Vandalism

Sadly the swan plants we planted were tipped over and broken on the weekend before the holidays, and the other plants in the beds were all ripped out in the first weekend of the holidays by vandals.

😪

Luckily our lovely Mum who looks after the chickens on the weekends replanted those in the raised beds for us. Hopefully we can think of a way to stop this from happening.

In week 10 some of us did some more weeding.

Others helped Miss Raven plant the flowers and swan plants we got from Mr Schneider at the launch of our new Whole School Science Inquiry "We're All In This Together'. We planted the flowering plants around the edge of the raised beds to attract pollinators, and the swan plants in pots to grow big and strong on the staff room deck ready for next years hungry monarch caterpillars!

It started to rain so everyone went back to class, but Liam stuck it out and helped Miss Raven by planting these swan plants all by himself. Thanks Liam! The caterpillars will love you...

Here are what they looked like planted...

What to plant?

In Week 9 we talked about what we want to plant in our raised beds... The Enviro Kids Club have decided they would like to plant a salad garden and a pizza topping garden in the two unpainted raised beds, and the Seaview Block children are going to plant edible flowers in the Mitre 10 orange raised bed. We also discussed what we could do to discourage vandals. Aliyah suggested putting chicken wire around the sides of the beds and Kaiah suggested we make some signs. Miss Raven emptied all the amazing soil from the compost bins from last year and put in on the beds ready for us to plant.

Moturoa Mission

On the 22nd of March two senior teams competed in the Moturoa Mission. Daniella, Jade, Aliyah and Mikaela were in one team, and Saskia, Mella, Nevaeh and Hunter were in the other team. Mrs Heath took them along to Greenslade Park on Rough Island and they had a great time! They told us they all liked the huge Maitai River board game. Their favourite activity was the bug challenge where you had to take a photo of a bug you found and post it to a website. They said they would all do it again, and recommended the younger Enviro Kids Club kids to give it a go when they are seniors. Well done all of you for representing Birchwood at this Enviro Schools Challenge! Thank you Mrs Heath for helping them to prepare, and thank you to the parents who took the students on the day.

Click HERE for an an article about the event.

Together we GROW

It rained in Week 7 so we stayed inside and discussed possible design ideas for the egg cartons we sell our chicken eggs in. In Week 8, while the seniors were off doing the Moturoa Mission some of the Enviro Kids got together to pick up the ti kouka (cabbage tree) leaves and weeded the garden by the library. Thank you Mrs Harpur for taking this photo of us all!

Weeding the Raised Beds

In week six we split into three teams lead by senior students and we went and weeded the raised beds in front of the chicken coops. We worked really hard pulling out all the weeds. In the end they looked fantastic! Didn't we do a great job.

The chickens return..

In Week 5 there was a much better turnout of enthusiastic children who want to be Enviro Club Kids and the chickens returned! We went to visit them. We discussed what they eat and we talked about possible names for them. We thought it would be a good idea to give them names that start with the letters G, R O and W to match our school values... But the decision is up to Mrs Hawkswell and the children in Seaview Block who are taking care of the chickens with some help from some senior students, the kindergarten, and a lovely Birchwood School family who live nearby and who are feeding and checking on them on the weekends.

Enviro Kids Club 2017

This is Miss Raven. She is the new teacher in charge of the Enviro Kids Club this year. She called our first Enviro Kids Club meeting for 2017 in Term 1, Week 4 once she found out when the chickens were coming back from their holiday after our awesome caretaker fixed all the holes in their coop.

Only seven super keen kids showed up to the first meeting: Daniella, Jade, Thea-Jane, Talia, Bella, Max, Cade, Mikaela and Kaiyah so we all decided to try and encourage some of our friends to come along and join us for our next meeting.