MURITAIS PASSING IT FORWARD!

Amazing gift of giving

Thank you to all those who donated shoes and warm coats to the 2013 Winter Drive. Your amazing efforts have helped others to have a warmer happier winter .

KEEPING KIDS COSY THIS WINTER!

Shoe Drive

This year we are being Every Day Heros.

After the huge success of the 'Jacket Drive', in April, we decided to collect shoes to donate to children who may not have warm footwear for winter.
Ms Berry's maths class spent the session sorting and classifying the MASSIVE amount of shoes collected.  Thanks to all those who donated their shoes and coats- YOU ARE AWESOME!

Restoring The Dunes!

The Year 5&6 kids have been working with the Eastbourne Dune Society to learn about, and help restore, the dunes.  Judith McDougal, a founding member of the EDS, came into Room 14 spent time educating us about why native dune plants are so important.  Next a group of ten students from room 14 went to the beach and helped weed and plant out a section of the dunes.  We have actually adopted a section of the beach as our own taonga- it is just in front of the Eastbourne Community Centre.  It was amazing to see the damage that the big storm has caused- Lucky we are going to be helping the EDS, because the clean up is a huge job!

Thank you Muritai School Carnival!

After the Muritai School carnival the carnival committee donated  lots of plants and seedlings for our school gardens! We now have colourful livingston daisies to attract monarch butterflies to our butterfly garden, succulents in the dry areas and herbs and vegetables growing in the vegetable gardens.
Thank you to the keen gardening team from year 3 & 4 who gave up their lunchtime to plant and then help the year 1 & 2 students plant and water their seedlings too.
Thank you too to the Muritai School carnival committee!

The Solar Eclipse

Yesterday there was great excitment as we went outside to view a solar eclipse of the sun.
We learned that the word eclipse means move in front of, and the moon was moving across the sky, in front the sun. 

Stan Swan made a viewer  for us with a camera and a  tripod a dentist's mirror partly covered in tin foil. He projected the image of the eclipse on a classroom wall.

We were all able to watch the eclipse with special solar glasses.We know that looking at the sun without solar glasses can damage your eyes!!!!!

Back in the classroom Mr Swan helped us model the eclipse with an apple,an orange and a lemon as the moon,the sun and the earth.

Planting Caterpillar Food

Today Eastbourne scientist Stan Swan visited Room 1 to help us solve the problem of not having enough swan plants in Eastbourne to feed all the caterpillars we are rearing in our school butterfly garden and for the Monarch butterflies to lay their eggs on! 
He bought us little peat pots and lots of swan plant seeds to plant and take home for our own Eastbourne gardens. The pots swelled up like magic when we added water! We poked a seed into each one with our finger.

Monarch caterpillars only eat swan plants! Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on swan plants too! We need to grow lots and lots of swan plants so the caterpillars will have enough food to grow and pupate into healthy butterflies!
We want to enjoy seeing lots of Monarchs in Eastbourne this summer!
Thank you Mr. Swan!

Room 8's Water Carrier Challenge.

This week our challenge was to design a creative carrier that could carry 1 litre across the playground without spilling or getting tired. See what we came up with!

Year 5&6 Gardeners muck in for summer...

Wednesday... Ms Berry's gardening team went to Mitre 10 mega and gathered all of the ingredients we needed to create new Yr5&6  garden area.

 Preparing the pots

 Adding the soil and potting mix

 courgettes, sweet 100's, scarlet runners, rhubarb.

 The Year 5&6 team...

 The lovely new plants... watch how quickly they spring forth...

 New food scraps bin... next to the 2 new compost bins

 Germinating box is now filled with Scarlett Runners and Butter Bean seeds...

 Soil and strawberry hay for the lovely year 4 strawberry plants.

Mean Green House Competition

After a whole lot of blood, sweat and yes even tears 4 students from Room 13 have finally completed their Schoolgen Mean Green House Competition entry. The students were required to explore eco houses, draw their own house, build it and then create a video that shared all the fascinating details of their house. Here is the result:

What a Waste!!!

WOW! today Ms Berry and Jean Pugh took 20 Enviro-leaders on a tour of the Hutt Cities waste plants.  The aim was to discover where our waste goes when we either put it in the recycling bin, or throw it in our wheelie bins.  We began by looking at the big ideas behind why we were going on this adventure... what happens to our waste and where we think it goes.

Firstly, we started with the wheelie bins.  Destination Landfill!  We were shocked to see how much recyclable and reusable waste people were stuffing into their bins.  Did you know that when you chuck your waste into a wheelie bin it ALL gets put directly into the ground?  WOULD you put rubbish into your front garden? NO!!!!!!

BIG IDEA FROM DESTINATION 1: If we reduce the amount of waste going into our wheelie bins we are saving our earth from being dug up.  Would you like a massive landfill being set up in your back yard? but sorting out our rubbish into re-usables and recyclables we could make a landfill last 80years instead of only 40yrs!

Secondly, we visited Earth-link.  Earth-link is an amazing privately run 'not for profit' organization.  Its aim is to re-use old junk. at this massive warehouse they run operations such as the CURTAIN BANK. the idea is that people need to insulate their houses, however not every one can afford to buy curtains.  A lot of families are unable to afford to heat their houses, no curtains means X2 on your average power bill!!!!  SO they re-use peoples curtains, giving them to families for FREE! They also train people on how to take copper out of washing machines, fix old, dirty or broken electronic devices and sew recycled clothing.  All of the money from the sales of these 'recycled' items goes directly back to the people who work there!!

BIG IDEA FROM DESTINATION 2: if we re-use, or recycle waste and products we use less raw materials from the earth!  ( it takes 500,000 kgs of rock to mine 1 kg of copper!!!)

Lastly: Our final destination was the Allbright waste recycling plant in Seaview.  This place was awesome!!! All of the rubbish you put into this green recycling bins gets collected and ends up here.  This plant sorts, compacts and exports everything from glass to paper to plastic.   These guys make a huge contribution to our planets well-being!  It was amazing to learn that it does make a difference to sort your recycling!!! WASH YOUR RECYCLABLES!AND did you know that reduced plastic, card and glass is wellingtons second largest export!!!

BIG IDEA FROM DESTINATION 3:  Sorting out your waste makes a huge invaluable contribution to protecting our world- YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

We will be using the knowledge, excitement and determination which we gleaned from today's event to re-develop how we manage our waste at Muritai School.  As a green-gold school we are always looking at how we can do things better.  Thank-you so much to Hutt City Councl for funding this excellent learning opportunity!
GET OUT YOUR GREEN BINS!!!!!