April

With senior swimming taking out 3 weeks of the term, it's been a bit disjointed on the enviro front.  
In the first part of the term, enviro kids enjoyed harvesting plums, apples and pears from the orchard.  Mrs Morrison brought in some plum jam and pikelets for all to enjoy.  Children took home plum jam recipes to try out with their produce.
We have also spent time orienting ourselves with the edible gardens, orchard and school surrounds, so that we can think about ways of using these in our enviro group.  We talked about our worm farm and compost and how we use these in the gardens.
 Mrs King came in last week with special guest Mr Johnstone (Sarah & Cam's grand-dad).  They judged the annual pumpkin contest as well as talking and discussing all things pumpkin!
With Autumn well established, our edible gardens have slowed down considerably and harvesting produce is nearly complete.  Room 7 artists enjoyed picking and sketching carrots last week - but most of all enjoyed eating them afterwards :)
I was honoured to attend the Keep Dunedin Beautiful Awards late March, and received a Very Highly Commended for the school's beautiful and creative murals, as well as our adoption of a spot to keep litter free (Cemetery Rd). 
Speaking of litter and waste, Rooms 1&2 enviro kids discussed our new DCC recycling system and made posters to show what goes in the yellow lidded bins and the blue buckets.  We all agreed that reducing the packaging we buy and use is the best step, but recycling the packaging and litter is the next stage. 
Over the next while, we will be learning more about Waste reduction within our school, community and beyond.  We hope to educate and motivate our whole school community on best practice with regard to Waste Minimisation.  Already, Mrs Horgan has taken the initiative to remove rubbish bins from the playground so that rubbish can be taken home, sorted and recycled.  Each classroom has paper recycling bins which get emptied every day also.   The enviro group will be monitoring these systems and reflecting very soon on progress, problems,  and any modifications needed.
To finish off the term, Room 3&4 enviro kids will be heading along Cemetery Rd to have a clean up and enjoy the good weather while it lasts!  Hopefully we'll get a couple of parents along this week to have a bit of a weed in our edible gardens too.
I was priviledged to attend the Enviroschools Reflection/Awards Process day last Tuesday.  I enjoyed learning more about Enviroschools in Otago, and about where our school fits into the Awards Scheme as a Silver School.  I came away with lots of exciting ideas and can't wait to share these with the rest of our school community.
Have a great rest over the Term 1 holidays, and don't forget Earth Day on 18 April.  Go to www.gdrc.org/doyourbit/18_4-heritage.html  or http://www.earthday.net/ for ideas on how you can participate.