Week 5 Nelson Enviro Schools Action Project Fund

At Birchwood School and Birchwood Kindergarten our children love to eat fruit!  They already enjoy watching it grow and ripen on the few fruit trees we have, and eating it! 

They also love the look and smell of the blossom flowers, and watching bees pollinate them (from a safe distance without being stung!)

In Term 2 Miss Raven's application for $500 to fund an Action Learning Project between Birchwood School and Birchwood Kindy was accepted.

We would like to use this money to purchase some fruit trees to share between our two centres. 

As we have had ongoing issues with the plants in our raised beds being pulled out, we hope that larger fruit trees may fare better from vandals. 

Birchwood Kindergarten would like to plant a seedless grape along a fence that we share, and a blueberry bush and lemon tree in their grounds. They would share the fruit of these with Birchwood School. 

Birchwood School would like to plant some more fruit trees (the types to be decided following consultation with the students, their families, staff and the B.O.T) near the path that links the kindergarten and the school. 

We will all help plant, take care of, watch grow and (hopefully) share the fruits of in a few years time.

We will plan and undertake the work together so that this project will be a catalyst to continuing to grow the relationships between the school and kindergarten.

As a first step, this week we went for a walk with our Caretaker Mr Gillians and had a look to see what fruit trees we have. 

We found: 1 lemon meyer, 1 greengager plum, 1 omega plum, 2 pear trees, and 2 Feijoa trees 

The problems: Their flowers are pulled off so we never get any plums. People steal the pears before we get to eat them.The fruit is picked by children before it gets a chance to ripen.

At Birchwood Kindergarten:

3 Feijoa trees, 1 Mandarin tree and 1 Apple tree

Next we will consult the students, families, staff and Board of trustees about what type of trees they would like to plant.

Term Three Week 2 Getting Ready to Grow

This week the Enviro Club worked together to make up our new 4 tier grow house for the seedlings we are going to grow soon.

Here is everyone helping to put it up...

Miss Raven was really impressed with the teamwork and 'GRIT' we showed as we followed the instructions to assemble it.

Here we all are in front of the finished product!

Once we had assembled it we looked at the back of all the seed packets Miss Raven brought in the holidays for us to sow this term and next...

We learnt how to read when they can be planted where we live here in Nelson by looking at a colour coded map... 

All of these seeds need to be planted in Spring so we just have to wait now until the 1st of September!

Term 3 Week One STRAWBERRIES

On Monday we learnt about strawberry plants. After reading about them, we went and planted our four strawberry plants in pots of special soil for growing super strawberries!

Once we had planted our strawberries we went and put tins and plastic bottles with their tops and bottoms taken off over our surviving seedlings to see if this will save them from the slugs and snails!

After that we checked on our daffodils and garlic...

We were happy to see that our daffodils had grown a lot over the holidays.

We were happy to discover our garlic has sprouted too during the break too. Yay!

Term 2 Week 10

First of all we did a puzzle all about the life cycle of a plant. 

We had to look at all the illustrations, read all the captions and then put them in the order of a plants life cycle. 

The seniors helped the middle and junior students. 

Once we had worked it out we glued it down.

Then we went and weeded our raised beds and put down some more snail bait after the weekends heavy rain.

We hope our plants will survive the holidays.

We are also looking forward to seeing how much more our daffodils will have grown after our break!

We discussed what we would like to try and grow next term and came up with these plants:

basil

beans

capsicums

carrots 

cucumbers

lettuces

parsley

peas

strawberries

sunflowers

tomatoes    

Because of the problems we have had with vandals ripping out our plants on weekends we are thinking we may just plant the seeds and grown them until they are big enough to put into a garden, then take them home and grow them.   

Term Two Week 9 Bella's Bird feeder Design #2

This week Bella showed us all her second bird feeder design.

This one she made from a pine cone and a piece of string.

You fill the pine cone with peanut butter or honey, then you roll it in birdseed.

Bella made two... one with honey, and the other with peanut butter. 

We went outside and hung them in some trees in front of Room 7 so we can see them out the window.

After school Miss Raven saw some wax-eyes (tauhou) feasting on them!

Click on the link to find out more about them!

After we hung the bird feeders we watered the plants and bulbs and checked on our garlic.

We were really really sad to find that vandals had pulled out most of our cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli seedlings and some of our spinach.

We hope there isn't any more damage over the holidays!