Term 2 Week 8 Bella's Bird Feeder Design #1 and Garlic Planting

On Monday Bella brought in a bird feeder she had made at home from a re-cycled ice-cream container and some sticks. We filled it with bird seed, and hung it in the tree outside Ti kouka/ Room 7.

Great job Bella!

On Wednesday it was the shortest day of the year. This is the day Garlic is traditionally planted and it is harvested on the longest day- Friday December 22nd.

The Enviro Kids all came to Room 7 and we watched the You Tube clip on how to plant garlic. We learnt you plant the garlic about a hands width apart, and a thumbs length deep!

Then we took our cloves out to our raised beds and planted them with the pointy bit up!

If you want to plant some at home, it is best to buy some New Zealand grown garlic like this, as the garlic we buy at the supermarket can be imported from other countries, and some of it is treated so it won't grow!

We are looking forward to watching our garlic grow, and to harvesting it at the end of the year.

Bronze Award

On Friday the 16th of June Heather Graham (the Enviro Schools Regional Co-ordinator) came to our assembly to present our school with it's Bronze Award Certificate.

Enviro Kids Club members Cade Ingerson and Liam Macdonald collected the certificate on our behalf.

Bronze Recognition takes 3 years to achieve so this certificate celebrates the work of all the teachers and children who have been involved at Birchwood School since it became an Enviro School in 2013.


Congratulations to everyone who has helped Birchwood School attain this level.
You can now see our Bronze status on the bottom right of our Enviro School sign outside the office.

To find out more about Enviro Schools you can check out the Enviro Schools website.

Term 2 Week 7

Angus, Ava, Mia, Bella, and Isla came to Enviro Kids Club on Monday. 

We talked about what kind of birds we would like to see more of in our school grounds after our birdspotting last week. The children all said they would like to see and hear more tui.

We looked up different types of tui bird feeders on the internet and then we talked about how we could try to make one at school.

This was the best birdfeeder we found on the New Zealand Forest and Bird website. We like that it is made from recycled material. 

(Click on the word birdfeeder to be taken to the website and you can try making one at home too!)

Then we went out to put the bird seed that Mr Schneider gave us in different trees around the school to encourage more birds to come. We wanted to wait until Winter to put it out as this is when a lot of birds have less food available. We saw some sparrows eating the seed almost straight away!

After that we watered our seedlings which are slowly getting bigger... the ones that haven't been munched by slugs and snails! Our celery is growing the best.

We checked on our bulbs after that. There are more beginning to push through the soil and bark in the bed at the end of room 9. If you look really closely you can see more than ten in this photo...

Next week is Matariki, and the shortest day of the year so we are going to plant garlic which is traditionally planted on the shortest day, and harvested on the longest.

If you would like to plant some at home here is a great clip that shows you how:

How to Plant Garlic

Term Two Week 6

On Thursday Angus, Ava, Mia, Bella, Macey, Isla and Liam all came to Enviro Kids Club. 

We couldn’t have Enviro kids club on Monday because it was the Queens Birthday holiday. 

We went to check on the bulbs, and we were happy to see lots of them are starting to come up. 

We also checked on our seedlings which are slowly getting bigger. 

Then we went on a walk around the school to see how many different birds we could see and hear.

As we walked around the school we spotted 27 sparrows, a friendly fantail, 2 chaffinches, a greenfinch, 2 tui, and a seagull! 

 Here is the friendly fantail (piwakawaka) we saw. 

 Here is the cheeky seagull we saw.

Here are a couple of the sparrows we saw.

We heard the birdsong of the sparrows, fantail and tui. Here are the sparrows:

We saw 34 birds in 30 minutes and we had lots of fun! 

Term 2 Week 5

This week Maddison, Isla, Alecia, Liam, Max, Cade, Evie, Mella and Daniella all came to continue our investigation into the biodiversity of our school grounds and all the different types of living things we share our school grounds with...  

First we watched a clip on You Tube called Yucky Bugs Are Good For Us. If you click on the underlined title you will be to be taken to the clip...

Then we went bug hunting! Here is what we found:

 

First we discovered some moth cocoons hanging on this plant in the garden at the end of Room 9.

 Then we discovered a whole lot of worms and some centipedes (that were too fast for us to photograph) in the compost by the senior playground.

Cade found this spider in the manuka (tea) tree behind the senior playground.

And we found this tiny shiny blue-black beetle too!

We also spotted this amazing fungi growing on a tree stump over near the fence near the entrance by the kindy that we hadn't noticed before...

We had great fun bug hunting, now we just have to see if we can identify them! Next week we are going to see how many different types of birds we can spot if the weather is fine!