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!

Hi
I'm learning how to work this
Maree

Watch out this volcano has a large crater and is about to erupt using baking soda and red coloured vinegar

Our Enviro-school visitors Day

On Wednesday 21st of October we opened our kindergarten to visitors to celebrate  alongside like minded conservationists.

Once we grouped together we went on a tour.  We started at the worm farms and compost bins, next to the native trolley track gardens, then to the vegetable gardens, herb garden, rain harvesting system above the sandpit, the flower garden, the nesting birds, the orchard, kumara garden and the bug hotel.

 

Once we explored outside it was inside to see our enviro-school planning wall, the Nga Atua display, our recycling systems, our natural resource and cold glue gun area.

Then weaving with Cordelle Rei, what a challenge.  Pegs were used as extra hands when creating our putiputi or pono.  Kia kaha nga wahine.

 

New Enviroschools Display

At our kindergarten, we have been brainstorming for a while about the way we'd like to display our Enviroschools information. We feel that Enviroschools has become a huge part of our culture and our programme, and we want parents, whānau, and visitors to be able to see this in our display.

After attending an Enviroschools Hui, our Head Teacher (Alayne) shared her learning that the Enviroschools journey can be represented by a river. There are waves, eddies, distributaries, etc. that impact the direction of your journey, but you keep paddling together in your waka, and you learn and grow together.

We loved this image, and decided to use it in our display. One of our teachers offered to paint a mural of a river to be the background of our display, which we had decided would take up the length of an entire wall, over the doors to the office and an entryway.

We incorporated koru-like waves into the painting. This is to tie the Enviroschools display in with the broader philosophy and culture of our kindergarten. We have a unique koru-based background which we use in many of our displays and throughout children's portfolios, so these wave koru are reminiscent of that overarching image.

When it was finished, we fit the painting into the Enviroschools display area. It certainly brightened up the white walls!

We then added our display information, all tied together by the background of the river painting.

This display includes our Enviroschools philosophy, our Care Code, our Enviroschools vision, a picture of our kaitiaki (who protects our gardens), and many pictures of our children engaging in sustainable practices. 

As a team, we are very pleased with our new Enviroschools display, feeling that it is a beautiful and inviting way to express the importance of this programme in our kindergarten. We will keep updating the pictures of the children's involvement (as well as the other items as we review and refine them) to keep the display relevant and interesting.

Enviro-School Visitors Day

Kia ora everyone
We have been asked by certain support agencies that work with children in our kindergarten to offer a day where we explain our sustainability initiatives that our children use on a daily basis.
So....if you would like to visit and be part of this day, here is the information.
Date:  Wednesday the 21st October 2015.
Time:  10.30am - 12.30pm
The first half an hour is spent of showing you our environment and sustainable practices, worm farming, composting, rain harvesting system, orchard development, bug hotel, atua play and discovery.
Next is 45 minutes to work alongside local master weaver, Cordelle Rei.  Each participant will get support to create a koru/kono or putiputi.
At 11.45am onwards will be kai and time for sharing and reflection.

Limited to 12 spaces as kindergarten session will be running.
Contact:  Alayne Shearer on 06 755 1366 or email puketapu@kindergartentaranaki.co.nz

Impressed at Puketapu

The Enviroschools team had the privilege of visiting Puketapu Kindergarten recently and wow what an amazing environment! 

Enviroschools is an integral part of their identity and their plans and community focused vision are evident everywhere you look.

Maori Perspectives ~ Ngā Atua are an integral part of the environment with plentiful opportunities for children to interact with nature and it’s rich resources.

Waste systems are well established and user friendly!

With a flourishing garden area, native garden track and orchard...

A stunning example of what the Enviroschools Kaupapa can achieve!  

Natural Materials for Exploration

Part of our curriculum is using natural materials
 for creations with the children.

Native Plants Trolley Track

We are very proud of our native plants on our trolley track.

Bug Hotel

At our kindergarten, we love bugs. We love looking under rocks and stumps to find them, we love drawing them and creating artwork about them, and we love learning about them. The hard part, though, is figuring out how to express our love for bugs without hurting them. Sometimes the children's fascination includes wanting to carry them around for hours, or to put them in little boxes to take them home. As teachers, we want to encourage children's enjoyment and learning, but also introduce the understanding that we need to respect bugs and keep them safe.

We decided that one way to support this goal was to build a Bug Hotel. This would allow us to have a safe and special place for bugs to be taken and where we can observe them without hurting them.

We decided to be responsible and reuse materials in our construction project, so the first step was to dismantle an old pallet that had been donated. We then used old donated bricks and collected heaps of sticks, leaves, pinecones, etc. to fill it up and make cozy little niches where bugs could curl up and feel safe.

Our Bug Hotel was a success from the beginning. It only took a day to build, and then it was ready for our many-legged visitors.

The children bring over the bugs that they find, and tell them, "Welcome to the Bug Hotel!" Often the bugs will sit for a bit out on the edge of the board, where we can observe them. Then they climb back into brick or between the sticks to find a place to stay.

It didn't take long for us to realize that the wind (and some enthusiastic exploring by children) quickly depleted the store of sticks and leaves, so we all work together to keep replenishing it over time.

We also added bamboo when we came across some later, as the tiny holes are perfect for our visitors, especially in winter.

Our children started spending more time than ever finding, observing, and learning about bugs.

We have loved seeing how brave our children are - we almost never hear a child scream or run away when they see a bug. Rather, there is competition to get close enough to see and about who gets to hold it or carry it to the Bug Hotel.

After a while, we realized that our Bug Hotel was great for most bugs we found - katydids, slaters, spiders, centipedes, cockroaches, weta, snails, grasshoppers, crickets, praying mantises, etc. - but we had a problem. What about earthworms? The teachers had been encouraging the children to put them down at the bottom, but the discovery of a few dried-out ones on the top level indicated that we'd not been as hospitable to them as we'd like.

So... we built a special earthworm wing of the Bug Hotel!

Our earthworm wing is walled in by bricks, with lovely, moist soil inside. It is great for digging for worms and for burying worms that we find elsewhere. It has a lid that we made at the carpentry table to keep it nice and moist, as well as to protect the worms from the inevitable feet that will step there on the way to the rest of the Bug Hotel. Plus, it is exciting to lift up the lid to peak into the earthworm wing. Our earthworm guest are now happy and comfortable when they come to stay.

Our Bug Hotel has been a part of our teaching environment for just over a year now, and it is looking great and is still used almost every day.

We recently planted some bug-friendly plants around the Bug Hotel, but there is so much foot-traffic, they are having a bit of a hard time growing. We've added a brick path to encourage the children to walk on it instead of the plants, but that's still a work in progress. We'll continue to expand and explore our use of this area, but we are loving it so far!

If anyone has suggestions or ideas for improving our Bug Hotel, especially with regard to growing bug-friendly plants, we'd love to hear them!

Harvesting Our Kumara

On our Celebrate Autumn day a few weeks ago, our tamariki had a wonderful time harvesting the kumara that we had planted in tyres at kindergarten. They were so excited to pull off the top tyres and start digging around in the lovely, soft soil to find the beautiful kumara.

 

We found just a few small ones at first, but we weren't discouraged!

 As soon as we moved the last tyre, we we started finding bigger kumara.

 There were roots everywhere!

 

Look at our beautiful kumara harvest! They grew absolutely beautifully in the tyre stack!

 

Our tamariki took great pride in their very own kumara.

The next day, we used our kumara to make kumara and orange salad, which was delicious!

Community Trading Table

At our kindergarten, we have set up a Trading Table, to promote reusing items and community interdependence. Whanau and members of the community are welcome to take anything they can use. They can bring in something in exchange, make a monetary donation, or if neither of those work, they are still welcome to help themselves. Fruits, vegetables, and children's clothes are the most popular items, although we get everything from books to craft supplies to baby carriers.
We also sell our worm juice and worm dirt from our worm farms on this shelf, which is always popular.

In addition to being a fun and sustainable program, our Trading Table is actually an effective fundraiser! We've made several hundred dollars in less than a year, and have been able to use the money to purchase gardening tools and other materials for our Enviroschools program.

A note: You may have noticed that our "Trading Table" is not actually a table. It used to be, but has been upgraded to shelves, due to our efforts to respect tikanga by not having food and shoes (or other potentially dirty items) on the same surface. We are brainstorming on what the new name should be, but haven't come

to a conclusion yet.

Welcome to Puketapu Kindergarten!

A big welcome to Puketapu Kindergarten - the first kindergarten to join the blog! They have an amazing centre with so many fantastic enviro features - very impressive! Puketapu Kindergarten has 45 little ones, 4 teaching staff (Emma, Alayne, Maree, and Rachel) and their administrator Corene. Can't wait to see your posts on the blog so schools can see what your 3 and 4 year olds have available!