Working

We haven't been posting much lately but we have been working our little green hats off!

We have tried lots of methods to help our garden grow but we are about to try something called... seed balls!

Before we get to that we just received 5 pairs of yellow gloves and a compost bin from the glorious McCains competition.

We have started to use the eco dome that we have kept ever since 2011 started!

For the eco dome we learnt about the water cycle. The water cycle is when the sun evaporates water which rises as steam that condensates as clouds and falls back as rain.

Our worm farm has also been going just as well as our garden.

We have put buckets in all of the classrooms in the school and we are going to give carrots,apples, etc in each bucket to feed the worms.

This will keep the wasted fruits out of the rubbish bins and it will feed the worms and then it will turn in to worm manure and it will help the garden!

Ash started an ant farm and we are also thinking about using apple cores for it as well as the rest of what's going in there.

Matthew Gilder(Room 6) and John also found a pineapple sage leaf that had mould on it?

we are planning to go to the nursery once again to replant some seeds we planted at the very start of our garden journey.

On the 13th of Dec we had our first Cauliflour its quite small but it will still taste good.

Thank you!

Tui
A huge THANKYOU for all your support with getting our Vegetable Garden ready. We enjoyed receiving all the interesting emails and were extremely excited to receive our pack. Thank you for providing New Zealand with a way to educate young children and provide learning in real life situations.
Kind regards,
Miss Casey and Room10

And it grows, and grows and grows...

Goodness me it just keeps growing! The gardens are well underway. With all the sun we have been having, and the daily water they are out of control! We cannot wait to be able to eat fresh vegetables - we are even going to make the teachers lunch one day!


We had a little issue though - noone turned up in the holidays to water the gardens and Miss Casey was not impressed!!! We didn't take responsibility for the gardens, but just as well it rained for often otherwise...


We have certainly learnt our lesson and we are back to our routine!


Here's some more photos of our gardens:

Buddy Time

Talofa
We had our first hot Summer's Day woohoo! So we decided to go and help the Kindergarten next door plant out there garden. Miss Casey chose 3 children from our room, and 3 of our New Entrant buddies to help with the planting.


We wandered over with some Cauliflower, Cabbage, and Rocket Plants (that were kindly donated by Tui, THANKS) and helped them plant out there garden. We had heaps of fun planting in the hot sun. The wee kindy children loved watering the plants, although we think they got more water on themselves whoops!


Here's some photos of us gardening in the Kindergarten...

We're going on a Bug Hunt!

Kia Ora
Room 1 came over to our room on this fine, sunny day and we went on a hunt! We had a magnifying glass, a Tui Garden Booklet and little containers! Can you guess what we were up too???

Bug Hunting! We wanted to see what bugs were in our gardens, what they looked like, what there jobs were, and if there was any really unusual ones. We found slugs, caterpillars, snails (eek), a weta (Miss Casey screamed at this) and heaps and heaps of worms!

After that, we came back to class and observed the bugs using the Dinoscope (magnifying glass that hooks up to the Interactive Whiteboard). Gosh they are even more interesting up close!

Here's some photos of us hunting!

Update

Our garden is coming along swimmingly! Some of the hot houses are now too small for the plants so off they come! We discussed also how sometimes the leaves of the plants are getting cut off from the bottles so we are in the process of discussing a better solution for protecting our plants from the climate! We shall keep you posted!

The Seedlings have gone nuts! They just keep growing, and growing and growing. They went a bit weird though - they all started growing on a lean - and we couldn't work out why then Georgia had a thought "It's because of the sun - they grow towards the sun". Genius! That was it. So now when we see them growing a funny direction we turn the tray around - it's continuous!

Every morning one of us will go over to Room 1 and get our buddy and water the gardens! We like how they help us, and they like to do it! And we are all learning at the same time! We have a roster, sometimes we forget to check it until Miss Casey says "Has anyone water the gardens" and many hands pop up to volunteer.

In our Class Meeting the other day we all said how much we have enjoyed the Vege Gardens and all the exciting new knowledge we have! Some of us have even started gardens at home!

Finally!

Kia Ora
YAY we could finally plant! After the gardens were built it rained....and rained...and rained...and rained... for a whole week! We weren't sure if it would ever stop!

Then finally Thursday afternoon we sure something yellow in the sky...the SUN! We ran over to Room 1, the new entrant classroom because we wanted to buddy up with them and garden!

Taliah and Nepia position the plants in the correct gardens. Then after Miss Casey demonstrating how to plant, we grabbed a wee buddy (cute) and planted the veges! It was fantastic! It was so much fun! We were finally able to plant our vegetable garden!!!

We had almost finished planting then...pat pat pat...RAIN!

The little tots ran inside, and Miss Casey and a couple of children quickly placed the mini hot houses ontop of the plants! These hot houses are recycled water bottles (1.5litre containers) cut in half. They allow the sun and rain to get through, but stop the nasty wind and frost!

But then after school Miss Casey realised that we forgot to put the little windows on some of the hot houses.. with the heavy rain Miss Casey and Clayton worked outside cutting the recycled bottles and placing them back overtop of the plants - slightly wet at the end of it!

Here's some of our photos from our exciting day!

We can't wait to see them grow!

The Build!

On a lovely Sunday Miss Casey, Mr Casey and a few children built the gardens! Gosh what a job! We decided to use Railway Sleepers because they are durable and untreated. Mr Casey and some of us measured these to make sure they fit the perimeter. We then cut them with a chainsaw; well actually Mr Casey did!


We then positioned these, and banged in pegs, and then nailed these to the sleepers. It took HEAPS of banging.


We then lay down newspaper and placed Compost soil into each garden. It felt like the shovelling would never stop! We then added in the Tui Garden Mix to give the soil extra nutrients.


Here is what our garden now looks like. And if you look closely the Blossom Tree is starting to bloom, woohoo!

We also started planting our seeds! We can't wait for them to propogate!

Garden Designs!

These are our garden designs that we came up with. Our class had to vote for a design that we liked and thought that would be the most efficient way to have our vegetable garden. In the end, the second plan took out the competition. 

Problem Solving!

We have been busy discussing our Vege Garden - Gosh what a tough job! We had to decide where it would go. We had to think about how windy the area was, how much sun it would get, and if there was any dead space. We found the perfect spot right beside our classroom - ideal!

But then we had a problem - the area we wanted to use has a Blossom Tree planted in the middle and not far from this a Water Tap (which we can't cover up). So we had to get our thinking caps on!

We came up with two designs (see below) that would ensure we had a large amount of garden space, didn't cover up the water tap, and the blossom tree wouldn't shade the vege garden. As a class we discussed our ideas, and the possible options and then voted. But the decision wasn't that easily made. We had other people to consider!

We had to check with Mrs Livingstone our Principal to make sure she didn't mind us altering the school; Mr Clark the caretaker to make sure he didn't mind us messing up his perfectly cut grass; and the Kindergarten next door, whose's big glass window looks right out onto the area. They all loved the idea! Phewf, what a relief!

But then Mrs Livingtsone had a thought - would the blossom tree shade the vege garden too much? And then Miss Casey had a thought - would the wood used to make the raised garden beds have chemicals in it which would seep into the soil and veges? Yikes! More problem solving to do done.

We rang a local nursery and asked them if the blossom tree would shade too much, they said it would be fine! And then the wood, we rang Mr Casey (Miss Casey's Dad who is going to help us build the garden) to see what type of wood he was thinking of using and whether it had chemicals in it! Luckily he thought of this already and decided to use old rail way sleepers because they look nice and don't have any chemicals. But as a precaution, because they may of had some tar on them, we are going to lay a barrier between the soil and sleepers.

Gosh! And we still haven't started building - we didn't realise how much there was to do before we could build the vege garden!

Oh o! Miss Casey wants to go and buy the sleepers this weekend, but she needed to know how much wood to get! So...for Math's we learnt about Perimeter and Area. We went out, and using pegs and string marked out the vege gardens. We then measured the perimeter of each and gave this to Miss Casey. Then Miss Casey wanted to know how much soil to get - so we had to work out the volume of the gardens! Gosh, so much learning to do! We then gave her this information.

Now hopefully we can start building next week. Although I'm thinking there will be something else we will need to work out before we start.

Argh...Miss Casey just said "Children, we have another problem we haven't considered..." What now!!!!

Vegeers

Hello, we are Ella and Madison and we are the creators of room 10's blog "Otatara Vegeers." Our plan is to make a organic garden for our community to share. So we will keep you posted with photos, info and more!