Stream Monitoring Term 3

We completed our third stream monitoring for this year. The stream was in very good health with lots of big mayfly easily found. We had the added company of the resident black cat. It was very interested in what we were doing!

KEG's This Week

This week the children tested the soil. They found it to be quite sandy with an acidic pH value of around 6. The garden was weeded and forked over. We picked and compared the green to red lettuce leaves. The plants and seedlings were watered with the fertiliser we made. We planted peas in with the beans to make a 'legume' bed.

Planting at Poorman Stream

Yesterday a group of senior syndicate students helped Steve from Nelmac plant out some native plants alongside Poorman Stream. We planted harakeke, grasses and kowhai.

This is our third year of planting at this site and it is starting to look better with plants from previous plantings getting established. Despite this, however, this site also hosts every bad weed possible according to Steve.

Lets hope that with continued planting and a helping hand from Nelmac that one day this part of the stream becomes an attractive riparian site.

Movie Makers

Members of the Enviro team have been transformed into movie makers creating a movie for The Outlook for Someday competition.

Our movie is called, 'Taming the Litterbugs.'

It has been lots of fun.

Ecofest 2010

This year we took Susie to Ecofest.

Susie has a wearable art costume designed by Room 10 children based on native plants. She is wearing harakeke, manuka flowers, pohutakawa flowers, a kowhai necklace and a tree fern.

Learning about soil

We did an investigation into what bugs are in our soil. We found heaps of worms and centipedes.

KEGS at Work

We are now a part of the Kids Edible Garden programme so each week our facilitator, Lyndsey, works with children in the garden.

This week we were putting coffee grinds around the garden as free fertiliser. We then made our own fertiliser with chamomile.

We also got to play a game to teach us the Maori names for the vegetables.