Eco Warriors Campaign

 Our Eco Warriors are wondering how we can encourage ur community to travel safely to school.

Here are their campaign slogan ideas:

"Children Here. Show you Care"

"Kids are around, so slow down"

"Stay slow, let's go"

We're going to work on ways to present our campaign next week.

Watch this space......

Year 4 Investigate What Our Kura Can Do

Do you remember when we wrote to the Prime Minister?  Well he didn't take them in person, but he did send a video reply.

Today we wondered how our kura can further help the sea.

We read a play about some Eco Awards. How did the children help their school environment?

Bryn: "Eat less meat."

Millie: "Bike to work or school."

Gayanuka: "Stop littering."

We wondered if litter was still a problem at our kura ...

After collecting rubbish from around our kura for just 10 minutes, we came back to analyse the data.

In 10 minutes, Room 26 collected:

Plastic pieces = 202

Paper = 76

organic = 22

random = 10

What do we think about this?

Henry: "I think Waka can do better."

Grayson: "It's horrible because we collected a lot in such a short time."

Elora: "This is really bad for life, sea and everywhere."

Midhush: "It's bad for the ocean because then the wind blows it to the drains."

Theo: "I saved 3 plastic bags that were heading for the drain!"

The category we had the most of was plastic.

When we looked even closer....

we realised the plastic had come from our lunchboxes!

How can we solve this problem?

Maddison: "Unwrap the muesli bar at home."

Leo: "I use a sustainable cupcake holder for my crackers etc."

Isabel: "Just bring a litter-free lunch!"

Room 23 collected litter from each lunch eating area and compared:

Maia: "There's the most rubbish in the Year 3 and 4 area"

"The Year 3 and four rubbish pieces might just be bigger" 

"Most of the litter in the Year 2 area was small" Bryn

"The litter comes from lunchboxes" 

What can we do?

Make posters for litterfree lunchboxes

Make a commercial 

Make a video about can happen if we make rubbish

Send a letter to the people who make Glad Wrap telling them not to make it and send a letter to supermarkets asking them not to sell it.

Make a booklet about litterfree lunches

Put reminders around the school about litter

Send notices to all of the parents for litterfree lunch boxes

Show how much litter is collected per year so people will reduce

Ask Ms Von to have a litterfree lunch day each week.

Awards for the tidiest area

Have a daily litter pick up

We read an interesting article about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Plastic-Free Challenge - school journal Level 2

Room 24 discovered the drain by their classroom as FULL of litter.  How sad! That leads straight to the sea.  We worked with Ms Daniel to clean it all out.  How can we stop this happening?  We decided to make posters to encourage more children to bring litter free lunches.

Room 25 were amazed at the big pile of rubbish collected, even after 3 other classes had already collected litter around the school. We divided the rubbish into 3 piles. The biggest pile was definitely the plastic brought in from home in our lunchboxes. 

Lots to think about. 

Remember: "When we know better, we can do better!"

Year 3 Where do all the leaves go?

 Today, Year 3 began their EfS lesson by playing in the leaves by the Junior Playground.  We wondered what happens to all the leaves that fall off the trees ...

Harshveer "The fungus, bacteria and invertebrates destroy them"

"Mr Dowden rakes them up." James

"The wind blows them away." Robin

We took part in a Mystery Science lesson and created a paper model to investigate how the leaves seem to disappear over time.

What did we discover?

"Worms and invertebrates eat the leaves up" Hala

"When you leave stuff too long it gets mouldy" James

Otis "Decomposers break up the leaves."

Afterwards, we observed the FBI at work and helped to feed our trees by spreading mulch.

Year 3 Investigate the Gross World of the FBI

 Today, Year 3 learnt about the incredibly important, but gross job that fungus, bacteria and invertebrates (FBI) do for our world.

Akhi "They make compost"

Ibaad "They make compost out of food scraps".

"Bugs  are super heroes because they turn dead stuff into soil." Robin

We talked about how all our food comes from the soil, so we need the FBI to keep turning dead stuff and scraps into nutrients for our soil.  

We went on a discovery walk to see where we could see evidence of the FBI at work.

Alex "I saw a rotten banana peel in the worm farm."

"I saw black mushrooms in the native bush walk growing on a tree."

"I saw a orange mushrooms and a worm." Robin

"I saw red fungus" Hala

"We saw the stink horns and when they grow they die a  few days later. They have red tentacles and they have black inside.  They smell stinky." James

"I saw a rotten log" Kaida

Back at the classroom we did some more research on the amazing red stinkhorn fungus we found.  Did you know the reason they stink is that they attract flies to spread their spores?

Afterwards we dug in our Mara Kai to see invertebrates and to see if there were any kumara left.

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Our International Visitors get a Taste of New Zealand

 

Our international students and their NZ buddies had a fabulous time today experiencing our Education for Sustainability programme. 

They visited the orchards, the whare heihei (chicken house), 

bee hives (they were all asleep) and we also dug around in our Mara Kai (food garden). The tamariki dug up lots of kumara (Maori sweet potato). We actually think we dug up the world's largest kumara!

Afterwards, we juiced some tangelos from Ms Everitt's tree and ate some kumara, which Ms Daniel had roasted at home. What a delicious way to experience how we care for our planet at Wakaaranga.