Today we chose Travelwise Leaders for a special project to help solve the drop off issues in Skilling Place:
Paige R
Skyla S
Izzy B
Jacob R
Joshua H
Eddie M
These children are either directly effected as they live in Skilling or great role models becasue they use active travel to get to school.
We're looking forward to meeting with Alice from Travelwise in Week 11 to help plan our actions to deal with unsafe behaviour.
Today we unboxed our Eye On Nature take home kit and reflected on what we had learnt.
Liam "I learnt how Queen Bees are made by feeding any egg more royal jelly"
Kai "I learnt how to take apart the front wheel of a bike"
Chloe "I learnt how to make instruments out of nature"
Kelsey "I learnt about different fruits and veges growing in different seasons"
Hedy "The difference between honey bees and bumble bees"
Charlotte "There's another type of bee called robber bees that try and take the honey"
Eddie "Drone bees are male and they eat all the food and get kicked out"
What actions could we take that have been inspired by Eye On Nature?
- leave the bees alone
- don't pick flowers
- plant broccoli
- plant flowers
- put out chew cards
Today, Year Five were learning to work together as a team to identify road hazards and overcome them.
We began by solving another giant jigsaw in teams. Here's the timed results:
Rooms 20/21 Girls 3:47
Rooms20/21 Boys 4:54
Rooms 15/22 Girls 3:35
Rooms 15/22 Boys 5:55
Next we put red flags on the the children acting in unsafe ways and talked about how we could solve these problems so they could move about safely.
While one team was making the jigsaw, the other team was first consolidating their knowledge of water conversation with a board game, and second going on the hunt for litter around our school.
In our workbooks we worked independently to link hazards with their solutions.
Lastly we learnt how to use an online mapping tool - Google Maps. We worked out the distance to school from our home and the best route.
Scarlett has just 105m to walk to school and Oscar is 5.9km away, so he drives to school.
Hector lives just 80 metres away and Bilal lives 9.8km away. Remember if you live far away you can be dropped further away from school and walk the last bit.
Today Year Five explored the benefits of active travel. First, we downloaded a digital workbook from Travelwise and completed a quiz to discover our prior knowledge of how active travel benefits our mental health, physical health and the environment.
Next, we split into teams to complete a giant jigsaw. While the other team was puzzling we read a journal article about active travel and went on a quick litter hunt.
It was fun to problem-solve together against the clock to create the giant jigsaw. Afterwards, we annotated our jigsaw with flags to point out all the ways choosing to walk, bike, scooter or use public transport can help us to feel healthy and happy.
AND the winners were:
First - Room 22 & 15 Girls 6:20
Second - Rooms 22 & 15 Boys 6:22
Third - Rooms 20&21 Boys 8:10
Rooms 20&21 Girls 8:26
Communication was key to quick team work!
Check out a time lapse video of the Room 20&21 Boys working together:
Next time we're looking forward to a giant jigsaw rematch, with a new puzzle that will help us learn how to identify and negotiate road hazards.
Thank you Travelwise for the awesome resources!
Today, the Eco Warriors had a extraordinary day out at the Eye On Nature Event held by the Manukau Beautification Trust at the Botanic Gardens.
We took part in four activities throughout the day hosted by Heart Foundation, Food for Thought, Auckland Museum, Garden to Table, The Bike Hub and Beez Things. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with experts and learn how we can promote our own well being and the well being of the environment.
The activities included changing a bike tire, making musical instruments, exploring a glass beehive and creating a seasonal fruit wheel. All the hosts were impressed with Wakaaranga tamariki's enthusiasm and knowledge.
Thank you Manukau Beautification Trust and all the sponsors for this opportunity! Nga mihi nui to our parent / caregiver volunteers!
Year 2 Busy Bees!
Have you ever wondered how flowers and plants grow seeds and fruit? Well, now our amazing Year 2’s know! Bees visit flowers to collect something very important – nectar to make honey. But did you know that when bees fly from one flower to another, they help the flowers grow seeds and fruit too? While the bees dive deep into the flower for their sugary drink they brush past the pollen carrying it from flower to flower. When the pollen from one flower goes onto another flower's sticky stamen then the flower can make seeds. Without the bees there would be no seeds and no fruit.
We explored our blooming Waka garden that has silverbeet, carrots and even kumaras! We got to see some bees in action. They were going deep into the purple kumara flowers looking for the nectar. We looked carefully to see the sticky stigma and pollen in the flowers.
Without bees helping with pollination, many flowers and plants wouldn’t be able to grow seeds. That would mean no new flowers or fruits! Bees are plant’s helpers, working hard to make sure plants can grow and bloom. They don't do it for free. They're paid in sweet nectar.
Back in the class we made models of flowers and used pipe cleaner bees to pollinate with glitter.
Next time we'll be making seed packets so we can grow more flowers to feed our bees.
Today, Year 3 continued learning about the important job of fungus, bacteria and invertebrates in breaking down waste. This week it was time to focus on the invertebrates in our compost.
Luke "An invertebrate is something that doesn't have a back bone"
Nala "Like worms, slaters, ant, a fly and caterpillars"
Our aim was to identify some common invertebrates breaking down our food scraps into compost.They may be small and icky but they're important too.
We partner read two articles in Junior Journals about invertebrates in our green spaces. Next we took samples of compost and carefully sifted through them to find bugs. We found beetles, worms, white worms, slaters and surprisingly big fat black wriggly pupa.
We wanted to find out more about the pupa, so we looked them up on the internet. We found out they are soldier fly larva and are vey important composters as they can eat TWICE their body weight in food scraps.
Lastly we recorded the soldier fly life cycle in our book and the facts we had learnt.
Can your tamariki name three common invertebrates?
Next time we are looking forward to finding out how Wakaaranga use CHICKENS to convert food waste into fertiliser and eggs.
Today, Year 4 looked at our new system for dealing with all food waste at Wakaaranga. Thanks to a generous grant from the Mana Ora Climate...
