Floating duck house 3

Culvert

Today we put the culvert up in the overflow so we can get a digger in to the adventure playground space.

Vision Statement

Today Su came in to help us work on our vision Statement for the adventure playground. We have come up with so.e great ones and are now refining so that we can have one shared vision.

Breakfast Club is back!

After a two year break breakfast club is back! The students collected eggs from the duck pond then another group made scrambled eggs, beans and toast! The students even cleaned up perfectly!

Music with Jade

We are loving music with Jade. We have made a school song and even added lyrics!

Tukutuku

Awhina and Marewa came in on Friday to help us finish our tukutuku. We brainstormed our school kaupapa and have come up with a school tukutuku design to represent our teaching and learning.

Duck scrambled egg sandwiches

We have started collecting duck eggs again! The students have been making scrambled egg sandwiches for the school as a nutritious snack.

Daffodil Day

Last Friday was Daffodil Day. Everyone brought in a gold coin donation for Cancer Research in order to wear yellow.

Taupo Bay Sand Dunes

We have now planted the pingao and spinifex and are looking forward to monitoring their progress. We will also be back in November to harvest their seeds.

Taupo Bay Sand Dunes

Last week we held a hui at Taupō Bay to show all project stakeholders what we have been doing. Kaumatua Mike spoke on our behalf after Morgan from Taupō Bay marae spoke. It was a great morning, which we finished of with acting a spinifex and pīngao before Morag gave a whakatauki to close.

Tukutuku

We are loving making tukutuku panels with Awhina, Marewa and Kauri class each week. We designed our own ones and are now making them and then going to make a big one together.

Measuring the top part of the Adventure Playground

Last week we measured the top area of our proposed adventure playground. We worked out the area and then started planting Manuka to fill the space up to make a great bushy area for children to hide and play in.

Adventure Playground

Rōpū Ngaio are now steaming ahead with their research and design of the proposed adventure playground. Now that we have finished measuring and completing the designs we are speaking directly with contractors to create a proposal for the board which the students will present later this month. Our focus of speech writing this term has been a great opportunity to practise creating persuasive texts!

Visit from Kaingaroa enviro class

Last week we had a visit from Kaingaroa school's enviro class. They wanted to know more about our mahi and particularly our duck pond. We gave them a tour of the school and Rōpū Ngaio led the tour confidently. It was an awesome day and we are looking forward to supporting them more in the future.

Scrubland beneath duck pond

Today we started looking into turning g the scrubland beneath the duck pond area into a usable space. We looked at what we would keep, remove and add then called contractors to arrange them quoting to remove trees and gorse before we start replanting.

Irrigation

Mr Pickard did heaps of work on the orchard trees over the weekend. He added a new irrigation system with petrol pump. This will save us hours of watering by hand. Thanks Mr Pickard!

Tree planting

Our school has been donated 10,000 trees for the plant a million trees scheme. Nikau class are planting most of them in the wetlands and we will plants some below the pond. We have put them in the orchard where we are setting up an irrigation system. In the mean time we are all taking turns with Nikau to water them by hand in the morning and afternoon.

Kauri seeds

Rōpū Ngaio made the decision to tip out the pīngao seeds from the trial pots. We think they probably died the week Rob had covid.

We decided to plant some kauri seeds that Cooper found beneath the kauri tree up in the outdoor learning space, instead while we wait for more yoghurt pots.