Making a Change

This week the whole school collected all the rubbish to see if we had made a difference after all our efforts to bring litter free lunches, recycle and reuse things. We had to put the compost straight out because it would get too smelly otherwise.

Most of the pile was recycling.

We are going to keep this up next term - which means we will sustain our efforts.

Paper making

As part of our topic on sustainability we are learning about recycling. So our group decided to make paper. During the week we began making paper.

First we had to rip up the old pieces of paper. We worked  in groups to make a bucket full of paper. We added water to the paper and left it to soak.


 
On Friday we worked at the orange table to make our own piece of paper. The pulp in the bucket had to be put into the blender. Then on it went - whizz, whizz, whizz.

 

Then we had to pour the mixture onto the sieve. We got spoons and smoothed out the pulp. 

 

Next we had to hold the sieve on its side to drain all the water out.

 We tipped the sieve over and out fell our wet piece of paper.




We had to fix up any holes by using the back of the spoon.








Then we put it in the sun to dry.

This was a fun way to use our old paper.

Cupcakes

Last week we made cupcakes with Mrs Barr. We had to carefully measure the ingredients, then put them into the kitchen whizz and turn it on to mix them up. Next we got a teaspoon and put the mixture into cupcake holders.
Mrs Barr put them in the oven to bake.
Then we got to decorated them with pink icing and a lolly.
They were yummy.

Litter Free Lunches

 We were challenged to have a litter- free lunch. This means there is to be NO litter in our lunchbox. This may sound like an easy thing to do, but it takes a lot of thinking and organising to get your lunchbox to be totally litter free. So far we have 5 children who bring a litter-free lunch to school. Some of us are trying very hard to remember not to have any packets, boxes or gladwrap in our lunchbox. By the end of this term we hope we will ALL have no litter in our lunchboxes.

We love the Red Cross

On Friday Robbie from the Red Cross came to talk to us about the people who help us in an emergency. We talked about teachers and parents, but most of all we found out about services that help us. There is police, ambulance, civil defence, city council and of course the red cross.

Robbie then told us about the wonderful work the Red Cross do. At the end he left each family a special torch/radio that you can charge up by winding it up. We love the Red Cross.

Arbor Day planting

On Tuesday it was Arbor Day so we went out to our Native planting area to help plant some seedlings. Ms Loveridge showed us where the seedlings were to go and how to plant them. We had to squeeze the pot and pull the seedling out. Then we had to tickle the roots before we put the plant into the hole the senior boys had dug for us. Afterwards we had to scoop all the soil back into the hole and stomp the soil down.




We planted some kowhai, pitosporums, coprosmas and whispering grasses.

One of the boys then watered the seedlings in. We will be the guardians of this area to protect it from others who might want to walk all over the little plants.

Sardines

Mrs Craib asks us to sit in 'sardines' on the mat. So what are sardines????
We asked Mrs Craib to tell us what they were.
So rather than just telling us Mrs Craib bought some sardines from the shop and we used our 5 senses to find out about them.
First we opened the tin and then looked inside. 'They're fish', said Potene.
We listened to them - 'they're not answering back,' said Abyan. Ha, ha, ha - of course they didn't make a noise, but we knew that!
Then we smelt them. 'Oo, pooh,' said Thom. 'They are fish.'
Then we got to touch them to take one to taste.

For some of us this was a huge risk. So we all took the challenge and had a little taste.

Some of us thought they were yummy.

'They were delicious,' said Frances and Caleb.

We sit in sardines when Mrs Craib wants us close together on the mat. We saw that sardines are close together in the tin.

Snow!!

It's snowing today.

 


Here are some photos of our school.
Stay home and keep warm.