Check out what is new around our school!

A huge thank you to Mitre 10 Mega Rangiora who donated $250 towards the building of our 2 new butterfly gardens in front of Harakeke.  A team of children from Harakeke have enjoyed staining the planters and planting them out with some flowers to make them more colourful and the swan plants that we grew from seeds to attract butterflies to our garden.  We are looking forward to being able to observe and learn more about butterflies and their life cycles from these soon!

We also have some fabulous new bottle top murals that were created during the Year 5/6 children with the support of Mrs Treacy as part of our REACH programme.  They look great and are an awesome way to use the plastic bottle tops!

A big thank you to Lesley Ottey who supported our recent RAKAU market day by providing us with some environmentally friendly ideas including re-useable bags, lunch wraps and recipe books that help prevent food waste.  

It has been so exciting to see a team of students and parents working on putting the ideas that we generated over the last 2 terms for a school mural into action.  It is really looking a bright and colourful addition to our school environment.  Thank you Natalie and Amanda for all your help with this!

A snapshot of Enviro activities over the last term>>...

Recognition by the Mayor.

This group of children are a part of our Zero Waste team at Ashley School and were recognised for their efforts by the Mayor of Waimakariri as Eco Warriors this year.  Their mission  has been to help reduce waste at Ashley School and they have taken a particular interest in how we can reduce waste in our lunchboxes and rubbish in our playground.  They regularly monitor whether we are improving in our goal of zero waste lunches, surveying lunchboxes each week and coming up with suggestions for children to use as alternatives to plastic in our lunchboxes such as using  beeswax wraps. They have also been instrumental in helping to organise days that encourage nude Food and also  help raise awareness of how much rubbish we create in a day by carrying it with us for a day.  They will also regularly take it upon themselves to collect any litter in our playground and think about how and why it has gotten in the places we find it.   They are a self- managing,  eager and enthusiastic  group of children, who are passionate about our need to change our attitudes towards litter and plastic waste. 

Growing Seedlings for Kaiapoi Food Forest

We had a visit from Lesley Ottey to teach us how to seed plants for our gardens.  We are growing some for the Kaiapoi Food Forest and we will also plant some in our garden too. Some of them are beginning to germinate!

Rubbish pick up around Ashley Village

The Year 5 and 6 students as part of their Reaching Out programme planned and organised a rubbish clean up around the Ashley Village for "Keep New Zealand Beautiful" Week.  We were surprised at how many bottles and how much plastic we found!  Thank you to all the parents who supported us on this trip.

New Butterfly Murals are on their way!

As part of the Year 5 & 6 REACH programme we are always looking at ways we can make our environment better.  A group noticed that the butterfly murals beside Korimako were looking tired so they have worked with Mrs Treacy to revamp these with the hope of making them last longer too. We can't wait to see them finished!

Looking after the garden beside Korimako.

Holly and Caden were keen to tidy up the garden beside Korimako as part of their REACh programme.  They  weeded and prepared the ground for new plants that would be easier care  We can't wait for them to grow.  

Making new bird feeders to help feed the birds.

Growing swan plants for a new butterfly garden.  

Supporting Toy Rescue

The Year 5 &6 children are helping Lesley Ottey with her Toy Rescue Project. She brought along toys she has rescued from going to landfill.  We will help wash these and then help find them new homes. New homes will include making cat and dog toys , making door stoppers, story telling sets, weighted toys for sensory support, reading buddies and  puppets.

Learning about the Importance of Water

Lesley came to teach us about the journey of water in the river and how the things we do at home or on the land can help prevent water pollution and create healthy water. We know that looking after our waterways and practising water conservation saves money and helps the environment. It helps not only us but also the animals and plants that live in or near water in our area too.

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WHAT HAVE WE BEEN UP TO LATELY?

BEESWAX WRAPPERS! - ELLA, LUCI, MADDIE, JORJA-ROSE, RYDGE AND JAMES

On Wednesday, a group of Rakau

students, worked with Claire, Natalie  and Carole to make some beeswax wraps that we hope to sell soon as part of a fundraiser for the RAKAU camp next year.

We used small, medium and large templates to shape the fabric.  We used pinking shears, which are scissors that cut fabric in zigzag lines to stop it fraying, so the fabric does come off in bits
We put grated beeswax on one half of the fabric, then folded the other half on top.  Next we put some baking paper on top and used an iron to melt the beeswax into the cotton fabric.  Then wallah, we let it dry and we have a fantastic alternative to plastic for wrapping your sandwiches and snacks or even covering bowls with salad in!  We can’t wait till next week to make some more!

BUG HOTEL BY JAMES, RYDGE AND DEACON.

We have been working on a bug hotel for a couple of weeks now. A bug hotel is a place for bugs to make their homes in. We are hoping to learn some more about the what type of bugs live in our  school environment.

We have put in lots of different things that we think bugs might like to live in such as bricks, hay, pipes, sticks and bark.The bug hotel is behind the adventure playground if you wanted to see it.

CLEANING UP THE VEGE GARDEN IN PREPARATION FOR SPRING

As the weather begins to warm up we are getting busy in the garden ready for Spring plantings. 

We have begun digging int he mustard seed and also weeding and digging over the garden.  

We have also decided to fix up some of the scarecrows ready for their busy jobs in spring!  

  A big thank you to the Korimako Kids who came and joined    in with all  the action.  

FOREVERGREEN PRODUCTION

As an enviro school we are really keen to get everyone in our community thinking carefully about our environment, our impact on it and how we can all help protect it for the future so our whole school production carried this message.

Forevergreen was a production in which we took a step forward a 100 or so years to see what our schools and homes might look like in the future if we don't change what we are doing now. The children of the the future were completing a history project about biodiversity in the natural environment of Aotearoa, but they didn't know anything about nature or the natural environment as nothing had "grown' naturally on the planet for more than 100 years and everyone now lived in an airlocked world. Their grandparents helped them to understand how the world had gotten to this point and that it wasn't always this way- that once upon a time there were beautiful trees and creatures in nature.
This production made us really think about what we need to do now to ensure that the children in the future still have a natural environment to enjoy!

PTA

It has been great to see that our PTA also is taking on the enviro message and have been fundraising using environmentally friendly products that help reduce our waste such as re-useable produce bags and steel straws, made by one of our own ex-pupils.

Lesley Inspires Us Again

Last week, Lesley Ottey worked with children around the school to help us increase our pool of knowledge on what to do with our food and paper waste at Ashley School so that we can improve our systems and make them sustainable for the future.  

In Korimako, the children learned more about how worm farms work and how to look after the worms at Ashley School.  They learned about what worms like to eat and what they don't.  They also created their very own mini worm farms to look after!

A team of keen enviro children from Korimako with the help of a parent are going to take the lead in making sure our worms are well looked after!  They will be making sure we put the right kinds of food scraps into the worm Bins.  

In Harakeke, the children enjoyed the challenge of creating paper bricks using paper from our BOB's bins and old newspaper with Lesley.  They learned how to turn this paper into something useful.... they are waiting patiently as they dry, ready to be used to help light the fire in winter!  We have a group of keen parents who are willing to help children make these more often!  

In Rakau Lesley shared with the Year 6 to 8 children how Bokashi bins can be used for food scraps.  We were keen to build up our knowledge to see if we think that this would be something that we would like to trial again at our school.   
We liked that we would be able to put all food waste in this system including meats and dairy products  and that it doesn't have a smell. 
In our class hui we had a vote and agreed that we thought it would be worth a trial in the senior school to begin with.  Carter and Caden have volunteered to set this up and monitor how it is going. We look forward to seeing some positive results! 

The Year Five children learned about how compost works.  We explored out existing compost bins and found that they are actually doing a pretty good job.  We even have some that is ready to go on our garden in spring when we are ready to plant.

We learned that making compost is a bit like making lasagne.We need to keep layering... a layer of  shredded newspaper/ cardboard , then a layer of Nitrogen rich materials ( grass clippings, weeds, coffee grounds, vegetables scraps, rotted manure, garden debris) and finally a layer of Carbon Rich Materials ( dry leaves, sawdust, corn stalks, pine needles, straw.)
We look forward to some more fantastic compost for our gardens to help them grow soon!  Sustainable Living!

Thank you Lesley for helping us build up our knowledge and understanding!