Huiakama School wins Taranaki Regional Council Environment Award for 2016

The quiet achievers on the Forgotten Highway at Huiakama School are being very industrious in their enviro efforts.  In November 2016 they were awarded the much sort after Environment Award.  Check out their write up here and make sure to watch their cool video :-)  Well done team!

Murals and Bird Feeders

May Harrison's Mural

Our outdoor art was inspired by May Harrison, a much loved teacher and member of our community who passed away several years ago.  The first mural is in memory of her and was completed at the beginning of 2014.


With the help of our Artist in Residence Barbara Spencer, students designed and painted this fantastic mural.  We were lucky enough to win a Keep New Zealand Beautiful competition for our design and the paints were provided by Resene.


This mural got us all inspired and one of our senior students completed a mural of the oak tree (which is our school emblem), other students created upcycled flower art from rubbish bin lids and bird feeders from plastic bottles.

Plastic Bottle House

Just before pet day last year we finished off our bottle house.  Students looked into different types of greenhouses and their costs using Google. This kind was the greenest and the cheapest, and looked simple for us to build!  Thanks to our lovely local recycling centre and local families, who saved all the bottles for us, we managed to get enough to complete the job.

We also managed to get a grant from Phonak to help with costs of the framing. We raised our tomato and cucumber seedlings last year, but we're hoping it comes into its own this spring to raise a lot more seedlings.

The build was really time consuming, and because our kids are littles, we had to do it bit by bit. We could only get a few bottles on each bamboo pole before some lost interest and we had to move onto a different area of the garden. Something to consider.  We also needed adult to cut bottles.

If we were to give advice we would say to pack your poles tightly together for maximum insulation. We might have to go back and adjust our front with a few extra poles.

Our Bottle House

Worms and Compost

Our worm farm came about because we had issues with stinky rubbish and flies.  Through student led investigation we came up with the idea to create a worm farm. We discovered we had an old one sitting out the back!! We revamped it and set it up alongside our compost bins (made out of recycled wood pallets).

We have a compost bin which classroom scraps are put into. One of our students is responsible for making sure they have enough to eat, and that citrus is kept out. Currently we're waiting with baited breath to produce their first lot of worm wee!

One thing we found over the winter was that we didn't have them covered. We thought they were producing wee but it was just the rain. So kids put a cover to keep dry and also found some old carpet to keep them warm.  

Welcome to Huiakama School!

Welcome to Huiakama School, who are participating in the blog project. They are a sole charge school of 17 students, led by principal Gwenda Pease and assisted by a release teacher, and teacher aide (both who are onboard).