Hard-working students, teachers and whānau at Grovetown School came together on the last day of Term 2 to plant nearly 600 native shrubs and trees alongside the school creek. Most of the plants were donated by Champion Freight, and some were grown at school.
Tamariki at Seymour Kindergarten celebrated the opening of their new bike track on Tuesday morning. It looks amazing, and will clearly be well-used and encourage the tamariki into another outdoor space. This is the first project to have support from the Marlborough Enviroschools Action Fund alongside some great community and business input. Applications for the action fund are open until the end of this term. We encourage you to work with your students to put in an application, and look forward to seeing more innovative ideas....
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Despite it being the shortest day of the year, students at all three Marlborough colleges celebrated 'Bike to School Day' last week. Students who travelled to school by bike, foot, skateboard or bus were rewarded with hot drinks and prizes. Three Queen Charlotte College students biked all the way from Havelock, picking up another cyclist from Momorangi Bay along the way (pictured above)! Top marks for dedication, people! Thank you to our environmental leaders at Marlborough Girls' College, Marlborough Boys' College and Queen Charlotte College for making a difference by organising the celebrations and encouraging their classmates to consider using environmentally-friendly transport to get to school. We can't wait to see what else you have planned for...
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It's not just July, it's 'Plastic Free July'! A group of students at Witherlea School have got a head-start on Plastic Free July, and have spent all term learning about what happens to our waste. They have visited Marlborough’s landfill and the resource recovery centre, which has given them a whole new perspective on how much work goes into taking care of the things that they have thrown ‘away’. Following their exploration, the students have taken action, by designing and then creating useful objects out of recycled materials – particularly single-use plastics. Check out some of their creations:
Marlborough Kindergartens celebrated Matariki with a special event at Monkey Bay early last Sunday morning. Children and teachers from kindergartens throughout Marlborough were welcomed to Monkey Bay by the sound of the putatara. They sang waiata, enjoyed shared kai, listened to korero about the Matariki story, and were treated to a bonfire and a beautiful dawn at the beach. The celebration, which is in its third year, was the culmination of all of the learning and celebrations that have been going on at individual kindergartens throughout June. It is wonderful to see our tamariki, whānau and kaiako coming together for this very special New Zealand celebration. We would love to hear about other celebrations that happened around Marlborough...
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At Mayfield Kindergarten, tamariki and kaiako really value whānau coming in to share their special skills and knowledge. The tamariki had a visit from a very special person this month: Nani Heather spent time sharing her knowledge of Māori medicine/rongoā with the children. With Nani Heather's guidance, the children collected mānuka leaves and flowers from the kindergarten's garden, and learnt how to soak them to remove the mānuka oil. They loved the chance to spend time learning with Nani Heather, and to experience something new from the world of Te Ao Māori. I wonder how many kindergartens and schools in Marlborough have plants that we could make rongoā out of? ...
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An enthusiastic group of student carpenters at Linkwater School took action to help their local living landscape this week, by building wooden boxes that will house predator traps. The students learnt all about how the traps work, and the special design that means that the traps are ideal for catching target predators like rats and stoats, but not pet cats and dogs, or native birds. The project was part of the amazing Kiwi Can programme, and was all about showing respect to the local community, by making the environment safer for our precious native species. The next step is for the students to take the traps home and record what they catch. We look forward...
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As we reach the shortest day for 2017, we are remembering summer-fun in the garden at Canvastown and Fairhall schools. In Term 1, as part of their investigation into ecology and diversity in the garden, the children at Canvastown School went on an insect hunt, learning to recognise the insects that live in their garden (top left image). Insects have an important role to play in an organic garden, we have to care for them as much as we do the plants we grow. The children wanted to encourage more insects to live and work in their garden so they decided to make a bug hotel out of recycled pallets and building materials as...
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Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to our blog! Our purpose is to share and to celebrate the wonderful learning and action that is going on in Marlborough’s schools and kindergartens - nearly all of which are ‘Enviroschools’. We hope to help connect tamariki, students, whānau, teachers, school support staff, the wider Marlborough community and the Enviroschools team with one another, through the common purpose of caring for each other, our schools and centres, our region, our country and our world. We would love to share your stories in whatever way you think is best: writing, artwork, photographs or video clips - it’s up to you! Please send them to us using the form on this...
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