Summer means.... Swimming!!

Today our school pool opened and what a great day for it to do so! We were all so excited to hop in this morning..even at 10.30. We had a lady here to help us today. We learned to make whirlpools, go under water, sit on the bottom of the swimming pool and make the first letter of our names in the water. It is so important for us in New Zealand to learn to be safe in the water. NZ summers mean swimming, not just in pools, but rivers, lakes and the ocean. We are looking forward to learning new skills to increase our water safety, as well as our confidence for us to take on the water this summer. Here's a shot of us in action this morning.

Compost is Cool!

Today we went on our first Senior Hub Trip! We went to the Eco-Drop in Bromley to learn all about how to make our own compost and worm farms. This will help us when we get our garden up and running!
We were split into two groups. The first group got on the bus as soon as school started.

Eager beavers ready to go! Tyler a bit unsure.... maybe the smell was too much...

We were met by Lou and Chris who work for the Christchurch City Council. They were going to be our educators for today. First off we learnt about the 6 things that compost has...1. Warmth 

2. Oxygen

3. Green food

4. Brown food

5. Micro-organisms and ..

6. Air!

We completed activities in groups and THEN got to put our learning into practise by making our own compost. Check us out....

Nalanee, Shyla and Nirvana trying to show examples of each element of compost

Getting ready to make our compost with Chris

Camryn adding our green food layer

We learnt that compost is like Lasagne... it has a lot of different layers

Tobey with the layer of water.

The second half of our day we focused on how to make a worm farm. We were put into 4 different groups and had to complete 4 stations. At these stations we, watered the garden with worm wee (remember to dilute this so that it doesn't burn the plants!), ripped up newspaper to make a worm bed, Separated the worm castings from the worms and put the worms into their cosy beds, and took out the citrus and onions/chilli/spicy food that worms don't like.

Shikarn found a delicious slug while he was looking through the worm fams

Ruavai thought the worm wee was gross!

Shyla was a pro with it :)

Jrae making the worms a nice bed

We learnt a lot this morning and we already have to many ideas about what we can do in our own garden. What a perfect way to learn about our environment- our topic for this term. Check back in a couple of weeks to see an update from our garden!

Bye Katie :(

Giving our cards to Katie

It was a sad day last week when our Kiwi Can leader Katie left us to start a new job. There were many hugs, a few tears and sad goodbyes. We made Katie lots of cards and made sure that her last day teaching Kiwi Can at Gilberthorpe School was a positive one.

We really enjoyed playing Bench Ball

We also started a new thing this week.. King and Queen of Kiwi Can. Ruavai and Shyla were chosen to be our first king and queen in Tawa. Next week they have to choose the next one, Shyla to pick the King, Ruavai to pick the Queen. I wonder who they will choose...

King and Queen of Kiwi Can/Tawa