Year 5 Get Active with Travelwise

Our Year 5 tamariki started our Ready Steady Go programme today.

Firstly, we brainstormed different ways to come to school actively:

scooter, jogging, walking, skipping, park and stride, wheelchair, ferry, train, tram, biking, kayak, bus, carpool. That is just to name a few.

We are going to be learning about what active travel is, how it is good for our bodies, minds and the environment and lastly how we can encourage safe active travel.

After we downloaded the digital student handbook we took a quick quiz to establish our prior knowledge.

Next it was time to complete a cool giant jigsaw puzzle.  We made it a competition:

Room 16 & 17 Girls - 8:15

Room 16 & 17 Boys - 7:58

Room 14 & 15 Boys - 10:43

Room 14 & 15 - 5:45

🌟Winners Room 14 & 15 Girls 🌟

Lastly, we annotated the puzzle with ways active travel is good for our body and the environment. 

While one group was busy with the puzzle, 

Ms Everitt took the other group out to collect litter waste from our green spaces. 

What wonderful Kaitiaki we are!

That's 4 bucket loads not going out to the ocean! 

Next week is WOW WEEK (Walk and wheel). We'll be learning how to get to school sustainably and safely. If you walk or wheel to school next week, you can enter the prize draw.  GOOD LUCK! 

2026 Eye on Nature

Ever year the Eye On Nature day lights up our Eco Warrior's imaginations and deepens their aroha for the environment. 

They're introduced to experts that can help them lead actions for their community and who open their eyes to a whole world of new opportunities.

 Thank you so much to the Manukau Beautfication Trust, the volunteers, sponsors and all their partners. 

This year we met with Auckland War Memorial Museum, Tread Lightly, Bee Things and Auckland Parks. 

Check out all the photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bPqqi4AKn5BVUaS2A 

Year Five Welcome back for 2026 Eco Action

 

Room 14 shared our Karakia in sign language AMAZING! 

What are the places and practices that make us a GreenGold Enviroschool?

"Bushwalk" Roxanne

Azariah "We grow plants and fruits"

Muller "We have bees"

Nova "We have chickens"

Shae "We have a worm farms"

Rachel "We have lots of trees"

Jamila "We encourage litterfree lunches"

Jacques "We pick up litter"

"Senses garden" Jasper

"A lizard lounge" Cody

We went on a scavenger Hunt to find all the ways we are a greengold enviro school.

We looked at the Guiding Principles of Enviroschools that guide our teaching.

These are: 

Sustainable Communities

Empowered Learners

Te Ao Maori

Respect for Diversity

Learning for Sustainability

To embed our learning, we did a Kahoot!

Year 5 & 6 What makes Wakaaranga an Enviroschool?

 What are the places that help to make us an Envioschool?

Emily "Behind the beehive there's a luxury resort for bees"

Leela "The Senses Garden"

"The bush walk" Cairo

Max "The worm farm"

Vivian "Chickens"

Alvin "The oak trees"

Elise "The apple and plum trees"

Rachel "The bee hive"

"The veggie garden by the art room" Mina

Aaron "The field"

"The compost" Zimon

We went a fun scavenger hunt to visit all the places that make us a GreenGold Enviroschool. 

After our adventures outside, we went on a digital explore of the GreenGold Enviroschool Blog. 

Room 22 and 19 Seaweek promotion

Today, the Year 6 classes in Rooms 19 and 22 looked into our Waka waste.

Do we have a litter problem at Waka? A quick survey of our lunchboxes showed that Room 19 had 45% of the class with a litter-free lunch today at school. Room 22 had 35%. That is a great start. But.......

 A 15-minute litter hunt around our school produced an astonishing amount of litter. We were really amazed at how much there actually was.

The classes decided to take action by making a collaborative display with  Aotearoa sea animals 

promoting bringing litter-free lunches to school. 

You can check our messages on the windows of Piwakawaka

Room 18 Waste Wise for Sea Week

 In Room 18 we reviewed the Enviroschools Guiding Principles with a discussion and a Kahoot.

Next we reviewed how far we've come with dealing with our waste.  We watched this video from four years ago Waka Waste Audit 2022 

We discovered that our litterfree lunches are still tracking around 40%

Is lunchbox litter still a problem?  A quick litter hunt showed us that, sadly, it was.

We had a brainstorm ...

How might we encourage more tamariki to pack a litter free lunch?

Dihan - posters

Fariya - a booklet

Ava - if you have a litterfree lunch you can wear mufti

Hector - if you bring a litterfree lunch you get housepoints

Riley - make a speech Ava - litter clean ups but if you have a litterfree lunch you don’t have to do it.

Savannah - make a video

We'll passed these great ideas  on to our 

Eco Warriors and spent the remainder 

of our lesson creating Litterfree Lunchbox 

posters for the Education for Sustainability 

room.

Year Three Crazy for Kai

 Today, Year Three continued their inquiry into kai.  We talked about the different times of day that we eat and the names we call these meals.  There's lots of different names for meals like some breakfast, brunch, paramanwa, tea, dinner, snacks, morning tea, dinner, supper, afternoon tea etc.

We talked about different families and cultures eat different foods for meals, but we all eat a mix of healthy kai to keep our tenana (bodies) going.  

We chose our own menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.  

Before morning tea we learnt some Te Reo Maori names for food with a fun wordsearch.

We talked about how our senses are important when it comes to our relationship with food. we got to taste some pears from our very own Waka Orchard.