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Enviroschools Marlborough / Posts tagged "local stories" (Page 5)
New garden at Rapaura School

Edible Gardens Update | Rapaura School

Edible gardens facilitator, Angela Wentworth, updates us on what was going on in the Rapaura School garden last term. 'Parts of the plant' salad To start the term, the children from Jellyman Room went on a discovery walk through the garden to look at what was growing; tasting pak choi flowers and picking celery and lettuce for the 'parts of the plant' salad they were going to make that afternoon. Before heading to the kitchen, they sowed some zucchini, pumpkin and corn, learning that growing your vegetables from seed is a lot cheaper than buying vegetables from the supermarket.  Each of the ingredients of the salad came from a different part of a plant: the leaves of...

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Cooking cauliflower rice

Edible gardens update | Blenheim School

Tracy, Edible Gardens Facilitator at Blenheim School, updates us on a busy Term 4 in the garden. Our whenua (soil) needs just as much care as the plants we grow.  The children started their term discussing soil. With pH testers in hand, they tested and compared the soils in each of their garden beds.  They discovered different plants like different soil types and poor soils can be improved by adding organic matter or compost.  Swapping testers for spades and trowels, the children prepared a bed for their summer corn crop, and spread mulch on some of garden beds in preparation for the judging of the Garden Marlborough Best School Garden Awards.  To show the judges how...

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Hannah & Liam The Rubbish Trip

Talking Trash with The Rubbish Trip

Trash-talk has never been as inspiring as it was this week at ‘The Rubbish Trip’ sessions for Marlborough teachers and senior students. Hannah Blumhardt and Liam Prince were in town as part of their year-long journey around New Zealand, sharing the 'why' behind their decision to live without a rubbish bin, and tips and tricks to help us all explore what our next steps might be in reducing the waste in our schools, kindergartens, homes and lives.  It was a cracking start to our Enviroschools Marlborough theme for 2018: EXPLORE! If you didn’t manage to get along, The Rubbish Trip website is a fantastic resource, sharing what Hannah and Liam have learnt and thought about during their trip,...

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Enviro Fun_Spring Creek

Enviro-FUN at Spring Creek School

Students at Spring Creek School had a whole day of enviro-FUN, exploring how they could help their environment using their school values. They used loads of activities from 'Me in my Environment' in the Enviroschools Kit, which can be found starting at Page 69 if you would like to try any of these at your school. Here are some of the things that they got up to: They built bird's nests using materials found from the school grounds, giving them an appreciation for their school's natural environment, and an understanding of what amazing engineers birds are!  (The one pictured here was built by a bird, not a student!)           They wrote recipes for a healthy school environment. Flowers,...

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New Welcome at Picton School

Students at Picton School have been working together to design an amazing new waharoa for their school entrance: "Te Waharoa o Waitohi Kura". They have learnt about ecological building practices, and have put a huge amount of thought into how Picton School students identify themselves, what symbolises their place, and what their new waharoa might look like.

  They had so much fun and did some great hands-on learning, trying out many different design techniques.  Model waharoa have been created using matchsticks, wooden blocks, playdough, lego, and even good old pencil and paper! The students even made videos, to show their Board of Trustees their plans, and to seek funds to take the...

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Pine Valley Stream

So many students studying streams!

Students from Riverlands School and Witherlea School have been making the most of the summery weather, by getting out of the classroom and into the river. Year 6 students from Riverlands School investigated the health of the Taylor River upstream of the High Street bridge.  Their measurements of water temperature, clarity, and flow, and their samples of the community of insects and other creepy-crawlies living there, suggested that the river was 'moderately healthy'.  They were excited to find upland bullies and some little trout living amongst the aquatic plants, and they enjoyed watching caddisfly larvae poking their heads and legs out of their stony cases.

Witherlea students in Year 4 are on...

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Chemical reactions at Bohally

Chemical Reactions at Bohally Intermediate School

A number of Bohally students used their ‘chemical reactions’ topic in Term 3 to explore sustainability issues. They connected their developing knowledge of chemical compounds and how they interact, with global and local issues in the real world. Students worked on a range of topics that included the chemicals used in salmon farming, the hidden dangers of cosmetics, what microbeads are made of, oil pollution, nuclear energy, and recycling.  They were encouraged to apply their new knowledge to think about solutions that might help with these issues.

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Action projects at Canvastown School

Students have been busy taking ACTION at Canvastown School this year.  Here are two great descriptive stories written by the students about two student-led construction projects.  It is so fantastic to be able to share writing that students have done about their projects - please send us yours too! A brand new bug hotel What we did:We rebuilt the Bug Hotel Why we did it:We rebuilt the Bug Hotel because it was old and it was rotting. How we broke it apart: Shianne used her muscles, a hammer and a crowbar to break it. Charlie helped as well.They tore it apart wood from wood. We also dug up pittosporum tree saplings, to use for our next project. (The Living Hut). Problems we encountered:The...

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Fantastic farmers

Rai Valley’s Fantastic Farmers

The Year 13 Enviro Class at Rai Valley Area School made this poster (and scones!) to highlight the wonderful work that local farmers are doing to improve water quality in the area. The class has been studying water quality in the local rivers throughout the year.  They have spoken to scientists, joined them to test water and river health, and examined data on water quality for themselves.  They have been highly impressed by many of the awesome things that farmers are doing to improve the health of Rai Valley's rivers, such as fencing off waterways, building bridges or creating underpasses for stock to cross rivers, growing plants for riparian and wetland plantings, and building barns...

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riverlands cloches

Kids’ Edible Gardens Update

Riverlands School Children at Riverlands School began last term’s ‘Edible Gardens’ sessions by introducing both themselves and their garden to Mrs A: their new gardening facilitator!  While walking around the garden and showing Mrs A the vegetables growing in it, they also checked for seeds that could be saved for future plantings.  They found some bean seeds inside their dried-out pods.  Together they picked them, and put them into a bag to store for planting out in the spring. Having not been used for a number of weeks, the garden needed tidying.  While the students were weeding, they discussed the topic of composting, and learnt that it was all about putting goodness back into the...

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