Take Action Term...leading to working bee day

Working Bee Tomorrow!

Hey Everybody!

The Working Bee is TOMORROW! Come and see what we're up to, help in our enviro projects and make a difference in our school!


Where: Maungaraki School
When: The 26th of November, 2016
Time: 10am onwards


:)

I really hope I see you there!

Check out the Threemeke Totara Blog!

Hey Everyone,

Here is the link to Threemeke Totara's blog. They are huge supporters of the Enviro Team!

http://threemeketotara.blogspot.co.nz/

Thank You

The Working Bee

Kia Ora Everyone!
I'm so sorry I haven't posted for a while.

This term is going to be our annual working bee! We have so many projects like the construction of our bottle greenhouse to pulling weeds out of the garden and planting new flowers and vegetables.



The facts are:
Where: Maungaraki School
When: Saturday 26th of November, roughly from 10 on-wards
What: Bring your own gloves and tools!

And, of course, a huge thank you to the local church for planning a fabulous morning tea for the workers.

Yates Gardening.....

This year we'll be putting our gardening gloves on!!!

The Challenge............

Wrap Free Wednesdays

This week, Maungaraki School tried out a new scheme. Wrap Free Wednesdays.

We were inspired by other schools. Instead of plastics, we used containers to put our food in. The enviro team monitors each classes progress using a graph.

Please join in! It's a competition.

Maungaraki Enviro Team Minutes

E-team 15 June 2016

Ab Grace

Nikau won the recycling best bins - we are making the award to give to them. Sam and Zena will sort.

Bottles were announced at assembly - we are collecting them for the bottle green house still and now the igloo milk containers, we have had a good start.

Construction - meeting today - have more materials to thread bottles, completion date depending on the collection of bottles but hoping to finish this term.

Gardening gang - plastics in the composting so need the bins people to sort out (Tegan). Tegan will ensure that all the worm farm stuff goes to worm farm and all other food scaps to the compost - our gardening gang will turn the compost.

Tegan and Sam will chat with Mr Marsh to ensure we are using all bins properly.

Nude food - Grace not here

Colgate - Grace not here

Meeting ended 10.49

Bins

Kia Ora Whanau! 

Lately, there has been a lot of cross-contamination in our bins system. We've got oranges in the fruit scraps bin. Which for our worms, is very dangerous. Please remember to put your scraps in the right bin! 

Thanks!

Maungaraki Enviro Meeting

1st June 2016

Present: Ruben, Mrs S, Al, Heather, Sam, Grace, Yuda, Ashleigh, Neha, Nitika, Dylan, Aarlin, Jayden, Zena, Tegan, Leo

Absent:

Grace is going to do a table to for Colgate. The current leaders are R1

Today they are going to record the black bins and they are also going to do that on Friday. They are taking photos of the bins. Sam and Tegan are mainly looking at volume. Now we should have a constant measure of our waste.

The Enviro Team blog is now on the school facebook page.

Constuction: The girls were cutting up the poles and they need more bambo sticks and 2L bottles! A note needs to go out saying that we need more bottles. Ash will sort all of the advertising.

Going to start drafting a note for the newsletter.

Gardening Gang: The gardening gang is still ticking over, we need to get a rain gauge, so that we know how much rain the plants are getting. There might be a rain gauge in the Maths Cupboard.

Plans are going ahead to start a milk bottle igloo! Tegan will sort a note to get out to the public.

Grace is going to talk to Mrs C about the Nood Food, progress has been made.

Seniors need to divy up to talk to classes. Grace 9/10, Sam Heather 7 / 8, Al + Jayden ⅘ Neha 3 Ash 2 Nitka 1

Room 1 and 3 don’t need any help yet and Room 2’s teacher wasn’t there so will report back later.

Another Video About Recycling

There are lots of ways to improve the way that you recycle.
I have another video with the link here. 

What Do You Recycle?

Take part in this Recycling Survey! 

The 5 R's

Enviro Minutes for the 25th of May

25/5/16: Present: Mrs S, Al, Ash, Sam, Grace, Ruben, Zena, Neha, Nitika, Aarlin, Flynn, Heather, Matthew, Yuda, Tegan, Leo

Absent: Josephine, Amelia

Construction: Nearly finished first panel, one more row to go. Extra meeting at lunch. Mrs S talked to Mr Marsh about corogated purspects because more bottles aren’t coming back in. Posters are to be made to advertise for the bottles. Grace is to let Mr Cowman to know about the bottles, for facebook page.

Garden: Everything is growing quite well, we need to make sure that we are protecting the younger plants from the wind.

Bin Competition: Totara isn’t winning the bin competition, Nikau and Kowhai are tied at the moment. Suggestion is to remove the black bins completely. Al will talk to Mr Marsh about getting a big version of the Purple (General Rubbish) and Yellow (Citrus). Mrs S thinks two people should do the bins all the time. The roster system doesn’t work very well. Tegan and Sam will be doing the bins everyday. Matthew is the backup.

Worm farm:

Diane has reinstated the worm farm last week.   The original compost was nice and damp all the way through with the occasional worm in it and the bottom layer of food scraps had lots of worms, big worms and baby worms.  The top layer of food scraps did have too much bread (She put some of this in the other compost bin) but otherwise was okay, not really smelly, sludgy or otherwise disgusting, too many fruit flies but we felt that can't be helped.

One comment though, it is very wet around the bin and she had to wheel it out of the enclosure to work on it.  I noticed Sean (or someone) has put a whole lot of mulch around the "lake".  If more mulch is available, can a layer be put around the bin area too please. Perhaps we could get some treated for hardwood pallets to place down as a temporary flooring.

Working Bee: potentially in term 3 depending on weather - on hold as we gathered ideas last time.

Idea: is that we have a general picking up rubbish model (lead by example)  in our lunch times and playtimes.

Colgate: Counting collections will be on Friday. Grace is drafting a blurb for the school facebook page and the school newsletter. The current leader is Room 1.

The report was filed with the BOT, they would like to know if we need any help with our Green Gold which we are aiming for.

Mr Cowman will be putting the link to the school enviro page so more people can see what we are doing.

Meeting ended 10.55

Next Enviro Meeting

When: Wednesday 25th May
Where: Room 11 (At The Yellow Table)
Time: 10:30am (Morning Tea)

Maungaraki E Team Minutes for the 17th May 2016

Present: Al, Yuda, Jayden, Sam, Flynn, Dylan, Ruben, Neha, Nitika, Grace, Zena, Heather, Ash and

Mrs S

Ab? Josephine apologise at library, Vanessa, Amelia.

Gardening gang: turning the compost every second day - gardening gang will do this. Worm farm needs to stop having bread in it. Yesterday found some weeds - nightshade and ragwort.  All keep eye out for berry type weeds that need to be pulled out.

Options for working bee

under gardening would be to build bee/weta/critter hotels.

Construction gang - we are still building the first wall - we all know what to do, we have bottles, wood etc and materials. By the end of T2 we will have the walls done. Working bee early T3 we can begin building the structure around in the friendship garden - suggestion to us a old pallets down as the floor to stop flooding.  Need more bottles, need to make sure the note goes in the newsletter

Due to dance splash the team is now meeting on Tuesdays so we can fit it in.

Bin competition - Sam is going with Tegan on Thursday - she will be taking photos to give evidence in terms of the competition.

Colgate - Grace; going good, she is counting up all the collections by Friday. She will be sending them off end of T2.  

Working Bee Ideas: (potentially Term 3)

Tyres down the bottom field, filled and planted out (seeds).

Finish murals.

Friendship garden/seat (we purchase and the working bee concrete it in).

Bottle greenhouse build.

Build bee/weta/critter hotels.

Enivro Blog up and running again

Notes taken by Mrs Sutherland

Next Enviro Meeting

The Next Enviro Meeting is going to be....

Where: At The Yellow Table - Rm11
When: Wednesday 11th of May - Morning Tea

Compost!

Hey Everyone!

This week the Enviro Team are making a new space for our composting. We will be using sustainable materials like wooden pallets, we are also going to be using recyclable materials.

Reminder: This is on Thursday the 12th of May. Bring some mucking in clothes and your A-game.

Grace

Assembly Enviro Update

Hey guys!

So some you may know and some of you don’t. This year, Maungaraki School is shooting for the EnviroSchools Green Gold. So far we have achieved Bronze and Silver, but now we are pushing it for Gold. We want to prove that Maungaraki School is environmentally friendly and have a space of sustainability.

One of our main goals is reducing our waste that goes into the landfill, the things you put in the black bins. As you may know, each syndicate has their own colourful bins, labelled plastics, food scraps, citrus and general rubbish. We want to see your lunch rubbish end up in our colourful bins rather than the black ones. So for two weeks we will be tracking where your waste goes. We are having a bin competition to see which syndicate is best at using our colourful bins. It is simple, put your food remains in the colourful bins, the more you help your syndicate to win a special prize. The syndicate with the least waste in their black bins, wins.

This year, Colgate (the toothbrush brand) is holding a competition. Colgate wants to reuse products you have used to make more. Maungaraki School is participating in this and we need your help. Here is your job, if you have any old or used dental products, bring them to school. You can bring in Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, Dental Floss Containers, Mouthwash and of course the cardboard We will ship your used products to Colgate which adds more points to our school. You can bring old toothpaste tubes, toothpaste boxes, old toothbrushes, dental floss containers. For every product you bring we can make a little bit of money for it.  The school with most products shipped wins $1000 dollars from colgate.

Remember you can do your part to help our school win Gold. Simply putting your rubbish in the right place and bringing your old dental products to your classroom  is playing a big part to help us.

Making a difference!

This is the link to an Article about New Zealand farmers making a difference in our environment. This helps promote New Zealand's clean and green image.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/sheep/78874225/te-anau-farmers-win-environment-award

RECYCLE, RECYCLE, RECYCLE!

Check out the link if you want to learn more about recycling your oral care products!

We can earn a few cents per item that is recycled.

http://www.terracycle.co.nz/en-NZ/brigades/bsbf-schools

Maungaraki Minutes = 13.4.16

Enviro Minutes

Meeting Duration: 10:30 - 11:00am

Attendees:

• Mrs S
• Sam
• Zena
• Al
• Grace
• Rueben
• Jayden
• Nitika
• Matthew
• Neha
• Dylan
• Tegan

Wrap-free Wednesday = Wednesdays were the whole school’s lunches has no plastic wrap.

• Ecducate kids by going class by class and telling them what effects plastic has
• Run an evening about a plastic wrap free school - talk about containers instead of plastic wrap.

Bottle Greenhouse:

• All the frames are built
• The bottles are all cut - we are needing more so there is a plea in the newsletter.
• Meeting every Thursday Lunchtime with Mr Marsh.
• We are needing to get more timber to finish making poles for the bottles to go on.

Gardening Gang:

• Starting to plant Flax seedlings outside the dental clinic.
• Meeting Every Monday
• Gardening Gang are up to date with weeds.

Worm Farm:

• Up and running again
• The worms are looking good!

E-Team Blog:

• Grace = posting like crazy.

Threemeketotara Blog

So, If you are a BIG fan of this blog....

Check out the Year 6/7/8 blog.... The link is right here

Go check it out!!!

Next Enviro Meeting

The Next Enviro Team meeting is next Wednesday!

Date: Wednesday the 13th of April, 2016
Where: Room 11 (Yellow Table)
Time: 10:30 (Morning Tea)

Gardening Gang

Every Monday lunctime,

There is a gardening gang that goes out with Diane and Mary-Ann to go and weed, water and make the gardens around our school look beautiful!!

The gardening gang get their gloves on and then get their hands dirty! Pulling out weeds, planting seedlings and deadheading the flowers so they grow even better than last time.

Peace out!
See you at the next meeting on Monday! :)

Bottle Greenhouse

Hey!

This year, one of our major projects is to build a bottle greenhouse. We are making this greenhouse by cutting 2.25 litre bottles of fizzy (empty of course) and using the top part, where the cap is. Then, we stick the half of bottle on a wooden pole, we have to squish them together to make them stay on the pole. We then have a frame for the 'walls' to click into. We also have lots of caps which we will be melting down to recycle.

Comment down below what you think about our project!

Maungaraki Facebook Page

So our school has a facebook page!!!

We post our learning experiences and current events.

The link for the page is right here....

Paper for Trees

Paper for Trees in an organisation that encourages schools and educational facilities to reduce the amount of recyclable materials like cardboard and paper that goes to the landfill. The way this happens is the school organises an 'enviro drive' for paper and cardboard.

We are looking at this challenge!

To out find more, click this link... Here!

Our Enviro Meeting (5/4/16)

Enviro Mtg 5 April 2016

Morning tea meeting 10.30-11.20

Present: Mrs S, Zena, Al, Heather, Flynn, Sam, Neha, Ash, Grace, Yuda, Jayden, Dylan, Vanessa

Update:

Construction team. (bottle green house) Meeting every Thursday Lunchtime with Mr Marsh. We have build all the frames, need to start cutting bottles, Ash to talk with Mrs G about a note in our newsletter regarding the 1.5 litre plastic fizzy bottles. Mr Marsh is getting more timber to thread the bottles. Estimated time to finish end of Term 2 (hopefully). Place to sit it? Possibly still the friendship garden. Yuda reminded us that this area is prone to flooding, need to look at drainage.

Gardening gang. Meet Monday’s lunchtime seedlings were planted outside the office yesterday.  Weeding getting up to date. This group is also going to work with Sustainability Trust to build a new compost (was cancelled yesterday due to sickness, Mrs S is negotiating another date).  Corn and tomatoes are ready to harvest. (although the corn has a pest on it... Zena and Heather to research into ways to organically remove the pests.) Flowers have been planted in the planter boxes and cleaned it up. They harvested the seeds for the flowers for re planting. (Teachers Mrs Wardle, Dianne).

Idea: Hui meeting was last Monday night, they have expressed an interest in participating in another working bee.  Our thoughts: church possibly to provide the morning tea.  Hui are possibly interested in the BBQ sausage sizzle.  We could have a gardening gang. We discussed finishing our friendship garden area...looking at paving for the floor, constuction of the bottle green house.  Al offered dirt from his house for the flooring/feijoas etc.  Screens? Finish the mural (painting) and corrigated tin murals. Area beind the playground, turn it into a orchard??

Community gardens Wendy Garlick Sustainable Trust is meeting with Mrs S later in the term re helping Dianne.

Colgate - Grace (forgot about it) Mrs Walker onto it.

Worm farm - R8 - we think R8 are doing the worm - Matt to check with Mrs Webby.  Dianne has been checking on the worm farm, needs to be well feed.

Compost - Logan - R9+10 - Totara taking the food scrapes to the worm farm.  We are collecting the yoghurt pottles they will go into the art cupboard.

Sam has finished the posters re the compost competition and one for Colgate as well.  Looking at running the compeition in early T2 prizes W4/5. Prizes Sam thinks icecream (something for a whole syndicate) we will keep thinking about prizes. Goal is to reduce the waste bin.

Paper for Trees - Heather and Zena in charge.  Made document re collection of data for paper recycling, we are too late for this round, but it is worth recording the data.  Mr Marsh was ringing waste management to get the paper waste data.  Heather will check with Mr Marsh as to how he got on.

Walking to school - Moving March - went really well, Totara provided the stamps and stickers. Mrs Renfew was running this.

Grace has taken over the e-team blog :)Yay!

Mrs S meeting with Micheline Evans from Enviroschools at 3.30 today in our hub.

Notes taken by Mrs Sutherland.... :)

Welcome to 2016!

Welcome to 2016!
New Year, new projects and new ways to be sustainable. It has been a while since the last post. So I'll do my best to fill you in. Over 2015, the E-Team has been busy! The year was great, we entered a competition to make a short film about sustainability. It was a great experience with the year eights that have now left the team.

Also, last year, we got out butterfly garden up and running! The butterfly garden is by the staffroom. Teachers get to enjoy watching butterflies coming and going. Teachers can also watch the tomatoes turn from green to red.

Another project that we have done is all about composting! We have gotten our food scraps together using coloured bins. Our purple bin is for general waste, our mint-green bin is food scraps, the yellow bin is for citrus and finally our blue plastic bin! We distribute these bins to each class every single day.

We have also got two more gardens! One of the gardens is a flower garden, the second garden is a vegetable garden, in our school, we have a gardening gang of volunteers that monitor, water and weed the gardens to keep them healthy and beautiful!!!

This year, the enviro team is aiming for green gold, this means we are aiming for an amazing award that is for our environmental efforts. The way that we celebrate this is always different, each student in the Enviro team can earn a badge, to recognize what the team has done. Also to say "I'm a member of the enviro team". This year our focus is to get everything up and running like a well-oiled enviro machine. We are organising a working bee so stay tuned to hear how you can help!!!

To the left is the butterfly gardens. The butterflies were created by Room Eight.











To the right is one of our gardens.

below is our worm farm. The worms are tearing through the compost collected for them! 

                  Below is our flower garden.

Below are the yummy green tomatoes!