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!  

Welcome to 2015

In February the staff and some Board members met to discuss an Enviro reflection. We had Micheline Evans with us, and came up with some wonderful ideas for 2015. Go back to zero waste (bronze stuff)like: compost, bottle house, friendship garden, seedlings, worm wee $, and new stuff like: chess set, cheese making, syndicate gardens, kids can - giving back, Nature walk bottom field, BMX track/Confidence course, weather station link with NIWA. A welcome committee (could be H&S led but with others on a list to help?) that provides a meal/biscuits to families new to the school. Explore, identify and make use of community connections (who can do what/get access to) – immediate school families, or extended families, or broader school community. Strategic partnerships – this is the longer term links that the school needs to make with outfits like the HCC, etc.

Room 9 Mini Working Bee

Check out these awesome children who met me at school on Sunday to take action!
Their plan was to move the bottom field garden up, and with the help of some awesome parents we got it done :) Thanks to Mr Marsh for getting us started!

There is some more wood in Mr Marsh's shed if any other children or parents would like to add to it. 

Make sure you check out the garden to see what we add to it this week.

Miss Matich