Rakau taking time out to appreciate our environment.

As part The Year 5-8 Education outside the Classroom we visited the Tuhaitara Coastal Park. We learned lots from Meredith, the park ranger, about the natural features including the biota nodes,Tutaepatu Lagoon, and the mudfish that are now beginning to live here. She shared with us some of the enviro projects that are now underway to enhance the natural habitats further. Some of us are interested in investigating how we could have our own enviro school biota node here now. 

We have worked to develop our observational skills  of our school environment. We used our visual skills to search our school to find natural and man made objects for our alphabet scavenger hunt .We also developed our listening skills by creating a sound map.  We found a space by ourselves to listen carefully to all the different natural and man made sounds in our school environment and recorded these in a sound map . We hope to compare these with the sounds that we hear on camp.

Being aware of our environment helps us to appreciate the wonderful things it has to offer !

Our butterfly gardens provide lots of learning opportunities.

The butterfly gardens outside Harakeke have been a hive of activity this term.  Children have had lots of opportunities to observe the life cycle of butterflies in action. We have discovered that caterpillars are certainly very hungry and we are lucky to have such wonderful parents who keep adding to our swan plants to keep them well fed! Thank you to the students in Harakeke who make sure the gardens are well watered.  

Korimako begin a Produce Box

Korimako Produce Box which will be located on the deck of Korimako. 

We would like to invite you to donate excess vegetables, fruit and herbs from your gardens to the box. Theo’s will be available for other families to buy for a gold coin donation. 

So bring in all those zucchini’s you can’t face eating again, the coriander that’s about to bolt, and the lemons you can’t use up. And don’t forget to check out the box for something tasty for your tea.

From Garden to Plate!

So much authentic learning to be done in the garden and the kitchen this summer! 

Children from the "Green Team" harvested the corn from our garden . They learned how to take the husks off the corn and that we could put this in our compost bin. They also learned how to prepare the corn by cleaning and snapping it into smaller pieces so there would be more to share. We cooked them in a big pot of boiling water and shared them with the students in Harakeke. Lots of teamwork and cooperation amongst this group of children! Well done and a huge thank you to Ashton's Mum, Carly for supporting us in the garden and kitchen to do this.

We  harvested some rhubarb from our garden and learned how to use this to cook some rhubarb muffins. Lots of teamwork and cooperation amongst this group of children! Well done and a huge thank you to Saoirse's Mum , Mia, for supporting us in the garden and kitchen to do this.

We harvested and cooked potatoes from our garden with the wonderful support of Emily, Kayla and Alyssa's Mum. Cooper discovered that it is not only people who enjoy eating potatoes as he found one that had already been eaten and the culprit was still inside! Washing the potatoes was a messy task. They learned knife skills to cut the potatoes into wedges . They learned patience as they waited for them to be cooked in the oven and that while they were cooking was a good time to clean up the kitchen. Sharing the wedges at lunchtime around the school was a favourite part for all the children. The tasted delicious and got great reviews. Well done team and a huge thank you to Emily for making this possible.

Isla, Joe and Matthew enjoyed the opportunity to learn how to turn the parsley and basil from our school garden into the most delicious pesto. It tasted amazing. Thank you to Kylie, Baxter's Mum for helping us with this.

We enjoyed learning how to make sweet and savoury scones. We read and followed instructions, measured and mixed , rolled and cut our dough to cook scones that were enjoyed by all the Year 5 and 6 children. We really loved the savoury scones that used tomato relish made from our tomatoes in the garden and basil. Thank you to Cooper's Mum, Casey for helping us with this.

Matthew enjoyed making yummy stir fry using vegetables from our garden too!

Community Seed Banks Initiative

We have had the opportunity to be involved with a new community project. We helped Lesley Ottey who is part of a group who is establishing a community seed swap project aimed at encouraging people to have a go at growing gardens . We learned how to harvest seeds and create paper envelopes for their storage . These will be used at the launch of the Rangiora Library Seed Banks, where community members will learn how to save and share seeds.

Building Relationships

Lesley Ottey from Eco Educate visited us early this term to talk to us about how important relationships and connections between people are for helping to protect our environment. We discussed the important role of volunteers in our communities and also how powerful children are to help share environmental messages and to rethink our thoughts about waste. We know that our decisions and actions can help make a difference for our environment.

Lesley has given us the challenge to share with our families the need to now separate our glass recycling into brown glass and clear/ green glass if we are taking it to the Waimakariri Recycling Stations. She even gave us some suggestions on how to set up systems to help us do this at home. Perhaps we could take on that responsibility in our own homes!