Tuesday, 20 December 2016

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Enviro Leaders Speaking at the Stratford District ...

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Enviro Leaders Speaking at the Stratford District ...: On the 13th December our Enviro Leaders were invited to speak at the last Stratford District Council meeting of the year to share our school...

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Enviro Leaders Speaking at the Stratford District ...

Sunday, 11 December 2016

Enviroschool Day @ St Joseph's Waitara

Some photos from our awesome Enviroschool's Day at St Joseph's on the 4th of November. We had visitors from DOC, Tiaki te Mauri o Paraninihi, Rotokare and Enviroschools running workshops with the students.

Monday, 28 November 2016

Room 4's Class Blog: Fairgo ad awards video

Room 4's Class Blog: Fairgo ad awards video

We came second well done Toko School, Room 4 and Mr Dillon!!!!

Thursday, 24 November 2016

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: The Taranaki Floral Art Society visited Toko Schoo...

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: The Taranaki Floral Art Society visited Toko Schoo...: Today our enviro class showed 67 ladies around our school to share our enviro learning. It was a lot of fun and they bought lots of our yu...

Friday, 18 November 2016

2016

Spotswood Primary Enviroday

2016 - What an amazing introduction to Enviroschools in North Taranaki!

It has been a privilege working with so many passionate students, teachers, principals, whānau and community groups this year. Your hard work and dedication to this important kaupapa is inspiring -thank you!!!

Kia tau ngā manaakitanga ki runga i koutou katoa. Have a great holiday and a Merry Christmas.

Rachael Ruakere
Enviroschools North Taranaki Facilitator.

Monday, 7 November 2016

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Check out our Pumpkin Patch Preparation

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Check out our Pumpkin Patch Preparation: Our Enviro Warriors are have been busy preparing our pumpkin patch. In autumn we put all our leaves into black bags to decompose. Today we...

Friday, 4 November 2016

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Sustainable Backyards

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Sustainable Backyards: Toko School is on the Sustainable Backyards Trail this year. Our students have had a lot of fun showing off our schools enviro initia...

Monday, 31 October 2016

Empowering Tamariki at Puketapu Kindergarten

Creating Mosaic Tiles at Puketapu Kindergarten

Kia ora koutou i te whanau o Enviroschools. EMPOWERING TAMARIKI ~
At Puketapu Kindergarten in Bell Block, tamariki have been enjoying the opportunity to be creative and design concrete tiles for their new vegetable gardens.
'Making art' involves experimentation, risk taking and uncertainty.
'MAKING' is vitally important in promoting forms of thinking that demand attention to the ways in which images are created and organized in this context.
Over the course of Term 4, children have gained a sense of emotional satisfaction, over the control they have ~ over the materials they have used and the autonomy they have had in the decisions they have made in creating, mini masterpieces for creating the edging of our new gardens!
Ka Rawe!!!
As an Enviroschool Kindergarten, kaiako foster an appreciation where the learning is sustainable with KNOWLEDGE TRANSFERRING from kindergarten to home.

Friday, 23 September 2016

Check out this video of Waitoriki School! You guys are amazing!

Monday, 19 September 2016

Uruti in the news

Bank staff muck in atUrutiSchool

Uruti students with BNZ staff.

All over the nation BNZ banks were closing their branches for good. Closed For Good is BNZ’s annual day of volunteering, and more than 3000 pairs of hands were sent to help a variety of places doing a range of jobs. Bank staff have lent their helping hands to more than 2500 projects around the country over the last seven years.

To get some of Closed For Good’s help causes submit their project and then bank employees vote for the projects they want to help. The ones with the most votes are picked and UrutiSchool was chosen. Bank staff arrived at Uruti School at 9.30am and got stuck in to work. Bank staff member Peter Hilliam told the students that they had decided that Uruti School was good place to go and spend the day. The workers were doing all sorts of jobs including painting, gardening, water blasting and building.

’’We really enjoy coming to the community and helping. We got away from the desk,’’ said Karen Goldsworthy.

Some of the students’ parents also came to help.

Uruti children were pleased with the finished product and hoped to be part of the Closed For Good programme again next year.

As spring (Koanga) is warming up, tamariki at Puketapu Kindergarten have been potting up seeds for our vegetable gardens. Tamariki enjoy talking about planting seeds. We were challenged when the beans that we planted, disappeared over night!! Maybe a mysterious family of slugs or snails?? We are developing an appreciation, respect, and love of the natural world!

Mangorei School Envirogroup and Clean Up NZ Week

The Mangorei Envirogroup and I made a quick video about what they had been doing for Clean up NZ Week.

*Turn up the sound when watching this, it was a very wet and noisey lunchtime :)

Friday, 16 September 2016

Our cardboard garden!

Cardboard Garden

In our vegetable garden we had a huge problem! We were sick of pulling out weeds every time we had an Enviro Schools session.
So this year we have decided to put cardboard down on top our garden as a natural weed mat.
This was a good idea because cardboard can disintegrate and unlike plastic it will not affect the environment.
We have cut holes in the cardboard where we have planted our plants and put stepping stones down to stand on and to prevent the cardboard from blowing away.
We change our cardboard regularly throughout the term and so far we have had no problems with weeds yet!

our new and improved garden

Cleaning up our School

Cleaning our School.

We have cleaned up our school by water blasting our paths, pulling all the weeds, clearing the bush track, re-making the dirt path, water blasting our fences, scrubbing, sanding and painting our school sign and we are yet to get a new pool fence!

Lucas is water blasting our bag area

Inside our school we are painting cupboards and tables to make our classroom bright and colourful. We are putting blackboard paint onto cupboard doors and then we are covering some table with whiteboard paint too.

Stay tuned....

Seed Selling

Last year Jayne came into school and helped to start us with a project called 'Seed 2 Seed.' Last spring we sowed our seeds (pumpkin, pop corn and peas). Over the summer they grew then last term we harvested and dried our Strawberry Popping Corn and Purple Shelling Peas. We have also grown our own unique pumpkins that are called Small Stream Pumpkins which is the English translation for Waitoriki (small stream).
Ashleigh, Milla and Holly have designed and made the seed packets (we chose a vintage theme).

As a whole school we have packaged the seeds up and now have them on sale in the foyer.
All seeds are $3.50 a packet or you can get three packets for $9.50.

Poppy counting out our strawberry popping corn to put in packets to sell

our small stream pumpkin seeds drying

shelling our purple shelling peas

Junior Cooking

Junior Cooking

Every Friday morning our juniors do some cooking with Mrs Downer and Mrs Wilkinson using produce that they have harvested from our school vege garden.

So far they have made apple crumble, feijoa muffins, coleslaw, fritters, macaroni and cheese, lemon cake, pumpkin hummus, fruit milkshakes.

They really enjoy Friday cooking as there are some delicious treats to eat each week!