Room 8 Caterpillars.

The biggest one.

The little runt caterpillar.

Already our little caterpillars have grown so much. They are eating the leaves quite quickly.This is what the looked like on Friday. Our little runt caterpillar looked like it had doubled in size over night. We were worried that he might be too weak. He looks happy now !

Seeing a Miracle.

Mrs Ryan bought all the classes in Year 3 and 4 a swan plant and we planted it. We were lucky enough to see a movie clip made by Mr Dobson of one of the caterpillars on Mrs Ryan's plant change into a pupa. It was very exciting . And then the bell rang and it was back to class.....
We hope to get eggs and caterpillars on our plant and see them hatch into monarch butterflies. Our butterfly friendly garden is starting to happen.

SCHOOL-GEN AWARD SECOND PLACE TO MURITAI.

 

SCHOOL-GEN AWARD SECOND PLACE TO MURITAI.

Many of you will have seen the excellent Eco Houses in the Senior School and the foyer recently. The entire year 7-8 group were awarded a special prize for school performance in the nationwide SchoolGen competition and Hazel Sisson was awarded 2^nd prize overall for her effort. Well done Senior School.

This is a huge achievement and acknowledges the amazing inquiry skills and efforts of the students

See the movie on Muritai TV about the Eco-Houses created

Electricity Monitors 2

A new club hits the classrooms of Muritai!

Chess Club is up and running!

We meet every Wednesday to have some fun playing chess. We have been learning about the names of the chess pieces and how they move. It is open to Years 2-8.

Little Kids Can be very Clever!

Today the newest members of our school, Room 16, came around to show us all the rubbish that had been found at school in one day. It was full of packaging from chips, snack bars and all sorts of things like that.
Mrs Mills showed us a really good lunchbox that would be good to keep our lunch fresh but we wouldn't need to use gladwrap or foil. We should try and get one of those next time.

New Trees for New students

A small group of new entrance students helped plant six natives in the Senior School Enviro Zone, with the help of some 7 & 8 students. These trees will be big and strong when the new entrance students reach year 7 & 8

Electricity Monitors

Room 11's important Enviro Job

We are a Green Gold School but that doesn't stop people dropping litter in our playground. Yuk!
Mostly we found packaging from food, mandarin peels and fruit scraps.We found a lot under or behind the bushes outside Mr Bird's office window. That is not nice for our environment.

Please put them in the bin and don't throw the litter on the ground!

Gardening with the Lions

Today, 10 students from Muritai School received $300 worth of gardening equipment from the Eastbourne Lions Club.  They spent the afternoon eating, drinking tea and gardening with the Lions.

 

Not these lions!!! 

These Lions

 

 Here's a few of the tools that were donated.

They were given trowels, spades, pitch forks, a dozen pairs of gloves, seeds, vegetable plants, flowers and a seed raising kit.

 

Together, they weeded, composted and planted the new plants. 

Here's them in action.

HUGE THANKS FOR YOUR GENEROSITY!!!

Ready, Steady, Cook!

Last week six lucky Year 7s and 8s ventured to Blue Carrot Catering in Petone to learn the tricks of the cheffing trade.  Under the tutelage of Head Chef Adrian Hornsby, these kids are aiming to be the chefs who will cook at the end of the year's Art Aucton. Money raised will go to future gardening projects at  Muritai.  This is part of Muritai's way of being sensible sustainable members of our community.  We hope to grow lots of vegetables so we have plenty of different dishes we can cook to the Art Auction.



Thank you so much Blue Carrot Catering for giving your time, produce and premises to spark a love of food and cooking in these young ones.  They simply loved it and have begun cooking at home for their family.

MIRO – Mainland Island Restoration Operation

Today nine students got the chance to find out all about the plant nursery at GNS in Seaview.

It is a very cool operation and the students really enjoyed being involved in the planting process and supporting MIRO.

MIRO is a volunteer group who work in partnership with Greater Wellington Regional Council.

Their 'Vision' is:

• To protect and restore the natural forest and lakes ecosystem.
• To eliminate pests, both plant and animal
• To see vulnerable trees, birds, insects and fish flourish again
• To reintroduce native species lost to the Park
• The were very to receive same lovely native trees, which will be planted at the back of the Senior School.

http://www.miro.org.nz

Catering for our kids passion...

Four dishes in an hour? surely not....

But this was the case for six lucky Year 7&8 children, read on and see how they were able to step up to the challenge.

On Monday the 27th June we attended a 'ready steady cook' session with the Executive Chef Aidy Hornsby, from Blue Carrot Catering Company.

The Kids traveled to the Blue Carrot Kitchen in Petone, where they met with Adrian, were split into two teams ( girls Vs Boys), presented with 4 recipes and had an hour to 'cook off' against each other. The girls team worked with Aidy, and the boys with chef Mark. These two were super patient, humorous and really great at allowing the kids to do all the hands on work.

The dishes were: leek and Potato soup, courgette and spinach mini tarts, pumpkin and spinach fritters with dipping sauce and a divine green hummus and carrot sticks. Aidy had created dishes which were specifically chosen to showcase the veg that we are currently growing in our school garden.

This training is in preparation for the Term 4 Art Auction, where the children will be in charge of cooking the nibbles for the evening. The next step is for the 'chef's' to meet with the Yr 4 gardeners (their veg suppliers) and discuss what they require to be planted out ready for Term 4.

So much fun, so much generosity from Gordon and Nicole, Aidy, Mark and the whole Blue Carrot Team, and a huge amount of pride at how our children performed!

Check out the Blue carrot Catering web site for your next function, big or small, their food will always be divine. www.bluecarrotcatering.co.nz

Making Compost - Using our Resources WELL

Some the of the Year 4 Gardeners have been inquiring into:  

How do you make COMPOST? 

Compost is very important in a vege garden.  It is something you add to soil for plants to eat so they grow big and strong...and yummy.  

They found out that some of the main ingredients in compost are:

Dry leaves, green leaves, grass clippings and food scraps.   

PROBLEM!!!  We have lots of food scraps but not enough leaves or grass clippings.  Where oh where could we find leaves???

Finally, after much deliberation, these kids thought of Mark the caretaker who seems to have a lot of leaves at his disposal everyday.

So, the gardeners sat down with him in the library,  joined forces and made a plan for Mark to put the leaves and any grass clippings from around the school into the food scrap bin or directly into the compost bin.  Now we can make loads of compost to feed the plants.

GREAT WORK Rosa, Eden, Zoe and Rochelle  - GOOD SOLUTION!!!

A New Enviro Project at Muritai

Muritai School is having an art auction at the end of the year. The Senior Enviro team have recruited some younger children to help grow yummy vegetables so some Senior cooks can create snacks for people who come to the art auction. Here is a short movie that shows the Enviro team beginning the new project.

Eastbourne Rocky Shore

Now Thats Fair!

Today we were lucky enough to have Darren from the Salvation Army come and talk to us about international Fair Trade.

We were stunned to learn that in some villages in West Africa up to 9 women and children a week can be stolen while they are out walking to fetch water, and then forced to work in virtual slave-like conditions to produce foods, sports wear and clothing.

The focus was on fair trade farms which produce coco beans for cadbury chocolate and bananas. Fair trade means that the farmers rights are being protected- they are able to get a good price for their beans and therefore are able to have a better quality of life.

Did you know that some of the clothes we buy in New Zealand are made in Bangladesh- they earn an average of 25 cents an hour!! What fair trade is doing is increasing their standard of living, fighting for their rights so they can send their children to school, have medical care and ensuring they have a voice.

If you buy fair trade chocolate, clothes or sports balls you are helping people to lift themselves out of poverty. INFACT if you buy fair-trade bananas 2786 children get to go to school. Anything from Trade-Aid is Fair-Trade.

This all fits nicely into our sustainable living unit. Teaching the children about sustainable practices not only means protecting the earths resources but also looking out the earths people who are unable to protect themselves.

Darren impressed the teachers by giving us a tin of fare trade "Avalanche Coffee", and YES it tasted just that little bit better, knowing that by drinking this brand we were putting wells into villages in Costa Rica!

We were shocked at how much corruption and dishonesty there is in the world, and how the people who have the power are so willing to 'rip' off their own people.

We want to encourage all our families to buy fair-trade products.
We want to stand up and CONSIDER other peoples situations around the world. Our personal challenge is to make a positive difference through the choices we will make throughout our lives.

Yum! Pumpkin Soup

It was all smiles in the Senior School today. Students were lining up for homemade(schoolmade) pumpkin soup, made from our very own garden grown pumpkins. Ms Berry used a special recipe passed down from her great, great grandmother and seemed to be the recipe for success. One child was heard saying it was the best soup they had tasted. Another student who has never liked soup had 3 cups. Sue and Carole in the office have requested the recipe (it must be good)

At a cost of $4.95 Ms Berry was able to feed 45 students and 6 adults.

A New Enviro Project at Muritai

These kids have begun work on an exciting new project at Muritai School.  Their aim is to grow vegetables in the school gardens and use the produce to create nibbles for an Art Auction.  The money raised will be used for more gardens and garden equipment.

 

Yesterday, some of these Enviro leaders researched which vegetables they could grow at this time of year.   They then drafted a letter to send to a local chef (Adrian Hornsby).  The children asked him what recipes they could use and if he could be part of the project.

 

 These three upcoming leaders helped begin work on a new project at Muritai School.  They spear headed a team of Year 4s who are in charge of clearing the land of weeds and old plants, making room for new vegetable seedlings.  

This week they will be finding keen gardeners to help dig compost into the soil so the plants have lots to eat and so the vegetables grow big and strong. 

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!

2011 colourful start - Molly H

A wonderful start to the 2011 school year.
It has been great coming back to school to see a garden full of flowers and veggies!
The garden with so many amazing things growing including corn, tomatoes, zucchinis, leeks, spring onion, garlic, lettuce and more!

Also a few years ago, our old caretaker Ted, sprinkled pumpkin seeds in the compost, so now we have a lovely big pumpkin patch growing next to the compost bins.
The new year sevens have been excited and enthusiastic about helping out in the garden and the Year Eights have been teaching them about the things we do in the garden over the past couple of weeks

Hopefully this year we will be able to do lots of work in the garden and plant some more yummy vegetables!

Room 15 & 3 Clean up!

On an usually sunny Wednesday afternoon we took our Room 3 buddies down to the beach to search for rubbish! At the same time we made a tally of the rubbish we collected to assist us with our statistics unit. We collected a total of 515 pieces of rubbish!!

We plan to collate the data and present it in a graph. (watch this space)

Thanks Room 3 for your fantastic help!

Our Beautiful Garden

When we planted our garden we also planted some iris bulbs in the corners of the each class plot. They have flowered now and if you look in our garden you can see these huge beautiful flowers. They are delicate purple and cream with splashes of yellow. Each plant has at least 2 flowers growing off the stem. 

Spring is around the corner!

Wellesley College Visit

On Friday, Wellesley College's Enviro-school team came for a visit. They listened to a fantastic speech from Sofija, Zoë and Verity and then looked around the wonderful gardens of Muritai School. They did some exploring in the senior school gardens and loved the green boat. Here are some pictures of the day.

Our Garden

Our garden is growing very well. The carrots are getting really big and now we have a few sugar snap peas. First we saw the flowers and they have turned into little pea pods. When they are bigger we will eat them.

Introducing The New Line Of G.O.O.S Boxes

Verity and Louis have been busy remaking new G.O.O.S boxes so that every class has a new G.O.O.S box.

G.O.O.S stands for "good on one side".
We use G.O.O.S boxes to reduce the amount of paper we use.
Classes use the boxes for different things from drawing to drafting work. We are very pleased to see that the G.O.O.S boxes have been used very well, it is a sign of your appreciation that environmental sustainability is the way of the future.

This is why Verity and Louis have been working so hard to get the new G.O.O.S boxes into your class rooms. This is the final product:

We hope you enjoy using the new G.O.O.S boxes.

By Hazel Sisson

Matariki and the Great Big Enormous Carrots!

We planned to harvest some of our roly poly carrots on Matariki. Today is the day of the first moon after the arrival of the matariki stars in our sky. We had to pull and pull until the giant carrots gradually eased out of the ground. "Wow ", we all shouted. Most of the other carrots still need to grow a bit more so we have left them in the ground to grow. Mrs Chao washed and cut them up and we ate a bit each .

They were sweet and fresh and we loved them!