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!

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Orchard Maintenance

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Orchard Maintenance: It was a busy day today in the orchard.  We had to copper spray our plums and peaches and we had a tidy up around the fruit trees.  We also ...

Enviro Updates on our Website

We have only just realised that other than our Enviro Blog we did not have any other information about our Enviro Schools Journey on our schools website.
We now have a page dedicated to this which also has a link to our blog:

WebLink Toko School

Just sharing our thinking and actions :)

Up-cycling our Planter Tray

On Friday the Enviro group up-cycled our planter tray. 
Thanks to Bunnings who provided us with this very cool colour. 
The kids had a great time and are excited to begin planting.

Marco School Car Park

This is a great achievement for Marco School Board of Trustees.

WE ARE GETTING A CARPARK!

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Silver reflection

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Silver reflection: Our Enviro class have been working closely with the team from Taranaki Enviro Schools to prepare for our silver reflection .  It has been a ...

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!

Planting day at Hawera Primary

On the 8th of May Bill Clarkson and Mike Tapp came to Hawera Primary School to help us plant 52 native trees .




Bill Donated these very special trees to our school. 

There is 32 Nikau trees, and 20 other native trees. These tress will help us to bring KAHA back to our school. 

 We are so greatful to have to many helpful people willing to share their expert knowledge. 

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.

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Check out our new Enviro Star signage

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Check out our new Enviro Star signage

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Country Fair Stall

Enviro Learning @ Toko School: Country Fair Stall: Below are some photos from our Country Fair.  We must have forgotten to post them on our blog at the time.  2015 was the first time selling...

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!

Toko School Room 5: Toko School Enviro Bank Established Term 2 2015 By...

Toko School Room 5: Toko School Enviro Bank Established Term 2 2015 By...: Toko School Opens Enviro Bank in 2015! Toko School Year 7 & 8 class have developed an Enviro Bank in Term 2. This bank manages the mo...

Toko School Room One.: Room 1 In The Orchard.

Toko School Room One.: Room 1 In The Orchard.: Room 1 has added 2015 to our orchard journey slideshow.

Toko School Room One.: Room 1's Orchard Journey From 2012 to 2015 (10 mi...

Toko School Room One.: Room 1's Orchard Journey From 2012 to 2015 (10 mi...: We have put the latest in the slideshow from 2015.

Toko School Room One.: May : We made a cake with feijoas from this y...

Toko School Room One.: May   :

We made a cake with feijoas from this y...: May   :   We made a cake with feijoas from this years crop in the school orchard.                

Our garden and orchard

We created the garden with the help of volunteers of our community who were Mr Allerby Mrs  Allerby Mrs McQueen and Mr and Mrs George. the teachers Mrs Claridge and Mrs Moratti helped too. the students of waitoriki school all participated in the making of the garden as well.

We used various materials such as wood chicken wire and nails for the fence to keep the rabbits out. we used bamboo as tripods for our beans to climb up. we also planted lots of different types of beans even heritage beans!

the whole idea of making the garden was to keep us busy with our enviro stuff and to have a big school lunch with food from our garden.

Room Six: Feijoas are Ready to Sell

Room Six: Feijoas are Ready to Sell: Room 1 and 6 have begun collecting the feijoas from our school orchard.  Last year the whole school ate all the feijoas.  They were really ...