Yr 6 Sponge cities

 

Our Year 6's continue to look at the importance of our local estuaries with a lesson borrowed from Sustainable Schools

Our last lesson focussed on how estuaries are habitats for animals.  This time we were thinking about how our estuaries are important for humans living in cities.

We began by discovering how Matauranga Maori weaved an understanding of the water cycle into the stories of Atua.  Next we reviewed the water cycle.

Afterwards we experimented to see how water travels in cities.  We compared grey infrastructure like gutters, concreate and drain with green infrastructure like lawns, parks and wetlands.  We discovered green soaks up water and grey lets water flow fast.  So parks, wetlands and lawns are important acting like a sponge and preventing floods. We need sponge cities!

Eco Warriors Plan to Collaborate

At the meeting with the eco-warriors at lunchtime, we looked at ideas for this term and a possible collaboration with FCI Eco Warriors

Ideas for this term include:

* Meeting the eco-warriors from Farm Cove in week 3 Monday Lunchtime 13 May 

*Tell them what we are doing and show them around the school

Buddy up with a Farm Cove person and show them around.

Places to visit... 

1. Beehive

2. worms

3. chickens

4. Native tree walk

5. Piwakawaka and blog

6. Senses garden

7. lizard lounge

8. Mara Kia

* Work on a project with Farm Cove together.

* Harvey- Tidy up the senses' garden

Moods & Muscles with Year Five

Today Year Five explored how active travel to school is great for our muscles and our mood.  Firstly we focused on muscles:

"There are 3 types of muscles" Maxwell

Lucy "If you lift heavy things your body repairs the muscle"

Caroline "When you carry heavy things your muscles get little tears"

"When you use your muscles they become stronger" Ayla

Lyra "Sitting too long increases your risk of health problems"

Christina "There are 3 types of muscles in our body -smooth, cardiac, and skeletal"

Westlinn "The heart is a muscle"

Gair "You need proper nutrients like fruit and vegetables and meat to grow muscles"

Joshua "There are 600 muscles in your body"

Afterward, we read about how exercise affects our mood:

Jason "Exercise can make you smile and feel happy"

Cloe "Exercise helps create new brain cells"

Nubia "It helps to develop friendships"

We measured our mood before and after exercise and then created a badge to promote active travel.

Yesha "I felt tired, weak, and gloomy before, and after play, I felt cool, cheerful, and energetic

Emily "Before I felt sleepy, joyful, and accepting after play I felt warm happy, and relaxed"

Estuaries are Habitats

 Today Year Six explored how our local estuary offers lots of habitats for plants and animals.  We reviewed our prior knowledge with a fun Kahoot, before reading about different estuary habitats in depth.  Afterwards we created our own online mangrove habitat using this website:

Ethan "birds live in the estuaries"

"Mangrove grow in estuaries"

Tiaan "Mangrove forests are highly productive busy zones"

Ethan "There are tides in estuaries"

Olivia "Some fish spend important parts of their lives among mangroves"

"Wakaaranga Creek is a mangrove forest"

Holiday homework - visit the Wakaaranga Creek or Rotary Walkway.  

Year Three Compost & Kohlrabi

Year continued to learn about how we can convert our food waste into new soil for growing more food.  Today was all about how we feed our chickens scraps and they turn them into eggs and fertilizer.  We learnt some amazing chicken facts on a scavenger hunt in the senses garden, mara kai and orchard.  

Emily "the oldest chicken was 22 years and  the most yolks in one egg were nine"

Charlotte "Chickens eat seeds"

Oliver "They only fly for 30 seconds"

While we were on our hunt we noticed the vegetables in the mara kai were looking AMAZING!  It must have been all the compost, worm tea and chicken fertilizeer we put on them a few weeks ago.  We picked three beautiful purple kohlrabi and ate them.  

Juho "kohlrabi tastes like lettuce"

Elias "It was hard and it tasted like carrot, lettuce and apple"

Nearly all the children said they would eat kohlrabi again.

Our Kohlrabi taste testing: