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.

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.