tree house

                           Tree House

                            

A few weeks ago some of us started making tree houses out of the pieces of wood from the old pool fence. We also used pieces of wood that Mr George brought to school for us to use for the tree house. 

First we built a ladder to help us get into the tree house. Then we started building the tree house using big branches and putting them in the tree and nailing pieces of wood that we had sawed. Now we have a bridge made of the old pieces of wood from the pool fence. 

Moturoa eco - building imagineers

We have been wondering about and getting ideas to build our own eco classroom.

We went to Hamilton to visit Hukanui School, Rhode Street School, Gold beads Montessori and then we went to Hamilton gardens.

We saw wine bottles, pumice and broken concrete and polystyrene floors! There were portholes in the floor so we could see what they looked like inside.  They had swales and an old bike that they pedalled to pump the water up to the tap!

They had windows in the wall that were wood slats that opened on the inside and outside that could be used to let air into the classroom. There were special slats so that the sun would be blocked out in summer but shine in during winter because of the angle.

We learnt lots on our trip and got lots of ideas for building our own eco-classroom.

We have been doing lots of learning around energy, Donna our facilitator brought in a light machine that helped us to decide what types of bulbs we should use.  The light would go on for ages with an eco bulb and was easy to spin it.  You didn't really have to try - you just had to push it.  For the non-eco bulbs it was really hard to push - you had to put lots of energy into it to make it keep on going.

    

Zoe wrote to the board - 7 drafts later after lots of sessions of feedback from the class we have been told we can continue our investigations!

By Tapeka, Zoe, Sadhbh and Nevaeh