vibes

We have been working on this concept for the past 18 months - two years.  Finally it’s now time to build. We have teamed up with C & K Panelworks and started working on it in the workshop on the 5th May. ….Watch this space!!!

Summary for 2017

Water feature
This year in enviro we have gotten the water feature team up and running again (they probably need 4 more weeks to finish it) we are grateful that Mr Paynter is allowing us to use his workshop. He is sharing his skills with us.

Enviro stall
The enviro stall has been ongoing on the last Friday of every month, our last was just before Easter so there were lots of homemade Easter goodies.

Plating out Kahikitea Stands
There has been one re-potting (where we take the plants from root trainers and put them into potting bags) afternoon that lots of hub children participated in. We are planning to plant out another stand at the end of the term.